All insights Retail May 4, 2026 12 min read

Translated from the Vietnamese original

In late March 2026, Ohmee, the brand Meiyijia uses in Vietnam, opened its first three stores in Hanoi: Vinhomes Smart City, Trần Kim Xuyến and Triều Khúc. Three stores. And the press ran the same headline everywhere: “40,000 outlets are coming.” We may not just be reading news. We may be reading a communications document designed to run years ahead of operational reality. Enough to confirm they are coming. Not enough to know they will win. The question is not how many stores they will open. It is: who is this message meant to make believe what, and why?

Who is Meiyijia, before the number dazzles us?

Meiyijia was founded in 1997 as the retail arm of a state-owned trading group in Dongguan, formally Dongguan Sugar & Liquor Group. Its state origins are more than a biographical detail: they partly explain how it could build a supply chain with market access that many private start-ups would struggle to match. In 2020 it passed 20,000 stores, and in under five years that number rose past 40,000, with its 40,000th store opening in Nanning, Guangxi, in July 2025.

That pace may not come mainly from offering a better customer experience than competitors. According to the China Chain Store & Franchise Association (CCFA), Meiyijia opened around 10–11 stores a day on average in 2024, more than 4,000 new stores in a year. That is most likely the speed of a franchising machine rather than a traditional retailer. Supported by a digital operating system built with Huawei, a Meiyijia store can reportedly open in a relatively short time, in some cases just a few weeks.

More importantly, and this is a point much of the commentary may be missing: over time, Meiyijia has become a large-scale consumer goods distributor in China, especially in snacks and beverages. Many brands in this ecosystem are also expanding abroad; Eastroc is one example.

The store is the channel. What is really being shipped behind it may be the supply chain.

To understand what they will bring to Vietnam, understand who they are at home

Meiyijia is a regional mass-market chain: light-touch franchising, low entry fees, little control over decor or pricing. It is the direct opposite of the “high-touch” 7-Eleven and FamilyMart models aimed at urban office workers. Meiyijia’s DNA was formed in Dongguan, an industrial city between Shenzhen and Guangzhou with more than 10 million residents, most of them migrant workers who came from all over to work in its factories. Its core assortment: cheap snacks, energy drinks, cigarettes and everyday essentials, at price points traditional corner shops may struggle to match if the supply chain is optimized.

Why Vietnam, and why now?

There are three strategic openings Meiyijia may be seeing. None of them is directly about “Vietnamese people liking convenience stores more than before.”

Opening one: the market is still fragmented in exactly the segment they know

As of 2023, Vietnam had about 6,720 modern convenience stores and minimarts, according to a Q&Me survey, one of the most widely used measures in the market. For a population of 100 million, that is among the lowest densities in the region. More important is the distribution: most existing chains are concentrated in big cities and higher-end segments. Industrial zones, second- and third-tier provinces and fast-urbanizing peri-urban areas still have few chains with a clear presence.

What did Dongguan look like in 2000? More than 10 million migrant workers, almost no modern retail chains, and traditional corner shops holding most of the market. The industrial zones of Bình Dương, Đồng Nai and Long An in 2026 are not an exact copy, but the gap may be close enough for Meiyijia to recognize the terrain.

Opening two: current competitors run high-cost models

According to CBRE data for Q4 2024, retail rents in central Hanoi range from 37 to 140 USD per square meter per month, which may explain why many premium convenience chains cluster in certain locations rather than expanding widely. GS25 once announced a plan for 2,500 stores in 10 years, but more than six years after entering Vietnam it has reached only a small fraction of that target, and has not yet broken even according to public reports. The Japanese-Korean premium model may be squeezed between high costs and a market not yet deep enough at mass scale.

Looking at this picture, Meiyijia may see a gap not in premium, but in the segment below it, where few players have rolled out systematically.

