The secret behind the breakfast surge: Oriental Selection's long-termism approach

In March 2026, an assortment option called “Breakfast Self-Serve Buffet” from East Buy (Dongfang Zhenxuan) quietly launched. Without any overwhelming promotional blitz, it still created an “industry miracle” with over 150,000 orders sold on its first day—then quickly sold out and went out of stock.

Breakfast Goes Viral: The Inevitable Behind Coincidence

While the entire new retail industry was still trapped in the vicious cycle of price involution and efficiency competitions—platforms racing to cut costs, chase ultra-low prices, and compete on shipping speed—East Buy broke through with a breakfast combo, essentially redefining the core logic of new retail.

Looking back at how this product came into being, it stemmed from the genuine needs of countless users. In East Buy’s own APP community, voices like these are always heard: “I want to change my child’s breakfast flavors, but each item is sold in big packs. If I buy two bags or three bags, I’m afraid the taste won’t suit, so in the end I can only waste it.” “My child is already tired of eating the same kind of xiaolongbao every day, but there’s no low-barrier way to sample new flavors.” “A family of three’s breakfast—I want it to be convenient and worry-free, and I also want nutrition and variety, but I can’t find a suitable option.” These seemingly minor requests were recorded, sorted, and reviewed one by one by East Buy’s product team, and ultimately transformed into inspiration for product innovation. This model helps the brand build deep emotional ties with users and long-term trust.

Unlike breakfast combos with fixed pairings on the market, East Buy’s “Breakfast Self-Serve Buffet” covers 24 market-validated, high-quality breakfast items, including classic siu mai xiaolongbao, beef turnover pies, mei gan cai guo kuang bing (meigan-cai filled flatbread), hand-grab flatbreads, tangyuan, and more. Users can freely choose 8 items in a set to purchase. It both enables “no repeats for a week of breakfast” and allows users to try multiple new products at very low cost—solving the core pain points of high barriers to first-time sampling, limited flavor variety, and inventory hoarding that leads to waste. As Yu Minhong said at East Buy’s supplier conference in March: “In the end, East Buy wants to provide the people of China with good products and good service. Our core as a product company is to meet user needs—so that users can feel how much we care. Every time a user places their trust in us, that is the meaning of what we stand for.”

From the sales data, this combo not only boosted the sales of classic viral single items, but also unexpectedly made niche items like meigan-cai filled flatbread and beef turnover pies go viral. This fully confirms users’ urgent demand for “low-barrier sampling” and “personalized choice,” and also proves that an “user-centered” product logic is far more durable than a price war alone.

“Three High” Standards**:**** Safety, Taste, and Value for Money**

If user needs are the inspiration for product innovation, then food safety is East Buy’s foundation for standing firm—and the core expression of its original intention. At the supplier conference, Yu Minhong emphasized: “East Buy wants to make ‘Three High’ products. First, the safety level must be high. Whether it’s what you eat or what you use, the safety must be extremely high—no compromise, no concession, reaching the top-tier safety state. Second, the taste level must be high. That includes the quality of the items themselves, as well as great flavor and great appearance. Third, the value-for-money level must be high. We never promise that our products are the cheapest. But among products with comparable quality, our value for money must be the best.” These “Three High” standards—especially safety—are carried throughout East Buy’s entire chain, from product production, quality control, warehousing, and logistics, becoming a non-negotiable bottom line.

To uphold the bottom line of food safety, East Buy has invested a great deal of effort at the supply-chain end, building strict supplier screening mechanisms and quality-control systems. Before products go live, product managers and quality-control personnel jointly visit partner factories to conduct comprehensive assessments across multiple dimensions, including the production environment, company management, coordination efficiency, and degree of cooperation. Factories that do not meet the standards are firmly not selected. Taking classic siu mai xiaolongbao as an example, the product team visited no fewer than ten factories in Henan. Henan is an important production region for frozen dough products and has many manufacturers, yet East Buy always insisted on high standards. In the end, out of more than ten factories, it selected just one—solely to ensure product quality. At the supply-chain conference, Yu Minhong also discussed supplier selection, saying: “The core of East Buy is to choose the best products. We’d rather spend more time and more cost to find the most reliable suppliers, because we know that every product is tied to users’ health and the brand’s reputation. We cannot be the slightest bit lax.”

In the product production stage, East Buy goes even further by getting involved throughout the process. It refuses simple OEM/branding-only production and instead works with suppliers to refine the product together, creating differentiated advantages. Most hand-grab flatbreads on the market use relatively low-cost lard shortening for lamination. While this can reduce costs, it also brings hidden health risks;

When developing its hand-grab flatbread product, East Buy insists on using a higher-cost but healthier lard shortening for lamination. This both preserves the taste and takes health into account. When East Buy’s product manager put forward these requirements to its partner, the partner’s initial reaction was simply unbelievable.

At the same time, East Buy has also established a sound product traceability system and detection standards. For meat ingredients, it conducts more than 50 items of testing for animal drug residues and heavy metals; for vegetable ingredients, it conducts more than 300 items of testing for pesticide residues. Every product must undergo rigorous quality inspections.

Three-in-One: Content, Supply Chain, and Users

Building on the success of this breakfast combo product, East Buy began gradually expanding into other packaged assortment categories. From breakfast, it expanded into tea drinks, snacks, vegetables, and household items—across multiple areas it all uses a “self-choose” model, fully handing the power of choice back to users. This enables users to mix and match according to their preferences, further reducing trial-and-error costs and improving the overall consumption experience.

Compared with single-item sales, this self-serve assortment model has to account for inventory of multiple items, lengthens the picking and sorting chain, and increases operating costs such as warehousing and labor. For companies, it is undoubtedly a choice that is “not cost-effective.” But in East Buy’s view, this “not cost-effective” aspect is precisely respect for user value. In fact, this “user-centered” operating model has also brought East Buy long-term returns. After users experience high-quality products through the assortment packaging, they turn into loyal consumers of single items, forming a positive feedback loop of “experience—repeat purchase—loyalty.”

East Buy’s mid-year performance for the 2026 fiscal year shows that the proportion of GMV from self-operated products exceeded half for the first time, reaching 52.8%. Total revenue reached 2.3 billion yuan, and net profit rose to 239 million yuan, an increase of 347.7% year over year—achieving a turnaround from loss to profit. This impressive performance fully proves the correctness of East Buy’s new retail model. From viral sell-through of breakfast self-serve assortments to the layout of assortments across all categories; from a strict quality-control system to thoughtful after-sales service; from symbiotic win-win partnerships with suppliers to emotional connections with users—every step East Buy takes has been steady and solid.

Today, the new retail industry is shifting from traffic dividends to trust dividends and experience dividends. Consumers’ needs are no longer limited to “buying the product,” but instead they seek “buying with confidence, buying comfortably, and buying with care.” The sudden breakout success of East Buy’s breakfast combo is a snapshot of this trend. Replacing traffic with products is the long-term strategy path for the entire new retail industry.