59-yuan shrimp paste hot pot buffet: Will it become the next "beef rib buffet"?

59 yuan per person shrimp paste hot pot buffet: Are small-town youths the first to achieve "shrimp paste freedom"? Recently, when returning to my hometown, I discovered that a second-tier small city in Hebei has opened several "shrimp paste hot pot buffets."

Compared to ordinary hot pot buffets, this place is like a "shrimp paste museum": from original shrimp paste to fish roe shrimp paste, mushroom shrimp paste, squid shrimp paste, and even dragon fruit shrimp paste, there are over a dozen varieties.

In addition to shrimp paste, the store also offers chicken paste, beef paste, fish paste, and other "paste derivatives," all uniformly packed in bamboo tube-shaped containers, lined up in several rows in the cold cabinet, quite spectacular.

Besides shrimp paste, the store also has beef, lamb, vegetables, mushrooms, and other traditional hot pot items. The desserts, drinks, and ice jelly commonly found in traditional hot pot buffets are also fully stocked, with some stores even adding pizza and other staples. Most consumers go there for "shrimp paste freedom."

In fact, in the past year alone, a group of chain shrimp paste hot pot buffet brands have emerged just in Hebei, even successfully expanding to other provinces. For example, Cijie Freshly Made Shrimp Paste Hot Pot Buffet from Shijiazhuang, founded last year, has now opened 66 stores, reaching Shandong, Jilin, Jiangsu, and other places; another brand, Chengkebei Shrimp Paste Hot Pot Buffet, also from Hebei, founded around the same time, has opened nearly 40 stores in four provinces: Hebei, Shanxi, Heilongjiang, and Jilin.

Jianglaolao Shrimp Paste Seafood Hot Pot Buffet, which opened its first store in Zhejiang, now has footprints across 12 provinces, with 20 new stores opened just this year; Laoxiaoxian Shrimp Paste Seafood Hot Pot Buffet, founded in 2018, also accelerated its expansion pace last year, opening 40 new stores since 2025.

The category is so popular that it has even spread to South Korea. Some netizens posted that South Korea now has shrimp paste hot pot buffets, with the "bamboo tube + shrimp paste" setup identical to that in China.

Why shrimp paste?

The rise of shrimp paste hot pot buffets has multiple reasons.

On one hand, shrimp paste is increasingly applied in the food and beverage industry and is already a classic core product in the hot pot segment. Data from the Mayiying 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% year-on-year, ranking first in growth rate among all segments of frozen food.

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

On the other hand, shrimp paste is inherently expensive, meeting consumers' expectations of getting their money's worth. Despite its popularity, the price of this "frozen dark horse" is quite high. For example, at Haidilao, a serving of its signature large-grain shrimp paste (about 140 grams) costs 74 yuan. Even in supermarkets, a pack of Anjoy shrimp paste can cost 16.5 yuan per 150g.

Correspondingly, eating a few servings of shrimp paste at a buffet restaurant can perfectly offset the 59-yuan admission fee, and adding some other items allows you to successfully "get your money's worth," making it very tempting.

The most important factor is the increasingly strong upstream supply chain for shrimp paste, with continuous increases in production technology and output. For example, Daixiajie focuses on the single category of shrimp paste, and in 2023 and 2024 led the drafting of the "Shrimp Paste" group standard and the "Frozen Shrimp Paste" national standard, achieving monthly sales exceeding 100 million yuan and annual sales exceeding 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 these shrimp paste supply chains has also brought opportunities for the emergence of shrimp paste hot pot buffets.

Will shrimp paste hot pot buffet become the next "beef rib"?

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

Using a core product buffet model to create differentiation and quickly opening stores in a short time inevitably reminds people of the similar "beef rib buffet." The latter quickly rose in the second half of 2024, then saw widespread closures in early 2025, with some merchants losing over 2 million yuan in just three months.

Of course, unlike beef ribs, which opened due to falling beef prices and closed as beef prices rose, the cost of shrimp paste is relatively controllable, especially with the development of the upstream supply chain, which has reinforced the foundation of this category. However, it is worth noting that ingredient cost is only the "last straw" for beef ribs.

Another major reason for the decline of beef rib buffets is that most stores merely rode on the popularity of "beef ribs" without converting category heat into brand repurchase, ultimately exiting the homogeneous 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 scale in the long run remains to be seen.