Opening three: Chinese goods need a legal, systematic distribution channel

Meiyijia entered Vietnam under a new brand, Ohmee, developed with a local partner. This may be more than brand localization. Vietnamese law (Decree 09/2018) requires an economic needs test (ENT) when investors from outside ASEAN, including China, open a second retail outlet or more. A Vietnamese legal entity holding the brand through Ohmee may be a way to work around regulatory barriers before tackling operations. The new brand may not be only a marketing decision; it may also be a structural one. In the long run, that structure could work as a master franchise, with the Vietnamese entity licensing each outlet.

Once that structure is running, the rest of the ecosystem can follow. Many snacks and non-alcoholic drinks from China already enjoy low preferential tariffs, in many cases 0% if they meet C/O Form E conditions under the ACFTA schedule (Decree 118/2022/NĐ-CP), making the price advantage sharper, as long as there is a distribution channel to bring the goods in.

The number 40,000: sumo strategy or performance?

This is the part to read slowly.

40,000 is the number of stores Meiyijia had in China as of July 2025. It is not the number it plans to open in Vietnam. But the way the Vietnamese media repeated it, without any clear correction, can be read as a kind of signal. According to Nikkei Asia (2023), the internal target may be 50,000 stores by 2027, a steep rise in a short time. That number isn’t a Vietnam plan either. But it is the next chapter of the same message.

For context: the total number of minimarts and convenience stores in Vietnam in 2023, according to Q&Me, was about 6,720, the entire modern market, including local chains. 40,000 is several times the size of Vietnam’s entire industry today.

• Meiyijia in China (July 2025)40,000 stores
• All convenience stores and minimarts in Vietnam (2023)about 6,720
• Ohmee in Vietnam (March 2026)3 stores

Sources as cited in the article: Meiyijia, Q&Me (2023), Vietnamese press.

But that may not be the only purpose of the number 40,000.

In sumo, the winning strategy isn’t necessarily to hit hardest but to take up space. On one reading, the number 40,000 may be aimed at three audiences at once:

Investors and local franchise partners

“We have done this at scale. Our system is proven.”

Existing competitors

“Our operating costs can be lower thanks to a large-scale supply chain.”

The press and the market

“We are coming, and this is not just a test.”

Two ways to read the first stores

There are two ways to read Ohmee’s first stores in Hanoi, and the reading we choose completely changes what we need to watch next.

1. Scenario 1: showroom first, adjust laterOhmee may be deliberately looking like the existing market, with shelves full of familiar Vietnamese brands, a design close to GS25, and no obvious signals about price or Chinese goods. The goal may not be to win in these stores right away, but to create a model that is easy to look at and roll out through local franchising, in tier-2 areas. Once density is high enough, they start adjusting the assortment. Phase 1 may look like the current market; that may be the condition for Phase 2 to happen.
2. Scenario 2: two strategies for two marketsOhmee in Hanoi and the big cities could operate as a mid-market convenience store competing directly with GS25 and Circle K. The chain that expands into industrial zones and second-tier provinces could run on a different logic: a different assortment, different prices, perhaps even a different brand. Two regions, two models, the same supply chain behind them.

Which scenario is right should become clear in the next six months, and the signal may not be the number of stores they open, but whether the assortment changes once rollout reaches a certain level.

Three questions the number can’t answer

Question 1: What are the unit economics of an Ohmee store in Vietnam?

Meiyijia’s mass-banner model works in China thanks to a low-priced assortment combined with rents in industrial zones and provinces that are far lower than in big cities. In Dongguan, both conditions are almost a given. In Vietnam, both need to be tested again.

But the issue isn’t only rent or basket size. Vietnamese family-run corner shops operate at close to zero cost: the owner doesn’t pay themselves a salary and pays no rent because the shop is their home. That is a price floor modern chains can hardly beat through supply chain alone.

The third, less discussed variable is logistics. Transport and warehousing costs in Vietnam are relatively high compared with China, because of fragmented infrastructure and store density not yet high enough to optimize delivery routes. For low-priced goods with thin margins, this could significantly erode the cost advantage.

