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Humble street snack rides fresh wave of popularity

(China Daily) 09:58, June 01, 2022

Editor's note: This series of stories looks at local enterprises in specialized sectors that have a share in global markets.

Luosifen, which translates as river snail rice noodles, has risen from its humble roots as a street snack in Southwest China to take the nation's food scene and beyond by storm, with spikes in domestic as well as overseas sales.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the precooked, packaged version of the product has seen record production and sales, according to industry figures.

Luosifen, which can be traced to Liuzhou, a city in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, features rice noodles soaked in a spicy broth flavored with river snails and topped with pickled bamboo shoots, which give it a distinctive, tangy aroma.

By the end of last year, sales revenue of packaged luosifen hit 15.197 billion yuan ($2.27 billion), an increase of 38.23 percent year-on-year, with the production and sales of many companies in the sector doubling, according to Jia Jiangong, deputy director of Liuzhou's commerce bureau.

Major producers such as Guangxi Luobawang Food Technology pointed to the widespread development of the "homebound economy" during the pandemic, by leveraging online sales and logistics channels. This helped fuel spikes in domestic and overseas orders for precooked, packaged versions of the dish.

Students visit a company that makes luosifen at an industrial park in Liuzhou, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, in April 2021. [LI HANCHI/FOR CHINA DAILY]

"Our daily production capacity was only about 80,000 to 100,000 packs two decades ago. By 2021, we reached 500,000 packs a day after a new plant was put into production, with a fourfold increase of overall production capacity compared with Chen Bo, general manager of Guangxi Luobawang Food Technology.

Chen Sheng, chairman of Guangxi Shanyuan Food, said, "In April last year, we sold 150,000 to 200,000 packs a day, and now it is stable at about 350,000 packs."

Along with technological and production facility upgrades, the company has set up at least nine sales branches across the country, and links have been formed with major supermarket chains.

The explosive growth helped the company reap sales of nearly 670 million yuan last year, Chen Sheng said, adding that the enterprise aims to break the 1 billion yuan mark this year.


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(Web editor: Xian Jiangnan, Liang Jun)

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