We bring innovative food and beverage startups to China, the world's biggest consumer market
In 2013, China’s grocery market crossed the one trillion-dollar mark and became the largest food and beverage market in the world. Since then, this growth has accelerated even further and it is without a doubt that the future of the world's food industry will be shaped in China.
Over half of the population here now lives in cities. The young urban middle class dominates new consumer trends and is hungry for innovation. Their curiosity and open attitude towards new food concepts will decide which companies thrive and which ones fail.
Most startups in the food and beverage business do not have the knowledge or financial fire power to set up shop on a different continent. Feast Creative Foods is a strategic investment company. We work with innovative F&B brands and bring them to China. We're hands-on, part of the team, committed and true entrepreneurial partners on the ground and at the frontlines in China's supermarkets. We work hand-in-hand with our partner startups to bring their awesome products to the world’s biggest consumer market. Bang!!
“To be successful in China, it’s not enough to list your product on Taobao. “
The typical Chinese consumer requires
9 brand touch points before making a purchase decision. That’s 3 more than in most Western countries.
For our partner brands we are …
FEAST is able to address all 4 major concerns of brands aiming to enter the China Food Market:
• Brand stewardship: How to keep control of the brand vs risk of a large non sustainable distribution ?
• How to invest progressively to increase returns certainty ?
• How to gather learnings with speed and at a limited cost ?
• How to make China launch as part of credible equity story to raise more and increase brand value ?
What we do
THE FOOD INDUSTRY IS CHANGING
For generations, consumers have been deluded by Big Food and they have started to realise that. The Fruit Loops of the world are fast loosing market share. And the past years have seen a bloom of thousands of innovative food and beverage startups offering more transparent, more individualised and more nutritious alternatives. Some industry observers already refer to the food industry as "the new internet".
CHINA IS UPGRADING ITS CONSUMPTION PATTERNS
The instant noodle is dying. The rise of the middle class, the increase of products available on the market, coupled with a lack of confidence in local food supply chains have led to dramatic changes in the grocery shopping landscape.
China has quickly become the biggest marketplace for nearly all FMCG categories. Food continues to secure a lion share of the overall spending behaviour outperforming transportation, the next ranked category, by a factor of 2x. By 2020, the Chinese online grocery market is set to be worth almost US$ 280 billion.
(Inaccurate - see https://www.statista.com/outlook/253/100/food-beverages/worldwide#market-revenue)
Providing enough food at acceptable levels of quality and at an affordable cost is shaping up to be one of China’s most challenging issue. And sales of imported food will continue to grow at double digits.
WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR
We are looking for enthusiastic entrepreneurs with a vision and a mind-blowing product compatible with the demand in China's supermarkets, restaurants and online stores. We seek to partner with the best-in-class food innovators and management teams to help accelerate their international growth and boost their strategic value with a meaningful presence in the world's largest consumer market.
(Click here to find out how to become a partner company.)
CHINA GROWTH PARTNERS
Feast Creative Foods is a China-focused platform investing in emerging consumer brands. Our team has decades of experience in marketing, media and China's food industry. And we pulled all our resources together to support Western food startups in China like no one else can.
For our partner companies, we are import agents, community builders, marketing experts, brand ambassadors, distributors, networkers, sales managers, trade show representatives and their very own office in China. Our goals are fully aligned. We work completely transparently and we're just as excited about new food concepts as you are.
• Full transparency and shared “risk” by co-investment model
• Online / social commerce first
• Localized consumer strategy and social media content creation
• Importability / Food regulation , end to end Operations to ensure excellence in execution
Differentiators
Brand Building
Online Owned Platforms
Brand stores & official brand accounts on major platforms including WeChat, Taobao, TMall, WeiBo, Little Red Book
Online offsite Platforms
Launching through strong online partners who direct traffic to our products, listing in the top online stores for category
Social Media Brand Support
Collaborations with >120 KOLs and KOCs on China’s biggest social commerce platforms
Professional Platform Management
A well-done WeChat presence is more important than a Chinese website
Western social media channels do not reach consumers in China. Here the digital landscape is completely different, with Tencent and Alibaba ecosystems dominating e-commerce space. That is why we focus our attention on cultivating platforms such as WeChat, China's biggest social with over 1 billion active users.
On our partner brands’ official accounts we post an average of 3 articles per month, educating our customers and followers about brand and lifestyle.
Powerful Partners
Partnerships with established category shops and distributors across Chinese e-commerce platforms (like Taobao and WeChat) enable us to collectively drive traffic toward FEAST's products. We also represent our partner brands on major Chinese eCommerce festivals throughout the year, to bring even more exposure to our brands.
Influencers and KOLs
We run campaigns with several hundreds of Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) and Key Opinion Customers (KOCs) on e-commerce platforms such as Little Red Book, WeChat and WeiBo, TaoBao, TMall and TikTok, better known here as DouYin (China’s most trusted social shopping platform). Depending on the relevant target groups our focus on different platforms is adjusted.
