Master Kong first proposed "wolf-like mentality," with revenue experiencing its first "negative growth" in nearly 10 years.

(The author of this article is DaV Business, published with permission from Titanium Media)

Text | DaV Business, Author | Liu Ying

By the end of 2025, the former CEO of Master Kong, Chen Yingrang, will retire, and Wei Hongcheng will take over. Wei Hongcheng is also the third son of Master Kong’s founder, Wei Yingzhou, and the younger brother of the current chairman, Wei Hongming.

In this order.

In Master Kong’s 2025 financial report, it mentioned a smooth transition of the CEO at the beginning of 2026. In the future, Master Kong will be guided by the spirit of “Back to Day 1,” returning to the efficiency, agility, and wolf-like fighting spirit of the first day of entrepreneurship, creating a platform that speaks the truth, dares to try, and grows together, fully stimulating the vitality of all employees.

This is one of the rare companies in recent years that once again calls for a “wolf-like” approach.

The background is that many new giants have emerged in the convenient food and beverage industry where Master Kong operates, and Master Kong itself has experienced its first decline in performance in a decade.

Performance Decline, Entering Negative Growth Era

After several years of slow growth, Master Kong finally experienced negative growth in 2025.

Financial report data shows that the total revenue for 2025 was 79.068 billion yuan, a slight year-on-year decline of 2.0%, compared to 80.651 billion yuan in 2024, which had a year-on-year growth of 0.3%.

It is worth noting that this is also the first negative revenue growth for Master Kong in nearly a decade. From 2014 to 2016, following the impact of the first takeaway war on fast food in the domestic market, Master Kong’s revenue declined for three consecutive years.

In terms of profit, thanks to favorable raw material prices and product mix optimization, Master Kong’s annual gross profit margin increased by 1.7 percentage points to 34.8%, driving the attributable profit to shareholders to reach 4.501 billion yuan, a significant year-on-year increase of 20.5%.

Master Kong’s business is mainly divided into two segments: instant noodles and beverages, but the development trends of the two segments are completely opposite.

In recent years, the instant noodle business has seen slow overall sales growth due to the impact of takeout and other factors. However, the market players remain relatively fixed. Aside from White Elephant, which has seen significant growth through online marketing in recent years, both Master Kong and its competitor, Uni-President, have only maintained low growth.

In 2025, Master Kong’s instant noodle business achieved revenue of 28.421 billion yuan, a slight year-on-year increase.

Meanwhile, beverages have become the main battlefield for food and beverage giants in recent years, primarily focusing on sugar-free drinks and functional beverages, with significant changes in the landscape.

(Master Kong beverage and instant noodle business revenue and growth situation)

Master Kong’s beverage business revenue was 50.123 billion yuan, nearly double that of its instant noodle business revenue, but decreased by 2.9% compared to the same period last year.

In other words, in the relatively low-competition, overall sluggish instant food sector, Master Kong still maintains a growth trend; whereas in the fiercely competitive and variable beverage sector, Master Kong’s revenue has actually declined.

Behind the Wolf-Like Approach, Insufficient Innovation

Master Kong’s operations face dual pressures from both internal and external factors.

Taking the beverage business as an example, from 2019 to 2025, the industry experienced at least four bursts of new beverage categories, including sparkling water, sugar-free tea, functional drinks (electrolyte water and energy drinks), and wellness water, giving rise to multiple billion and hundred billion big products, but Master Kong has hardly seized any of these opportunities.

From the company’s own perspective, Master Kong lacks significant innovation.

Analyzing Master Kong’s key strategies for beverages from 2019 to 2025, we found that it wasn’t until 2023 that Master Kong clearly defined its approach to “keeping up with the trend of health-oriented sugar-free products and fully launching sugar-free tea, sugar-free carbonated drinks, and sugar-free coffee.”

From an industry perspective, competition is quite fierce.

Qianqi Forest, Dongpeng Beverage, and Nongfu Spring have been some of the more aggressive players in recent years.

Qianqi Forest started online and began expanding offline; Dongpeng Beverage launched over 300,000 freezers in 2024, with 100,000 to 200,000 planned for 2025.

These two are the most aggressive new entrants in the beverage market.

Faced with such fierce industry competition, this is also why the new CEO of Master Kong, upon taking office this year, called for a wolf-like approach and a return to entrepreneurial spirit.

Master Kong has maintained its position as the “number one” in China’s beverage market for many years, thanks to three key advantages — its main brand beverages, products under the PepsiCo brand through OEM and sales, and bottled Starbucks business. These three businesses were previously top-tier in their respective segments, but the significant changes in the industry in recent years have turned these advantages into an “old map” of beverage consumption.

Master Kong itself also suffers from insufficient innovation. Reviewing Master Kong’s beverage product line, we find that nearly all are old brands that have been in operation for over 20 years, such as iced black tea, Master Kong green tea, rock candy pear, Daily C, Pure Fruit, and sour plum soup.

The latest product, Tea’s Inheritor, was only launched in 2024.

An interesting phenomenon is that both Uni-President and Master Kong, as two old rivals, have fallen into a state of innovation stagnation in recent years.

Uni-President and Master Kong used to innovate and follow each other on popular products like Old Vine Pickled Cabbage, Rock Candy Pear, and Iced Black Tea, creating a boom in the domestic beverage and fast food market over the past decade, establishing a competitive landscape of non-carbonated beverages represented by Master Kong and Uni-President.

However, faced with the wave of functional drinks and sugar-free tea, both of these old beverage giants appear powerless.

Will the Domestic Beverage “Number One” Give Way?

Nongfu Spring’s beverage sales reached 52.5 billion yuan in 2025, surpassing Master Kong’s beverage business and becoming the true “number one” in the domestic beverage market.

Master Kong’s market value is given a relatively low valuation by the capital market compared to “newcomers” like Dongpeng Beverage and Nongfu Spring.

Energy drink giant Dongpeng Special Drink is expected to have a revenue of about 21.1 billion yuan in 2025, roughly one-fourth of Master Kong’s, yet its market value is as high as approximately 126.8 billion yuan.

Another packaging water giant, Nongfu Spring, is expected to have a revenue of 52.5 billion yuan in 2025, about 66% of Master Kong’s total revenue for that year, surpassing Master Kong’s beverage revenue, with a market value of nearly 477.3 billion Hong Kong dollars.

In contrast, Master Kong’s market value is only 74.5 billion Hong Kong dollars.

Since entering the Chinese market in 1992, Master Kong has established the largest distribution channel in the country, covering the most sales terminal points.

However, in the past two years, Master Kong’s number of distributors has been continuously decreasing.

In 2024, the number of Master Kong distributors decreased from 76,875 to 67,215, a reduction of 9,660. In 2025, Master Kong’s number of distributors was 57,609, again decreasing by 9,606.