China's unmanned shelf bubble: ¥3B of funding on shelves that earned ¥10 a day

In 2017 China's 'unmanned shelf' wave put open snack shelves in offices, funded by a flood of capital: more than 50 startups split over 3 billion yuan that year, with 猩便利 raising 380 million in November alone and 果小美 pulling in more than 500 million across four rounds in six months.

The economics never worked. A point could cost about 2,000 yuan to install and 10 yuan a day to run, while the average shelf earned about 10 yuan in sales per day — before shrinkage, which ran at 30–50%. Placements were bought with 300–500 yuan commissions per point, so shelf count and revenue diverged: 果小美 claimed 100,000 points and daily gross merchandise value above a million yuan, but that was 100,000 points earning 10 yuan each.

The correction came faster than the boom. From late 2017 猩便利 pulled out of cities and cut about 60% of its BD staff; 果小美 shrank from 59 cities to 15 and laid off thousands; GOGO小超 became the category's first bankruptcy after just four months; and by mid-2018 the industry's own prediction — 70–80% of companies dead by June — had largely come true.