Distribution Channels
Online
Owned Stores 5 major Chinese platforms (WeChat, Weibo, Taibao, TMall, Little Red Book)
Online Distributor Stores >50 stores with average monthly sales volume >200k RMB
Social Commerce >120 KOLs & KOCs promoting products through their channels
Offline
On Trade >40 stores
Retailers with focus on premium banners in top cities
Portfolio
Noveltea
Noveltea is based in Newcastle (UK) and offers alcoholic teas with 11 percent ABV. The two founders Lukas and Vincent combined the two favourite British drinks into a new beverage category: alcoholic tea blends.
Pilot case of NOVELTEA China: >50 % of global sales
Detailed case study available HERE
Almo
Australia’s first long life Australia-grown almond milk. Offers nutritious, tasty, clean, and sustainability focused plant based beverages
The Nu CompanY
The Nu Company is a German startup making vegan, low sugar chocolate bars in a plastic-free packaging. In 2019, the company added Nupro to their product range - a vegan protein supplement targeting female millennials.
Feed.
Is a French smart food company that designs nutritionally perfect meals in formats tailored to active people. It is developed by a team of dieticians and nutritionists, agri-food engineers and chefs, the recipes contain natural ingredients that provide 100% of the necessary contributions of a balanced meal.
Become a Partner Company
Work with Feast, bring your F&B startup to China and enter the world’s biggest consumer market
We are looking for companies that turn the old food industry upside down / are planet positive / offer healthy, nutritious and sustainable products / have a solid, diverse team / have a clear growth strategy and have existing products in the market.
As a first step of every possible cooperation, we analyse the market potential and the category size in China. Then we organise a tasting and check the ingredients as China’s regulations for importing foods are quite strict.
After developing the label and the pricing strategy, we translate the marketing material into Chinese and develop an individual launch strategy for every partner brand, combining e-commerce, events, distributor partnerships and social media campaigns to a 360° China strategy.
We do all this fully transparent and as true entrepreneurial partners. If you think your brand might work on the Chinese market, send us an email to shanghai@feast-china.com.
Our Team
Marc-Antoine Olive
Ceo & CO-Founder
Marc-Antoine served in a variety of general management and BD roles within Danone, Pepsico and General Mills, across mature and emerging markets with focus on China, brand building and multichannel operations.
Benedikt Stöckert
Finance & CO-founder
Up until the founding of FEAST, Benedikt was a driving force behind the success of ESB. Prior to that, he spent years as a managing director at various startups and consulted companies as finance specialist.
Nicolas Stöckert
Chairman & Co-Founder
Rachel started her long career in FMCG and retail at industry giants such as Danone, P&G and Carrefour where she worked as a purchasing director.
RAchel Han
Operations
Rachel started her long career in FMCG and retail at industry giants such as Danone, P&G and Carrefour where she worked as a purchasing director.
ANDY CHEN
E-COMMERCe
Andy has various eComm-platform experience, served 4 years in a well know TP and 10 years in Marketing
ISSA WU
Marketing
Issa has built her career doing branding for various FMCG brands, working with brands like Johnny Walker. She, along with our marketing team, takes care of all our partner brands’ branding in China.
Lana Khovracheva
BUSINESS DEV & Events
Lana came to Shanghai in 2015 to study Chinese and International Relations. She has worked for various F&B startups and knows the entire foodie scene.
TOM SU
E-COMMERCE Manager
CICI CHEN
SENIOR SALES MANAGER
Tom is our e-commerce expert with 7 years of experience in launching and operating online stores for western FMCG brands of all sizes.
Cici has over 10 years of sales & marketing experience. She is passionate about innovation and f&b industry. Previously she worked at Nestle China. Cici takes care of our retail and HoReCa accounts.
Rita Zhai
E-commerce & Logistics Exec.
Rita is a logistics maestro with a magic touch for eCommerce. Lucky for us, she is practicing both of these abilities in order to smooth out an important part of our process chain.
Ivy Xu
Social media Manager
SHIRLEY SHU
Brand Design
Ivy is an explorer at heart with a passion for innovative food brands with a purpose. Ivy runs our social media accounts.
10 years of cretive design experience, rich design of online/offline and digital design, mainly serving for FMCG industry, participated in Ali-Hema project.
Summer Liu
Sales Executive
Summer is a crucial member of our sales team, promoting our products in both offline and online channels, as well as taking care of existing client relationships.
Ring Li
Accounting
Ring has worked for several food startups before she joined our team to take care of our accounting.
Advisors & Friends
Brent Ferguson
CEO SANTACK Group
Brent Ferguson has been advising Feast for two years. With more than two decades in international F&B trade building SANTACK Group Ltd., he knows the ins and outs and everything inbetween.
Manoj Metah
CEO naked Group
Manoj Mehta is among many things, CEO of naked Retreats. Years of international business experience prove him to be a bold change driver and a strong asset to have in our corner.
Max Bittner
Angel/Advisor
Max is the founder and former CEO of Lazada, the leading e-com platform in SE Asia. In 2016, he sold the company to Alibaba at a valuation of nearly US$ 4 bn.