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It’s astonishing how fast the Chinese people are giving up on 10k KFC, 7k Starbucks & 6k McD outlets 🙌🙌 And that too, all in favour of the local competitors. This is a serious deal, which I hope also plays out in India. .. Take McD & KFC competitor Tastien, which has opened a whopping 1.6k outlets in the last 6 months. -> That’s more than 3 times the total no. of McD outlets that have been launched in India to date, all opened by this Chinese player in just the last 6 months -> In fact, it now operates 7k outlets in China, more than McD Similarly, another competitor, Wallace, is more than 3x larger with >20k outlets! 🙌🙌 .. Let’s move to Starbucks, which has 7k outlets in China. -> Nine months ago, its Chinese competitor Cotti hit 6k outlets -> But, more importantly, it announced that by 2025-end, it shall hit the 20k mark -> This means that it will open 20 outlets every day! Crazy! Other local competitors are also expanding rapidly. Luckin Coffee has surpassed 8k outlets. And Mixue has hit 36k outlets. Thirty-Six Thousand! 🙌🙌 .. And all of these Chinese players have two standard features. One. They are often much cheaper versions of their Western counterparts. For example, Luckin sells some of its coffees at a third of Starbucks’ prices. Mixue & Cotti even lower. .. Two. Geography! Most homegrown chains come from places other than China’s rich megalopolises, such as Shanghai & Beijing. -> Cotti & Wallace opened their first outlets in Fuzhou, a Tier-2 city -> Tastien was also founded in a Tier-2 city called Nancheng. In fact, ~50% of Tastien’s outlets are in Tier-2 & Tier-3 cities -> Luckin’s rapid growth has also been driven by its expansion in these relative backwaters. Starbucks, meanwhile, has barely ventured beyond the most prominent Chinese cities in the past two years .. Such chains are expanding most aggressively in cities like these, partly because Western rivals have historically ignored them. And presently, I know at least one major Indian cafe chain applying this formula. Barista! 🙌🙌 .. Back to China, foreign rivals are catching on. -> In the first quarter of 2024, ~60% of new Chinese KFCs and Pizza Huts opened in Tier-3 or smaller cities -> Most of the 4,000 new outlets that McD is planning to open by 2028 are also planned to be in smaller towns But, anyhow, the shift towards local brands reflects a growing sense of national pride and cultural identity among the Chinese. Plus, these Chinese chains have created a massive lot of jobs in lower-tier cities, which foreign brands have traditionally overlooked. What do you think?