China Online Food & Beverage Market H1 2026: From Scale to Value
Overview
China's online food and beverage sales rose 5.1% to CN¥ 304.57 billion in H1 2026. Snacks, high-protein snacks and beverage selling points, in one report.
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Key Findings
- The market grew steadily, and value ran ahead of volume. China's online food and beverage sales grew +5.1% to CN¥ 304.57 billion in the first half of 2026 on mainstream e-commerce platforms, while volume rose +3.8%, with snack food the largest category at CN¥ 71.99 billion, meat products growing fastest at +24.2% and instant food following at +12.0%, and the gap between sales and volume growth shows the industry moving from winning on volume to adding value through quality.
- Category growth is stratifying, as healthification lifts higher-priced and everyday categories alike. Seen through growth, scale and average price together, the market's categories form a layered structure, and the ones creating growth in a largely saturated market are those that tie their products to health claims and daily scenarios.
- Snacks grew on price and structure while volume fell, and health-focused hero products set the pace. Online snack sales grew +9.5% while volume fell 5.2%, with braised snacks, nuts and dried fruit as the base and chocolate and ready-to-eat seafood among the fastest growers, the largest brands ceding share to a long tail of smaller ones, high-protein snacks growing +14.1% to CN¥ 6.75 billion, and snacks sold on emotional selling points growing fastest of the five selling-point dimensions, at +30.9%, as shoppers moved from satisfying cravings to nutrition and quality.
- Flavour holds the base of beverages, while efficacy claims have become the growth engine. Flavour ingredients remained the largest beverage selling point at CN¥ 8.06 billion, drinks sold on efficacy claims grew fastest at +26.6%, and within those claims drinks sold on a gut-health claim were the largest at CN¥ 610 million, while beauty and skin-care claims (+37.3%) and nourishing and moisturising claims (+33.7%) supplied most of the growth, as the health positioning of drinks moved from basic sugar reduction to natural ingredients and claims drawn from traditional Chinese food culture.
Read the chapters
| Region |
China
|
|---|---|
| Industry |
Food & Beverage
|
| Report Type | Market Analysis |
| Pages | 28 |
| Language | en |
| Author | Moojing Market Research Team |
Topics
Frequently Asked Questions
It covers China's online food and beverage market in the first half of 2026, compared with the first half of 2025, in four chapters: the market as a whole and its categories, snacks and their brand landscape, high-protein snacks and the selling points snack products compete on, and beverages and their selling points, from flavour ingredients to efficacy claims and Chinese-style wellness drinks.
Online food and beverage sales on mainstream e-commerce platforms in China reached CN¥ 304.57 billion in the first half of 2026, +5.1% on the same months of 2025, while volume rose +3.8%. Snack food was the largest category, at CN¥ 71.99 billion.
Drinks sold on efficacy claims grew +26.6%, the fastest of six beverage selling-point dimensions, while flavour ingredients remained the largest, flat at CN¥ 8.06 billion. Selling points and claims are Moojing's classification of what products claim on their listings; one drink can carry several, and the figures say nothing about what the products do.
From Moojing Market Intelligence: observed online sales on mainstream e-commerce platforms in China, from January to June 2026 with the same months of 2025 as the comparison. The figures measure online sales, not the total food and beverage market, which also includes offline retail and food service.
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