---
title: "A cup of milk tea in the trillion-yuan track: XIANGPIAOPIAO bets on the \"Ancient Five Reds\" for food and medicine homology. Did this move pay off?"
type: "News"
locale: "en"
url: "https://longbridge.com/en/news/288508186.md"
description: "XIANGPIAOPIAO announced the launch of the 2026 shareholder return program, distributing the new product \"Ancient Five Red\" warm milk tea for free to registered shareholders. This move aims to leverage the investor community for new product promotion and user insights, marking the company's bet on the \"food and medicine homology\" track, in line with the trend of functional and health-oriented transformation in the tea beverage industry"
datetime: "2026-06-03T02:48:29.000Z"
locales:
  - [zh-CN](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/news/288508186.md)
  - [en](https://longbridge.com/en/news/288508186.md)
  - [zh-HK](https://longbridge.com/zh-HK/news/288508186.md)
generator: "portal-rs"
---

# A cup of milk tea in the trillion-yuan track: XIANGPIAOPIAO bets on the "Ancient Five Reds" for food and medicine homology. Did this move pay off?

A milk tea company has started collaborating with a traditional Chinese medicine university to establish a research institute, which is worth pondering.

On June 2, XIANGPIAOPIAO Food Co., Ltd. (603711.SH) announced the launch of its 2026 shareholder return program, offering a free box (6 cups) of its new product "Ancient Formula Five Red" warm milk tea to all registered shareholders as of May 15, with the application deadline set for June 12.

This is not only a shareholder return activity but also a new product promotion and user insight completed with the help of the investor community. The product being distributed carries XIANGPIAOPIAO's systematic bet on the "food and medicine homology" track, and it marks a clear direction for this national milk tea brand as it collectively moves towards functional and health-oriented transformation in the tea beverage industry.

## **Industry Turning Point: From "Quenching Thirst" to "Solutions"**

To understand the logic behind XIANGPIAOPIAO's move, one must first grasp what is happening in the entire beverage industry.

In recent years, China's tea beverage market has undergone a profound paradigm shift. New-style tea beverages, represented by Heytea and Nayuki, have completed a phase of rapid expansion, but as store density approaches saturation, the industry has shifted from incremental competition to stock competition. Data shows that by 2024, the market size of China's new-style tea beverages will reach 354.7 billion yuan, with growth slowing and industry competition intensifying.

At the same time, a structural opportunity is quietly emerging—consumer demand for beverages is upgrading from "quenching thirst" to "solutions." Functional drinks, health beverages, and food-medicine homology products have become one of the fastest-growing segments in the fast-moving consumer goods industry.

The various industry data on the food-medicine homology track are the most intuitive. By 2024, China's food-medicine homology market size has surpassed 265 billion yuan, with ready-to-eat products growing at a staggering 23.8%. By 2025, this figure is expected to expand further to over 370 billion yuan, with online sales of food-medicine homology categories on mainstream e-commerce platforms increasing by 28.9% year-on-year, far exceeding the average growth rate of the fast-moving consumer goods industry. It is expected to exceed one trillion yuan by 2031, with an average annual compound growth rate of about 20%.

What drives this track is not just the health anxiety of middle-aged and elderly people. More noteworthy is the generational shift in consumer power—the Z generation is becoming a new growth engine for health consumption. Their health logic is vastly different from that of their parents: instead of slow-cooked herbal soups, they prefer "delicious, convenient, and aesthetically pleasing" products, pushing offerings towards ready-to-drink, snack-like, and scenario-based directions. Data shows that from September 2024 to August 2025, the number of social media posts related to food-medicine homology reached 883,000, a year-on-year increase of 71.9%, with young people being the main contributors to the discussion. They are particularly inclined to incorporate food-medicine homology ingredients into daily consumer products like tea and milk tea.

This provides pre-packaged beverage companies with an unprecedented window: to encapsulate traditional health wisdom into a convenient cup of milk tea.

Industry players have also sensed this direction. Yuanqi Forest will launch 19 new products in 2026, including modern interpretations of Chinese health culture and functional products targeting specific scenarios; Auntie Hu has released a white paper on dietary nutrition upgrades, systematically embedding the concept of "health" into brand narratives; Multiple traditional tea brands have successively launched a series of "health tea drinks" that incorporate herbal ingredients.

Functional transformation has become the most concentrated consensus in the entire tea beverage industry since 2025. Among the few players that have systematically laid out their strategies early on, supported by a complete R&D system of publicly listed companies, XIANGPIAOPIAO is one of them.

**Reconstructing the product logic of functional milk tea with the anchor point of food and medicine sharing the same origin**

The "Ancient Recipe Five Red" warm milk tea is not a concept product launched to follow trends. From product development logic to market launch path, there is a relatively complete methodology behind this product.

The starting point for product development is a consumption scenario that has been fully validated. Approximately 300 million women in China experience varying degrees of menstrual discomfort, and "drinking something warm during those days" is a habit ingrained in the memories of several generations of women. Existing solutions on the market are either traditional herbal soups or health products, both of which have significant convenience shortcomings.

XIANGPIAOPIAO's approach is to achieve a "modern replacement" of this habit in the form of milk tea—retaining the emotional attributes of warm beverages while upgrading it to a product with real health benefits through the scientific ratio of functional ingredients.

