Four Pieces of Beef Jerky, 64.58 Yuan: Regulators Crack Down on China's Bulk Snack Chains

Four strips of beef jerky rang up at 64.58 yuan at a store in Hebei province. When the customer re-weighed the bag, the same jerky came to 17.29 yuan. In Henan, another shopper who was charged 111 yuan at checkout demanded a re-weigh and watched the bill fall to 64.8 yuan. As Jiu Pai News reported on Saturday, complaints like these have caught up with China's bulk snack chains, and regulators in several cities are responding.

The stores under inspection belong to a retail format that has swept China in the past three years: liangfan lingshi, literally "volume-snack retail" — no-frills shops lined with open bins of dried tofu, spicy gluten strips, candied fruit and nuts, all sold by weight at prices well below supermarket levels. The sector has consolidated at speed around two national giants, Zhao Yiming Snacks and Hao Xianglai, which between them have opened thousands of outlets in county towns and city neighborhoods, competing on the promise of the lowest possible price per gram.

That promise is what the scales are suspected of breaking. The market regulator in Baotou, Inner Mongolia, has launched a citywide special rectification targeting the major chains — Hao Xianglai, Zhao Yiming, Qilou Snacks and Cailiren among them — with inspectors carrying standard test weights to check the electronic scales in use. In Shanxi's Yuncheng, inspectors concentrated on electronic pricing scales at the chains' county stores; in Funing, Jiangsu, the same exercise. Short-weighing — the idiom is quejin duanliang, "a jin short, a liang light" — is a classic of Chinese consumer grievance, and manipulated electronic scales are its modern instrument: a scale can be preset to read heavy, or jump to a higher reading when a button is pressed, in ways invisible to a shopper watching the display.

The story has traveled well past the affected cities. The Hebei jerky case sits at the top of Zhihu's question board, where the discussion has turned to whether the whole sector's pricing is trustworthy, and the crackdown charted on Baidu's search rankings over the weekend. On Weibo, the reaction has been less surprise than recognition. "This is outrageous — we've bought snacks at Zhao Yiming many times," wrote one surgeon who posts about consumer and health matters, in a reply typical of the comment section.

What happens next will say something about how the sector is governed. The scale is the point of sale for a business whose entire margin depends on shoppers trusting that cheap means honest; a re-weigh that cuts a bill nearly in half cuts against the trust that built the chains in the first place. So far the inspections have been ordered city by city, and the two chains named in every complaint have yet to respond publicly. A national campaign has not been announced. For now, the arithmetic keeps circulating: four pieces of jerky, 64.58 yuan — and 17.29 on an honest scale.