# mall retail

The ‘Hermès of Nuts’: How Xueji’s Luxury Snack Play Exposes China’s Emotional Consumption and Its Limits

Xueji Chaohuo, a fast-growing Chinese chain that styles itself as the luxury choice for roasted nuts, has provoked both ridicule and long queues with high prices and glossy mall stores. Its premium rests on mall location, heavy investment in store design and a carefully cultivated emotional pitch to middle-class gift buyers, but supply stabilization, fierce peer competition and wavering freshness claims expose the model’s fragility.