Pastry Shop Selling Western Cuisine! Baoshifu Opens 1000 Square Meter "Super Collection Store," Venturing into New Territory?

Author: Mu Jiu Jiu

Source: Professional Catering Network (ID: zycy168)

Cover image source: Xiaohongshu @Vientiane Yibin Tiandi

The store size has expanded to 1,000 square meters, adding pizza, pasta, steak…

Once famous for its meat floss small shell cookies, the leading Chinese bakery brand Bao Shifu is quietly exploring cross-industry ventures.

Recently, Bao Shifu opened its first double-story, 1,000-square-meter super-store in Sichuan. In addition to core popular products like meat floss small shell cookies, the store also features a Western food area selling pizza, pasta, steak, and more.

From a small stall of dozens of square meters to a 1,000-square-meter complex store, from a single pastry to multi-category fusion—behind Bao Shifu’s major move, is it a helpless response to industry competition or a proactive brand exploration?

Can this new store format help Bao Shifu find a new growth breakthrough?

1

Bao Shifu opens its first “Super-Collection Store”!

A 1,000-square-meter large store mainly selling baked goods, coffee, Western food…

In mid-February, the construction barriers at Vientiane Yibin Tiandi were quietly removed. Bao Shifu, with its new “Super-Collection Store” format, made its debut in this southern Sichuan city and even nationwide.

Once opened, this store quickly became a focal point, topping the local bread and beverage charts, with continuous customer flow and many products sold out.

So, what are the highlights of this store?

1. 1,000 square meters with a new dine-in area

Bao Shifu’s super-store is located in Vientiane Tiandi, Yibin.

As a major commercial complex in Sanjiang New District, it seamlessly connects to Yibin High-Speed Rail Station, less than 3 km apart, making it a local traffic hub. During last year’s National Day opening, it attracted nearly 2 million visitors.

Additionally, due to lower rent compared to first- and second-tier cities, it has become a primary location for many brands to develop flagship stores, with over 100 flagship brands and a flagship store ratio exceeding 40%.

Bao Shifu is no exception. The new store is situated in a high-traffic area of Vientiane Tiandi. Unlike previous small shops of 100-200 square meters or even dozens, this 1,000-square-meter standalone store has become a local landmark.

The decor retains the warm yellow style of the past but is now brighter and more upscale overall.

Notably, the new store also features a dedicated dine-in area and lounge, clearly different from the previous buy-and-go model.

Image source: Professional Catering Network

2. The interior is divided into zones: bakery, coffee, and Western food

The store is organized by product categories.

The first floor mainly offers baked goods and coffee. About a quarter of the left side is a dedicated coffee zone where customers can order online for pickup, separated from the bakery area by a clear pathway.

Image source: Professional Catering Network

The bakery area maintains the warm yellow lighting and delicate display style from before, with an open kitchen design emphasizing the brand’s “handmade and freshly baked” characteristic.

Image source: Professional Catering Network

The second floor features a Western food zone decorated mainly with natural wood tones, complemented by greenery, creating a stylish Oriental wabi-sabi aesthetic.

Dining areas include dedicated booths and casual tables for two or four people, catering to diverse dining scenarios.

Image source: Xiaohongshu @Vientiane Yibin Tiandi

The store also innovatively applies the popular “counter-style” dining concept from the food industry, making the overall environment more refined and suitable for individual diners.

3. Product “aggregation”: baked goods, coffee, pizza, pasta

As suggested by the name “Super-Collection Store,” product diversity is a highlight.

The bakery zone is core, featuring signature items like small shell cookies, egg tarts, bread, pastries, and cakes, mainly baked on display. Each display counter shows the production date, emphasizing freshness.

Specifically, the store retains popular items like seaweed meat floss small shell cookies, taro egg tarts, cheese mochi, as well as new products like caramel & taro yam puff balls, chocolate queen rolls, and previously viral items like butter rice cakes, corn egg tarts, and beef bread.

It also adds categories like bread and customized birthday cakes, totaling over 100 SKUs priced between 6 and 68 yuan, mostly consistent with other stores.

The coffee zone offers black coffee, American coffee, and milk-based drinks like Bafei milk latte, available iced or hot, with prices matching other cities—post-discount prices are 3.9 yuan and 8.8 yuan respectively.

The second-floor Western food area mainly sells pizza and pasta.

