Will 59 Yuan Shrimp Paste Hot Pot Buffet Become the Next 'Beef Rib Buffet'?

59 yuan per person shrimp paste hot pot buffet: small-town youth realizing 'shrimp paste freedom'?

Recently returning to his hometown, Neican Jun found that a second-tier small city in Hebei had actually opened several 'shrimp paste hot pot buffet' restaurants.

Compared to ordinary hot pot buffets, these places are like a 'shrimp paste museum': from original shrimp paste to roe shrimp paste, mushroom shrimp paste, squid shrimp paste, and even dragon fruit shrimp paste, with more than a dozen varieties.

Besides shrimp paste, there are also 'paste derivatives' such as chicken paste, beef paste, and fish paste, all uniformly packed in bamboo tube-shaped containers and arranged in rows in the cold storage.

In addition to shrimp paste, there are also traditional hot pot items like beef, lamb, vegetables, and mushrooms, as well as desserts, drinks, and ice jelly commonly found in traditional hot pot buffets. Some stores even add pizza and other staple foods.

Most consumers come for 'shrimp paste freedom'.

In fact, over the past year, a number of chain shrimp paste hot pot buffet brands have sprouted in Hebei Province alone, even expanding beyond the province.

For example, Ci Jie Xian Da Shrimp Paste Hot Pot from Shijiazhuang, founded last year, has now opened 66 stores, reaching Shandong, Jilin, Jiangsu and other provinces. Another brand, Cheng Ke Bei Shrimp Paste Hot Pot, founded around the same time, has opened nearly 40 stores in Hebei, Shanxi, Heilongjiang, and Jilin.

Jiang Lao Lao Shrimp Paste Seafood Hot Pot, which opened its first store in Zhejiang, now has a presence in 12 provinces across the country, with 20 new stores opened this year alone. Lao Xiao Xian Shrimp Paste Seafood Hot Pot, founded in 2018, accelerated its expansion from last year, opening 40 new stores since 2025.

The category is so hot that it has even become popular in South Korea. Recently, a netizen posted that South Korea also has shrimp paste hot pot buffets, with the 'bamboo tube + shrimp paste' configuration identical to that in China.

Why Shrimp Paste Hot Pot Buffet?

The reasons for the rise of shrimp paste hot pot buffet are numerous.

On one hand, shrimp paste has become increasingly widely used in the catering industry and is already a classic star product in the hot pot segment.

Data from Mayiying offline retail monitoring network shows that in 2025, sales of shrimp paste categories increased by 56.9% year-on-year, with sales volume up 60.6%, ranking first among all sub-categories of frozen food in terms of growth.

In five provinces—Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Anhui, Hunan, and Guizhou—shrimp paste has even successfully 'overtaken' beef balls to become the top hot pot ball ingredient category.

On the other hand, shrimp paste naturally carries a premium trait that satisfies consumers' expectations of 'getting their money's worth'.

Despite its popularity, this 'frozen dark horse' is not cheap. For example, at Haidilao, a serving of signature large-grain shrimp paste (about 140 grams) costs 74 yuan. Even in supermarkets, a pack of Anjoy shrimp paste can reach 16.5 yuan per 150g.

For hot pot buffet restaurants, eating a few portions of shrimp paste can offset the 59-yuan ticket price, and adding other items can achieve 'the feeling of getting value for money', making it highly enticing.

Most importantly, the upstream supply chain for shrimp paste is becoming increasingly strong, with production technology and output continuously rising.

Take Daixiaji as an example: the company focuses on the single shrimp paste category and led the drafting of the group standard for 'Shrimp Paste' in 2023 and the national standard for 'Frozen Shrimp Paste' in 2024. It now achieves monthly sales exceeding 100 million yuan and annual sales over 1 billion yuan.

For the catering industry, especially the hot pot segment, the upstream supply chain is the core lifeline for brands to reduce costs, increase efficiency, and ensure quality. The rise of the supply chain has also brought a turning point for the emergence of shrimp paste hot pot buffets.

Will Shrimp Paste Hot Pot Buffet Become the Next 'Beef Rib Buffet'?

According to Chenzhi Big Data, in the past year, the number of shrimp paste hot pot buffet stores has rapidly grown from fewer than 10 to over 500, mainly distributed in down-market areas.

Creating differentiation through the star product buffet model and rapidly opening stores in a short period inevitably invites comparisons with the similar 'beef rib buffet'.

The latter rose quickly in the second half of 2024 and began closing in bulk in early 2025, with some merchants losing over 2 million yuan in just three months.

Unlike beef rib buffets, which opened when beef prices were falling and closed when prices rose, the cost of shrimp paste is relatively controllable, especially with the development of the upstream supply chain reinforcing the foundation of this category.

However, ingredient cost is only the 'last straw' for beef rib buffets. Another reason for the decline of beef rib buffets is that most stores only rode the wave of the influencer 'beef ribs' without converting category popularity into brand repurchase, ultimately exiting the homogenized market.

For these emerging shrimp paste hot pot buffet brands, challenges such as brand differentiation, product innovation, and store operation management still exist. Whether they can achieve long-term scale remains to be observed.