Baobao Chanle, a smash-hit brand in the Chinese baby snack market

BaoBao Chanle 宝宝馋了 is a rising infant & child snack and complementary food brand established in 2016. The brand distinguishes itself by claiming no added food additives.

Baobao Chanle highlights “no additives” of its products. Photo source: TmallBaoBao Chanle ushered in explosive growth in 2020, with online monthly sales reached nearly RMB 100 million, a year-on-year increase of more than 30 times.¹ During 2020 Tmall Double 11 Shopping Festival², it clinched the No.1 in the mother & child category brand soaring list, and the No.1 in the infant and child snack segment as a brand that has been on Tmall for less than three years.

The rise of Baobao Chanle holds all the aces.

Around 2016, the maternal and infant We-media exploded in China, represented by famous pediatricians Cui Yutao and Zhang Silai on the Weibo platform and Dingxiang doctor (an online health information provider) and Nicomama (a popular maternal and infant KOL) on the WeChat. Under their dedicated promotion, scientific and refined feeding started to garner widespread attention, especially among young generation parents. However, the market offering still lagged behind. So “Baobao Chanle" came into being and rode on the beneficial trend to provide scientific, nutritious, and delicious baby snacks for 1-5 years old babies. Its 30-day e-commerce repurchase rate reached 50%, showing significant consumer loyalty.

Besides, in China's infant and child snack and complementary food market, many products, such as rice noodles, puffs, fruit puree, have stereotyped forms in 20 or 30 years. However, Baobao Chanle launched dried shrimp rice companion, sesame sea moss, and other innovative products to open a new market. All the products feature natural with no additives, low salt, low sugar, and low oil.

Now Baobao Chanle’s product portfolios include snacks, complementary food, and seasonings, with more than 40 SKUs. Among them, rice chips, sesame sea moss floss, sesame sea moss, cod puffs, and strawberry cookies are the top 5 selling products, with each product selling more than 10,000 units a month. It maintains a pace of 3-5 new items per month.

In the recent three months, Baobao Chanle has completed two rounds of financings to enhance its supply chain and brand building.

China's baby snack and complementary food market size in 2020 was about RMB 110 billion.³ Despite falling birth rate and epidemic-induced recession, the baby complementary food and snack sectors maintain a high year-on-year growth rate of 73.3% and 75.3% (from January to October 2020), respectively.

With the accelerating pace of urban life, parents born in the 1980s and 1990s have a growing demand for convenient and healthy pre-packaged healthy snacks and complementary food products. In the past, the Chinese market was dominated by international brands such as Gerber, but new and innovative brands expect to encounter strong development opportunities.

Innovative opportunities for baby snacks and complementary food in China

Few professional brands

It is undeniable that foreign brands are more professional and sophisticated in creating food specifically for infants and children. Many Chinese-grown brands use "baby-oriented" packaging designs to appeal to children, but their products are not designed for children per se. Most of the products are confectionary, biscuits, puffed food, which are no different from adult snacks. But in foreign countries, many food giants have launched professional baby and children snack brands. Pepsi launched Imagine Snacks, a children's healthy snack brand focusing on yogurt and cheese products in 2018, aiming to provide rich protein and calcium supplements to children.

PepsiCo's children's snack brand Imagine Snacks, photo source: 36KrAnnie's, a children's food brand owned by Mondelez International, has a broader range of products, including cheese, cereal snacks, organic fruit candy, and macaroni. Mondelez's innovative unit, Snack Futures, also launched children's food brand Ruckus and Co., but none of these brands have yet entered the Chinese market.

Nestlé seems to be more forward-looking for the Chinese infant & child snack market. It launched the children’s snack brand -- Xiao Chu Hu Meng Meng 小厨狐萌萌 at the end of 2020.

Some Chinese-grown brands also jumped on the bandwagon by launching professional food brand specifically for infant and children, such as Deer Blue launched by the e-commerce snack giant Three Squirrels. But the market still calls for more new entrants to meet the growing and diversifying demands of Chinese parents.

Few product categories

In the Chinese market, both snacks and complementary food sectors face single product type and homogenization problems.

Baobao Chanle’s dried shrimp, sesame sea moss, fruit & vegetable cheese, cod puffs are all innovative product forms and achieved excellent market performance.

We also noticed that in recent years, the cereal snacking trend has been prominent worldwide. Cereal products represented by cheerios and cereal bars are popular in the overseas market. In the Chinese market, the emergence of innovative snack cereals, such as Wang Baobao, also reflects cereal foods’ consumption potential in different scenarios. Therefore, we think that cereal snacks for children would be a feasible innovation direction.

Segmented consumer needs

Chinese parents have three immediate demands for current infant & children snack and complementary food.

1. Raw material ingredients are "organic" and "natural". At present, the number of factories that truly meet the organic certification standard in China is limited, and most of the products may have traces of hype marketing. We look forward to seeing more brands bringing products made from quality and differentiated raw material products in the days ahead.

2. Clean label. More consumers prefer brands with clean label claims such as no additives, no pigment, preservative, and other chemical ingredients, and no or low sugar/oil/salt. Babao Chanle stands out and creates word of mouth with the brand concept of “no additives”.

3. Fortifying product nutrition and function. On the one hand, Chinese parents would like to choose products highlighting enriched nutrients such as high protein and high calcium; on the other, they are eager for products with functional ingredients to improve children's immunity, brain vitality, intestinal function and other body functions. The use of probiotics in children's snacks or complementary food is a good option for innovation.