Meiyijia beat corner shops in China not only by being cheaper, but because its target customers, factory workers far from home, had no familiar corner shop to go back to. In Vietnam the question is different: are Ohmee’s shoppers in a similar situation, or do they still have a familiar option 50 meters away?

Real numbers from the first Hanoi stores will answer this within six months, and that will also be the moment to judge whether the cost advantage of a Chinese supply chain really holds in Vietnam. If it doesn’t, the whole platform-play argument may need to be revisited.

Question 2: The real competition isn’t at the shopfront

On the surface, the competition is between Meiyijia and Circle K or GS25. But the group most affected may not be the retail chains, but local FMCG manufacturers: Masan Consumer, Tân Hiệp Phát, URC Vietnam.

From this angle, the question is no longer who is affected, but what they can still hold on to when the distribution channel changes.

For retail chains, the issue isn’t opening more stores, but answering two basic questions again: why should customers come to this outlet, and why buy here instead of another option a few dozen meters away? When goods can be standardized by the supply chain, a store’s advantage no longer lies in the product, but in its location and its reason to exist. And in a market where good locations are gradually being locked up as cities grow, this becomes a constraint that is hard to reverse.

For FMCG manufacturers, the problem isn’t selling more, but keeping access to shoppers through as many channels as possible. When a new channel is designed to favor a different ecosystem of goods, depending on a few distribution channels can quickly become a weakness.

The real competitive response may not come from the store across the street. It may come from the factory.

Question 3: Is this market entry or a platform play?

Whichever scenario plays out at the shopfront (showroom then adjust, or two parallel models for two regions), one logic is hard to ignore when you look at the economic structure: this is most likely a form of platform play.

The reason is simple. Transaction-level unit economics in Vietnam are hard. Family corner shops run at close to zero cost. Urban rents are high. Logistics are fragmented. If Meiyijia doesn’t win upstream, meaning margin from expanding distribution through its own channel, listing fees and partnerships with FMCG brands, or win in the capital markets by using expansion to tell a different valuation story, it is hard to find a clear economic rationale for this structure.

More interesting is how that platform play may look different by geography, because consumer sensitivity to Chinese goods is uneven. In big cities, the perception barrier is higher: the share of Chinese goods on the shelf may need to be lower to avoid a backlash. In industrial zones and second-tier provinces, shoppers are used to choosing on price rather than brand: this is where the assortment can shift faster. The same platform play, but with the product mix adjusted region by region, not because the strategies differ, but because the markets do.

The real question isn’t whether they are making a platform play. It is who is funding this expansion, and which local FMCG brands sit in the path of that change.

What is really worth watching

Not the number of stores opened in the first year. Rather: the product range on Ohmee’s shelves in the first six months, and whether the first three Hanoi outlets (Vinhomes Smart City, Trần Kim Xuyến, Triều Khúc) can maintain a stable assortment. These may be their real “laboratory,” even if no one calls them that.

If the shelves lean toward Chinese snacks and drinks priced well below comparable local goods, we may be seeing the first step of a distribution strategy deployed through a retail channel. If the shelves are balanced with Vietnamese and international goods, they may be testing a retailer model.

The question I still can’t answer: will Vietnamese consumers in Meiyijia’s target segment (industrial-zone workers, residents of second-tier provinces) be willing to switch from a familiar corner shop to a new chain with unfamiliar goods? If the answer is no, the price advantage may not be enough to change behavior, and the whole platform play will need further proof.

Shelves are easy to stock. Shopping habits are not.

And if Meiyijia doesn’t need to win outright at store level, this may be the most important scenario for local FMCG: a competitor that can accept thin retail margins to optimize its position in distribution, pushing goods into the mass segment with no clear stopping point for negotiation.

Data sources: Momentum Works; China Chain Store & Franchise Association (CCFA); Daxue Consulting / iiMedia Research; Nikkei Asia; Huawei Cloud; Q&Me Vietnam (2023); CBRE Vietnam (Q4/2024); Cafef / GS Retail Annual Report; Decree 09/2018/NĐ-CP; Decree 118/2022/NĐ-CP (ACFTA).