First-harvest West Lake Longjing leaves go out of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai via Hema: Can supermarket supply chains cure the "information disease" of spring tea?

Every year before Qingming, the first-picked tender shoots of West Lake Longjing from Hangzhou are always a “hard currency” among tea drinkers—accounting for only about 1% of the total Longjing tea output.

But in the past, most first-picked Longjing was absorbed within insider networks in the core producing areas, to the point where “good tea doesn’t leave Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai” became the industry’s unspoken rule. This year, Hema’s in-house brand “Hebo Bubu” for the first time rolled Hangzhou first-picked pre-Qingming Longjing out to stores nationwide, trying to break the market barriers of spring tea with a “48-hour from factory” model in its fresh supply chain. This move appears to be answering an old question in the traditional tea industry: whether the pain points of consumers—“not understanding the trade, not trusting, and fearing being taken advantage of”—can be solved through standardized exploration via supermarket channels.

“Circle-Tea” goes onto the shelves: Longjing first-pick’s nationwide experiment

First-pick, pre-Qingming, and pre-rain are different grades of Longjing tea. Among them, first-pick Longjing is the most scarce because it has a suitably balanced polyphenol content, a higher level of theanine, and stands out for its fresh taste and lingering sweetness. Its yield per mu is only 2–3 jin. In the traditional tea distribution chain, first-pick Longjing has become a “circle tea” that many people find out of reach due to its low output, narrow channels, and information asymmetry.

What Hebo Bubu tried this year is: lock in partner tea gardens in advance, require suppliers to finish picking, pan-frying, and shipping within 48 hours, then connect to Hema’s nationwide fresh logistics network so that it reaches stores in different locations in as fast as 24 hours. Hebo Bubu’s负责人 Shan Shen told Xinhuanghe reporter that first-pick pre-Qingming Longjing has been open for reservations since March 1 this year, and it has basically sold out in less than 20 days.

Hebo Bubu Longjing spring tea base in Hangzhou

According to information, last year Hebo Bubu’s first attempt at spring tea drove its entire green tea category to grow nearly 10 times year over year between April and June. Among the cities outside Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai, Xi’an, Beijing, and Chengdu became the biggest buyers of tea.

“Out-of-town consumers aren’t that they don’t like drinking tea, but that they have pain points such as not knowing how to choose, not being sure about the price, and not having quality supply.” Shan Shen said. In the past, consumers either had acquaintances help them buy from the producing areas, or they “picked by luck” at tea shops—within the same pack of tea, shop owners would take inventory from different tiers in three-tier tea cabinets, and the price and quality depended entirely on what they said.

“First-pick tea isn’t tea waiting for people to harvest it; it’s people waiting for the tea to sprout. We need to lock in large areas of tea gardens in advance, and find experienced tea farmers to judge which tea trees will sprout earliest based on temperature, sunshine, and rainfall, and then harvest the new tea by chasing the sun.” Li Xiaojun, chairman of Yifutang Tea Industry and a spring tea cooperation merchant for Hema, explained. After last year’s success, this year Yifutang also introduced more advanced color-sorting equipment and expanded capacity to ensure that the harvested spring tea can be pan-fried and shipped out within 48 hours.

Before Qingming Festival, tea farmers harvest tea buds.

With standardized product formats, supermarket channels put first-pick tea onto shelves, with clear price tags and labels indicating origin and grade. In essence, this is using a fast-moving consumer goods logic to reconstruct how tea is distributed.

An industry pain point of “too deep water”: why can prices differ by five to ten times?

The biggest headache for consumers when buying tea is that they can’t understand quality or calculate price. For the same Longjing, a roadside shop may sell it for several hundred yuan, a brand flagship counter for several thousand yuan, and in live-streaming rooms even for less than a hundred yuan.

In an interview, Li Xiaojun said plainly: “The pricing of traditional gift tea is often five to ten times the cost. And if you add a bit of cultural storytelling, selling it for ten to twenty thousand is also very common.” Hebo Bubu’s research also confirms this: in many cities’ tea stores, there are phenomena such as tiered picking of inventory and selling based on whom you are. Once consumers have been burned, it’s hard for them to trust again.

This information asymmetry stems from the industry’s lack of standards. Although Longjing tea has national standards and geographical indications, a large amount of tea is still produced in household workshops—covering planting, picking, and pan-frying mainly based on experience, with no quantifiable quality control system. Hebo Bubu’s approach is to spend one year traveling across tea regions nationwide, selecting suppliers that meet food-grade hygiene standards and have their own tea gardens and modern factories, and jointly establish internal standards—for example, the proportion of “one bud and one leaf” needs to be 70% or more, and the pan-frying process requires that it be “properly fried until thoroughly cooked,” rather than preserving water to increase weight.

An associate technician, Xu Xiaoshun, demonstrates the tea pan-frying process to visitors.

These standards may not be perfect, but at least they let consumers see on the packaging that the “three labels” are all complete—geographical indication, tea brand, and year mark—so the tea they buy is no longer a “mystery box.”

New tea drinkers and new logic: what kind of tea do young consumers want?

According to Hebo Bubu’s data, among the people who purchase its tea, the proportion of consumers under 35 has already exceeded half. This generation of young tea drinkers’ consumption habits are very different from those of their parents: they are less willing to pay for “cultural premium,” and they care more about value for money. They prefer smaller pack sizes, easy steeping, and multiple categories; they don’t like buying half a jin or a full jin at once and finishing it after the season ends.

This shift forces channel partners to adjust their strategies. This year, Hebo Bubu changed a 150-gram pack of Longjing to 90 grams and also introduced a two-box gift set of light hand gifts. At the same time, it is developing convenient forms such as cold-brew tea bags. Shan Shen summarizes its product selection logic: first, customer insight—adjust specifications in real time based on sales data and negative reviews; second, direct sourcing from the source—squeezing out inflated profits from middle links; third, scenario-based packaging—making “easy to eat and easy to bring along” the standard.

This actually reveals a trend: tea is returning from being a “cultural consumer product” to essentially becoming a “daily beverage.” When young people are no longer willing to pay high premiums for stories and packaging, supermarket channels—leveraging their supply-chain efficiency and brand trust—have the opportunity to fill the market gap between traditional tea companies and small family-run shops.

The transformation of the tea industry is, at its core, the inevitable result of the industry shifting from disorderly growth to standardized, inclusive development in the new era of consumption. For the entire tea industry, only by bidding farewell to inflated premiums and aligning with real consumer needs can it achieve sustainable industrial development.

Reporter: Gao Ying Photography: Gao Ying Editor: Liu Meimei Proofreader: Gao Xin