How do Chinese consumers view foreign food and beverage brands?

58% of Chinese consumers trust foreign food and beverage brands more than domestic alternatives for product quality and food safety, according to a 2025 survey by Mintel China, with trust levels reaching 72% for baby food and premium dairy categories. This enduring trust premium — rooted in a series of domestic food safety scandals including the 2008 melamine milk powder incident — creates a significant market moat for foreign food and beverage brands in China. However, the landscape is shifting rapidly. The 国潮 (guó cháo, national trend) movement has eroded the automatic prestige advantage foreign brands once held, particularly among Gen Z consumers, and has forced foreign brands to invest more heavily in local relevance. The Chinese food and beverage market, valued at RMB 7.8 trillion in 2025, remains one of the world’s largest and most attractive for foreign brands — but success now requires a more sophisticated strategy than simply importing Western products and slapping on a Chinese label.

The Foreign Brand Trust Premium: By the Numbers

Chinese consumers’ trust in foreign food and beverage brands is not uniform — it varies significantly by category. According to a 2025 consumer sentiment study by Bain & Company and Kantar Worldpanel, the highest foreign brand trust premiums exist in categories where Chinese food safety scandals have historically been most damaging: infant formula and baby food (72% trust foreign brands), dairy products (68%), imported meat and seafood (65%), and premium cooking oils (59%). In contrast, categories where domestic brands have strong quality reputations — such as soy sauce, tea, rice, and traditional snacks — show no foreign brand premium, with domestic brands leading by 15–25 percentage points on trust.

This tiered trust landscape means that foreign brands in high-trust categories can command significant price premiums. Imported infant formula sells for an average of RMB 280–450 per 800g can, compared to RMB 130–220 for premium domestic brands. Foreign premium cooking oils (olive oil, avocado oil) command RMB 120–280 per liter, while domestic soybean and peanut oils sell for RMB 20–50 per liter. The trust premium is real and monetizable — but it is also fragile. A single food safety incident involving a foreign brand in China, even if the incident originated in the brand’s home market and was unrelated to Chinese production, can erode years of trust premium within weeks.

The 国潮 Challenge: Why Domestic Brands Are Gaining Ground

The most significant structural change in Chinese consumer attitudes toward foreign food and beverage brands is the rise of the 国潮 (guó cháo, national trend) movement. Originally a fashion and cosmetics phenomenon, 国潮 has deeply penetrated the food and beverage sector. Domestic brands have successfully positioned themselves as offering quality comparable to foreign brands with superior cultural relevance, better price points, and supply chains that are more transparent and traceable than foreign imports.

A 2025 study by JD.com’s Consumer Insights Lab found that among Gen Z consumers (aged 18–28), 56% said they preferred domestic food and beverage brands over foreign ones, compared to only 29% among consumers aged 45+. The generational shift is stark and accelerating. Brands like 元气森林 (Genki Forest), which built a USD 15 billion valuation by offering sugar-free beverages with Chinese ingredients and flavors, and 三顿半 (Saturnbird), which disrupted the premium instant coffee market with Chinese-designed packaging and domestic sourcing, have demonstrated that domestic brands can compete with global giants in categories previously dominated by foreign players.

Category-Specific Dynamics

The foreign brand dynamic plays out differently across food and beverage categories. In the dairy sector, foreign brands like Danone, Nestlé, and Fonterra continue to dominate the premium infant formula segment, but their position is increasingly challenged by Chinese brands that have invested heavily in quality improvement — Feihe (飞鹤) now commands 18% of the total infant formula market, the highest single-brand share in the category. In the beverage sector, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo still lead carbonated soft drinks, but their growth has flattened as Chinese consumers shift to healthier options — functional teas (元気森林), traditional herbal drinks (王老吉, Wang Laoji), and almond or oat milk (Oatly doubled its China revenue in 2025).

The coffee market is a particularly interesting case. China’s coffee market grew 23% in 2025 to reach RMB 280 billion, driven by the rapid expansion of domestic chains Luckin Coffee (瑞幸咖啡) and Cotti Coffee (库迪咖啡), which together operate over 28,000 stores nationwide. Starbucks, once the undisputed market leader, has seen its market share decline from 58% in 2019 to 36% in 2025 as domestic chains offer comparable quality at 30–50% lower prices with faster delivery through WeChat Mini-Programs. Foreign brands in categories with strong domestic competition must find differentiating value beyond “foreign provenance” — Starbuck’s response has been to invest in premium Reserve Roastery experiences and local-for-local product development, including tea-based lattes and mooncake gift boxes that no other brand can replicate.

The Safety and Quality Factor

Food safety (食品安全, shípǐn ānquán) remains the single most powerful driver of foreign brand preference in China’s food and beverage market. The legacy of the 2008 melamine scandal, in which six infants died and 300,000 were sickened from contaminated Sanlu infant formula, continues to shape consumer attitudes nearly two decades later. A 2025 survey by the China National Center for Food Safety Risk Assessment found that 63% of Chinese parents with children under 6 said they still actively avoid domestic infant formula brands, despite significant quality improvements by Chinese manufacturers.

Foreign brands that maintain rigorous quality control and actively communicate their safety standards to Chinese consumers benefit from this trust premium. The most effective communication channels are Chinese social media platforms — Xiaohongshu reviews from real Chinese mothers, Douyin factory tour videos showing foreign quality control processes, and WeChat articles from food science KOLs. Foreign brands should specifically address the 三重认证 (sān zhòng rènzhèng, triple certification) concept — FDA, EU, and China certifications — as Chinese consumers recognize that foreign brands undergo multiple regulatory regimes and consider this a proxy for safety.

Strategies for Foreign F&B Brands in Today’s China

For foreign food and beverage brands entering or operating in China, four strategies are proving effective. First, premium positioning with local relevance — import products that are genuinely superior and differentiated, but adapt flavors and formulations for Chinese palates. Nestlé’s success with locally-developed milk powder flavors and Oreo’s China-exclusive green tea and peach flavors demonstrate that localization does not mean lowering quality standards. Second, invest deeply in food safety storytelling — Chinese consumers want to see the factory, understand the supply chain, and hear from experts about why a foreign product is safer. Third, build domestic supply chain capability — brands that import everything from overseas are vulnerable to tariff fluctuations, logistics disruptions, and the perception that fresh products are better when locally produced. Danone’s China-focused dairy farms and Nestlé’s multiple China-based production facilities give them a critical advantage over brands that only import.

Fourth, embrace the 国潮 phenomenon rather than resist it. Foreign brands that collaborate with Chinese cultural IP — Starbucks’ mooncake gift boxes with Palace Museum patterns, Oreo’s Shanghai-century-flavor collaborations — signal respect for Chinese culture and reduce the “foreign outsider” perception. A 2025 Boston Consulting Group study found that foreign F&B brands that ran China-specific cultural collaborations saw an average 18 percentage point increase in Gen Z brand favorability, narrowing the gap with domestic brands by half. The era of simply being “foreign” as a selling point is ending — but the era of being “the best foreign brand that truly understands Chinese consumers” is just beginning.

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