In recent years, many former baking giants in mainland China such as Duolezhi Day, bread618, and Bread New Language have all fallen into the dilemma of closing down and shrinking after once being extremely popular. The year 2025 has seen a proliferation of news about the closure and suspension of operations of baking stores nationwide, with nearly 90,000 bread shops closing down, and the average survival time of baking stores being only 32 months.
According to reports from Blue Whale News and others, on December 27, the last store of the long-standing Taiwanese baking chain 85°C in Jinan — the Wulong Road store in Jinan — announced its closure. Two months earlier on October 31, Beijing’s last 85°C store also closed down.
85°C is a Taiwanese coffee and baking brand, belonging to the company Gourmet Master, specializing in bread, beverages, and cakes. At its peak, it had about 560 stores in over 80 cities in mainland China. However, since the second half of 2023, its business in China started to incur losses. In 2024, the losses continued to expand, with losses reaching about 46 million RMB in the first half of 2025.
In response to the continued deterioration of its business performance in the Chinese market, 85°C has successively closed stores in cities such as Hangzhou, Shanghai, Nanjing, and Beijing since the beginning of this year. According to Gourmet-KY, the parent company of 85°C, the total number of store closures in mainland China this year is expected to exceed 40.
The plight of 85°C is not unique in the baking industry. The recent development of the popular Guanlianshen line on social media has also faced challenges. On December 27, the last store of Guanlianshen in Chengdu also had its final day of operation. Last April, Guanlianshen had already withdrawn from Changsha.
Recently, the UK-based Swire Group has been rumored to be interested in transferring all shares of Chongqing New Qinyuan Food Co., Ltd., and thus withdrawing from the mainland Chinese baking market. Public information shows that Swire Group acquired Qinyuan Food in 2016, with a peak of 651 stores in 2018, which has now decreased to 394.
Hangzhou’s baking enterprise Fuli Forest, with a history of 25 years, has also announced its entry into bankruptcy liquidation proceedings. In October of this year, another popular bread brand, Youhe, closed its 2 branches in Shanghai, with the new store in Shanghai Global Harbor closing within a year of opening; due to cost increases and intense market competition, the Hangzhou chain brand Huanniu Cake House also announced its exit in June this year.
According to Narrow Food Eye data, as of December 15, the number of bread baking stores nationwide decreased by 87,658 in the past year. According to a research data group from Meituan, the average survival time of domestic baking stores is only 32 months, with over 57% of stores closing within two years of opening.