The pizza features high-quality kiln-baked varieties, including Margherita, black truffle beef, mushroom and ham double pizza, and premium options like burrata cheese pizza. Seasonal and regional flavors include spring pizza, fresh asparagus and sausage cheese pizza, and Naples spicy sausage pizza, priced from 30 to 108 yuan per serving.

Pasta options include black pepper beef noodles, black truffle cream bacon pasta, clam pasta, and Bolognese, priced at 48, 58, 48, and 69 yuan respectively.

Additionally, the Western food area will soon offer steak, beverages, and light bites.

2

What is Bao Shifu’s true intention behind exploring Western cuisine?

In 2004, near Beijing’s Communication University, a small shop named “Baozi Western Pastry Shop” quietly opened, selling bread and Western-style desserts.

This was the precursor to Bao Shifu’s bakery brand.

Later, with the launch of its signature meat floss small shell cookies, the brand officially operated under the name “Bao Shifu Pastry.” In just over ten years, Bao Shifu’s meat floss small shell cookies sold over 100 million units annually, creating a nationwide phenomenon. Its stores expanded to nearly 200, becoming a leading Chinese bakery brand, once sparking “7-hour queues to buy Bao Shifu.”

Now, why is this brand, rooted in Chinese pastries, suddenly venturing into Western cuisine? Is it a deep strategic move or just a fleeting trend?

1. “Baking industry reshuffle shortened to six months,” “Bakery+” has become an industry trend

“Previously, the industry would undergo a reshuffle every 5-6 years, but now it can happen every six months. Brands lacking innovation will inevitably be eliminated.”

Bao Shifu’s founder Bao Caisheng once said.

In recent years, fierce competition has led even top brands like Christine, 85°C, Paris Baguette, and Tuo Tou Ju to shrink their operations or face bankruptcy.

Against this backdrop, seeking a “Bakery+” model has become a common way for many bakery brands to break through.

Among the most integrated sectors is tea drinks, which closely overlap with bakery consumer scenarios and customer groups. Many brands are expanding into this area to seize market share.

For example, the recently popular Luzhi River opened its first double-layer flagship store in Nanjing, offering nine drinks including peach gum small pear, single-brew milk tea, jasmine American, and jasmine latte.

Earlier, brands like Butter & Bread, 85°C, Qianji, and Paris Baguette expanded their beverage lines in stores, adding yogurt, milk tea, and coffee. Holiland even launched a new brand “Haocha” in 2024, with milk teas like Haoyun Guanyin, Haomiao Mingxiang, and Haijing Zhengshan, boldly entering the new Chinese-style tea market.

Bao Shifu is no exception. From early “Bao Coffee” offering American, latte, and milk tea, to now venturing into Western cuisine with pizza, pasta, and steak, it has been trying to break out of the original bakery retail model, enriching its product matrix and enhancing core competitiveness.

2. The connection between bakery and Western cuisine: from “walk-in” retail to “+ dine-in,” expanding boundaries

Bao Shifu’s cross-industry move into Western cuisine is not blindly following trends but an exploration of breaking traditional bakery retail formats.

Historically, many bakeries focused on immediate purchase and takeout, rarely offering dine-in options.

Bao Shifu, mainly operating as a street-side stall, has long existed in a similar manner—customers buy and leave quickly, with short dwell times, limited consumption scenarios, and a customer spend mostly in the tens of yuan, restricting growth.

The new store’s addition of Western food and dine-in options addresses this pain point, encouraging customers to stay for meals and relaxation, extending dwell time, improving experience, and increasing average spend to boost sales.

Moreover, the product boundaries between bakery and Western cuisine are quite blurred. Many Western restaurants also sell baked goods, so Bao Shifu’s addition of Western dishes requires minimal market education. Ingredients like cheese and butter are common to both, reducing cross-industry risks.

From a small stall of dozens of square meters to a 1,000-square-meter super-store, from meat floss cookies to multi-category fusion including bakery, coffee, and Western food—Bao Shifu’s cross-industry expansion is not a helpless response to competition but a strategic move for long-term development and proactive change.

In the context of industry reshuffling and intensifying competition, “Bakery+” has become an inevitable trend. Bao Shifu’s venture into Western cuisine not only aligns with industry trends but also creates a differentiated path, exploring new growth avenues.

However, whether this cross-industry journey will succeed remains to be seen by the market.

How brands should transform and break through is a topic that industry insiders need to explore deeply.