Will the 59 yuan/person shrimp slide hotpot become the next 'beef ribs buffet'?

59 yuan/person shrimp slide hotpot: small-town youth are the first to enjoy 'shrimp slide freedom'?

Recently returning to hometown, Neicanjun found that a second-tier city in Hebei has opened several 'shrimp slide hotpot buffets'.

Compared to regular hotpot buffets, this place is like a 'shrimp slide museum': from original flavored shrimp slide to fish roe shrimp slide, mushroom shrimp slide, squid shrimp slide, and even dragon fruit shrimp slide—more than a dozen varieties.

Besides shrimp slide, there are also chicken slide, beef slide, fish slide, and other 'slide derivatives', all placed in bamboo tube-shaped containers, arranged in rows in the cold cabinet—quite impressive.

In addition to shrimp slide, the store offers traditional hotpot items like beef, lamb, vegetables, and mushrooms, plus desserts, drinks, and ice jelly usually seen in hotpot buffets. Some stores even add pizzas and other staples.

Of course, most customers are there for 'shrimp slide freedom'.

In fact, over the past year, a number of chain shrimp slide hotpot buffet brands have emerged just in Hebei, some even expanding beyond the province.

For example, Cijie Xian Da Shrimp Slide Self-Serve Old Hotpot, founded last year in Shijiazhuang, now has 66 stores across Shandong, Jilin, Jiangsu, etc. Another brand from Hebei, Chengke Bei Shrimp Slide Self-Serve Old Hotpot, has nearly 40 stores in four provinces: Hebei, Shanxi, Heilongjiang, and Jilin.

Jianglaolao Shrimp Slide Seafood Self-Serve Hotpot, which opened its first store in Zhejiang, now spans 12 provinces, with 20 new stores opened this year alone. Laoxiaoxian Shrimp Slide Seafood Self-Serve Hotpot, founded in 2018, has accelerated expansion since last year, opening 40 new stores since 2025.

The category is so hot that it even spread to South Korea. Recently, a netizen posted online that South Korea also has shrimp slide hotpot buffets, with 'bamboo tube + shrimp slide' setup identical to China's.

Why shrimp slide?

There are several reasons for the rise of shrimp slide hotpot buffets.

First, shrimp slide has become widely used in the catering industry, already a classic major item in hotpot track.

According to Mashiying offline retail monitoring network data, 2025 shrimp slide category sales grew 56.9% year-on-year, with sales volume up 60.6%, the fastest growth among frozen food subcategories.

In five provinces—Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Anhui, Hunan, Guizhou—shrimp slide even 'overtook' beef balls to become the top hotpot ball ingredient category.

Second, shrimp slide has a premium connotation, meeting customers' expectations of 'getting value for money'.

Despite its popularity, the price of this 'frozen dark horse' is not low. For example, at Haidilao, a serving of signature large-particle shrimp slide (about 140g) costs 74 yuan. Even at supermarkets, a pack of Anjing shrimp slide (150g) can cost 16.5 yuan.

In contrast, eating a few servings of shrimp slide at a buffet can perfectly offset the 59 yuan ticket, and with a few other items, customers can feel they have 'got their money's worth'—quite tempting.

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

Take Dai Xia Ji as an example: It focuses on a single shrimp slide category, and in 2023 and 2024 led the drafting of the 'Shrimp Slide' industry standard and 'Frozen Shrimp Slide' national standard. It now achieves monthly sales over 100 million yuan and annual sales surpassing 1 billion yuan.

For the catering industry, especially hotpot, the upstream supply chain is the key to reducing costs and ensuring quality. The rise of these shrimp slide supply chains has brought a turning point for shrimp slide hotpot buffets.

Will shrimp slide hotpot buffet become the next 'beef ribs'?

Chenzhi Big Data shows that in the past year, the number of shrimp slide buffet stores has grown from less than 10 to over 500, mainly in lower-tier markets.

Using a single-item buffet model to create differentiation and rapidly opening stores in a short period inevitably draws comparisons to the 'beef ribs buffet' trend.

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

Unlike beef ribs buffets (which rose due to falling beef prices and fell when beef prices rose), shrimp slide costs are relatively controllable, especially with upstream supply chain development strengthening the category's foundation.

But note that ingredient cost was only the 'last straw' for beef ribs buffets.

Another major reason for their decline was that most stores only rode the trendy 'beef ribs' wave without converting category heat into brand repeat purchases, ultimately exiting the homogeneous market.

For these emerging shrimp slide hotpot buffet brands, challenges remain: brand differentiation, product innovation, store operation management—whether they can sustain scale long-term remains to be seen.