On the formulation level, "Ancient Recipe Five Red" is derived from the folk-transmitted Five Red Soup and Angelica Blood Nourishing Soup, selecting authentic food and medicinal ingredients, and made into a paste through eight non-heritage boiling processes, ultimately presented in a three-in-one form of "paste + tea bag + fresh-keeping cup." The design logic of this product form is: the paste carries the efficacy, the tea bag provides flavor, and the fresh-keeping cup ensures the quality and portability of the milk source—each serving its purpose, integrating functional beverages and daily tea drinks within the volume of a cup of milk tea.

The scientific backing is the key support that distinguishes this product from many "health drinks." In October 2025, XIANGPIAOPIAO officially established the "Health and Wellness Beverage Research Institute" in collaboration with Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, providing academic support for the scientific nature of the formulation. This collaborative model is rare in the fast-moving consumer goods industry—traditional FMCG companies typically rely on internal teams or third-party research for new product development, while introducing professional traditional Chinese medicine institutions as joint R&D partners means that the sources of formulations, effective ingredients, and efficacy verification can all receive relatively standardized academic support. This investment is also reflected in the financial reports, with XIANGPIAOPIAO's R&D investment in 2025 increasing by 47.50% year-on-year, a significant growth rate in the FMCG industry.

Market feedback provides the most direct validation. "Ancient Recipe Five Red" was launched in September 2025, primarily disseminated through Douyin and Xiaohongshu, quickly gaining traction through precise scene tags like "menstrual care" and "Auntie milk tea." As of now, the online GMV has exceeded 50 million yuan, accumulating about 900,000 online users.

It is worth noting that according to the company's plan, they will further launch the "Ancient Recipe Eight Comfort" functional milk tea, which focuses on sleep aid scenarios, and the matrix of food and medicinal products will continue to extend to different effects and usage scenarios. This means that "Ancient Recipe Five Red" is not just an independent new product but the first category anchor point for XIANGPIAOPIAO's systematic entry into the food and medicine sharing the same origin track In the first quarter of 2026, XIANGPIAOPIAO's instant beverage business generated sales revenue of 565 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 85.31%; overall operating revenue reached 878 million yuan, and net profit attributable to the parent company was 93.3893 million yuan, representing year-on-year growth of 51.41% and 597.41% respectively, achieving a historical high for a single quarter. Behind these figures is the concentrated release of accumulated momentum after the completion of channel repair, as well as the initial contribution of new product series, including "Ancient Recipe Five Reds."

## **Entering the Trillion Yuan Track, "Mutation" is the Only Way Out**

However, the field of food and medicine integration and functional beverages is far from a blue ocean.

Traditional pharmaceutical companies such as Tong Ren Tang, Dong E E-Jiao, and China Resources Jiangzhong have long established deep brand assets and raw material supply chain barriers in the "health food" sector; ready-to-drink tea brands represented by Auntie Hu and Cha Bai Dao have intensively launched various "health tea drinks" in recent years, covering almost all mainstream food and medicine integration ingredients from red dates to dried tangerine peel and goji berries; emerging fast-moving consumer brands like Yuanqi Forest have also begun to introduce Chinese health elements into their product lines, with red bean and coix seed water becoming another hit product for the company.

In such a competitive landscape, XIANGPIAOPIAO's "Ancient Recipe Five Reds" needs to answer a key question: Why should it be you?

From the existing information, XIANGPIAOPIAO's differentiation is reflected in at least three dimensions.

The first is the precision of the scene. Rather than broadly targeting "health," it precisely addresses the niche scene of "women's menstrual health," which has a potential population of 300 million, clear consumption habits, but lacks large-scale pre-packaged products in the market. The more precise the scene, the stronger the user's perception of demand, and the shorter the purchase decision chain.

The second is the innovation of product form. The three-in-one form of "syrup + tea bag + milk preservation cup" is relatively rare in the pre-packaged beverage field. This form of differentiation not only enhances the perceived value of the product but also sets a certain technical threshold for rapid imitation by competitors.

The third is the depth of academic endorsement. Establishing a research institute in collaboration with Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, rather than simply adding traditional Chinese medicinal materials to the ingredient list, means that XIANGPIAOPIAO is attempting to construct a complete scientific narrative from raw materials, formulas to efficacy. In an increasingly transparent information environment where consumers are becoming more vigilant against "pseudo-health," this is a key path to establishing product credibility.

Of course, challenges also exist. Cultivating users for functional beverages requires time and continuous content investment. How to balance a delicious and effective product experience, how to connect offline channels beyond online promotion, and how to convert early online users into a stable repurchase group—these are all issues that "Ancient Recipe Five Reds" must address for larger-scale growth.

## **Conclusion**

From "connecting cups to circle the earth" to collaborating with a Chinese medicine university to create functional health beverages, the path this company has taken is actually a microcosm of the transformation of the entire pre-packaged tea beverage industry.

XIANGPIAOPIAO's scale advantage lies in the channel network and brand recognition accumulated over nearly 20 years, which new entrants find difficult to replicate in the short term; while the direction represented by "Ancient Recipe Five Reds" happens to be positioned at the intersection of the "functional" dimension, which traditional beverage brands are generally not good at, and the "fast consumption" dimension, which traditional pharmaceutical companies are generally not adept at This time, delivering a box of "Ancient Formula Five Reds" to shareholders is XIANGPIAOPIAO's most tangible way of telling the market: we are serious about this track.

As for whether this move is ultimately correct, time will provide the answer. However, it can be confirmed that in the beverage industry's transformation from "quenching thirst" to "providing solutions," taking this first step grants a first-mover advantage

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> **Disclaimer: This article is for reference only and does not constitute any investment advice.**