Shrimp paste hotpot boom: supply chain and price impact cycle logic

59 yuan/person shrimp paste hotpot: Are small-town youths the first to achieve “shrimp paste freedom”?

Recently, returning to my hometown, I found that a second-tier small city in Hebei had opened several “shrimp paste hotpot” restaurants.

Compared to ordinary hotpot buffets, this place is like a “shrimp paste museum”: from original flavor to fish roe, mushroom, squid, and even dragon fruit shrimp paste; more than a dozen varieties.

Besides shrimp paste, the store also offers chicken paste, beef paste, fish paste, and other “paste derivatives,” all uniformly placed in bamboo tube-shaped containers, arranged in rows in the cold cabinet.

In addition to shrimp paste, the store also offers traditional hotpot items like beef, lamb, vegetables, and mushrooms. Desserts, drinks, and ice jelly commonly found in hotpot buffets are also available, and some stores even add pizza and other staples.

Of course, most consumers come for the “shrimp paste freedom.”

In fact, over the past year, a group of chain shrimp paste hotpot brands has emerged in Hebei alone, even successfully expanding to other provinces.

For example, Shijiazhuang’s Cijie Freshly Made Shrimp Paste Hotpot, founded last year, has already opened 66 stores, reaching Shandong, Jilin, Jiangsu, and elsewhere. Another brand from Hebei, Chengkebeishrimp Paste Hotpot, founded around the same time, has opened nearly 40 stores in Hebei, Shanxi, Heilongjiang, and Jilin.

Jianglaolao Shrimp Paste Seafood Hotpot, which opened its first store in Zhejiang, now has a presence in 12 provinces nationwide, adding 20 new stores this year.

Laoxiaoxian Shrimp Paste Seafood Hotpot, founded in 2018, has accelerated its expansion since last year, opening 40 new stores since 2025.

The category is so hot that it has even spread to South Korea. Recently, netizens posted that shrimp paste hotpot has appeared in South Korea, with the “bamboo tube + shrimp paste” configuration identical to that in China.

Why shrimp paste?

There are several reasons for the rise of shrimp paste hotpot.

On one hand, shrimp paste is increasingly widely used in the catering industry and has long been a classic hit in the hotpot segment.

Data from the Mayin offline retail monitoring network shows that in 2025, sales of shrimp paste category increased by 56.9% year-on-year, with sales volume up 60.6%, ranking first among frozen food subcategories.

In five provinces (Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Anhui, Hunan, Guizhou), shrimp paste even “reversed” to replace beef balls as the top hotpot meatball category.

On the other hand, shrimp paste carries a premium connotation, satisfying consumers’ expectation of getting value for money.

Despite its popularity, the price of this “dark horse frozen product” is quite high. For example, at Haidilao, a serving of signature large-grain shrimp paste (about 140g) costs 74 yuan. Even in supermarkets, a pack of Anjoy shrimp paste costs 16.5 yuan per 150g.

In contrast, eating a few servings of shrimp paste at a hotpot buffet can perfectly offset the 59 yuan ticket, and adding other items allows diners to “recover their costs.”

Most importantly, the upstream supply chain for shrimp paste is becoming stronger, with increasing production technology and output.

For example, Daixiaji focuses on the single category of shrimp paste, and in 2023 and 2024, it took the lead in drafting the “Shrimp Paste” group standard and the “Frozen Shrimp Paste” national standard. It has now achieved monthly sales of over 100 million yuan and annual sales exceeding 1 billion yuan.

For the catering industry, especially the hotpot segment, the upstream supply chain is the core lifeline for cost reduction, efficiency improvement, and quality assurance. The rise of these shrimp paste supply chains has also brought opportunities for shrimp paste hotpot.

Will shrimp paste hotpot become the next “beef rib strips”?

According to Cheetah Big Data, in the past year, the number of shrimp paste hotpot stores has rapidly grown from less than 10 to over 500, mainly concentrated in lower-tier markets.

The model of using a single large-product buffet to differentiate and quickly open stores inevitably draws comparisons to the similar “beef rib strip buffet.”

The latter rose rapidly in the second half of 2024, then saw mass closures in early 2025, with some merchants losing over 2 million yuan in just three months.

Of course, unlike beef rib strips, which opened due to falling beef prices and then closed as beef prices rose, shrimp paste costs are relatively controllable, especially with upstream supply chain development reinforcing the category’s foundation.

However, it is worth noting that ingredient cost was only the “last straw” for beef rib strips.

Another major reason for the decline of beef rib strips is that most stores simply rode the wave of the trendy “beef rib strips” without converting category popularity into brand repurchase, ultimately exiting the homogenized market regretfully.

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