The retail industry is undergoing dramatic changes. Recently, industry giants seem to have reached a consensus overnight: bigness is a sin, and heaviness is a burden. But there are always those who refuse to follow the crowd. At a time when the industry is hitting the brakes collectively, Pinshang Life + Tramy Fresh Mart has chosen to move in the opposite direction. Its pastry and noodle counter, in particular, has broken the norm: Chinese-style pastries are no longer the “exclusive choice of the aloof middle class”. In the first few days of opening, 70%–80% of customers were elderly people.

However, after the initial bustle, the real question emerged: Is the pastry counter model just a passing fad, or a new path forward? In essence, this experiment is exploring an alternative possibility for retail. While everyone is chasing “refinement and efficiency”, can the overlooked, steaming-hot needs of ordinary households sustain a different business model? It may not be trendy enough, but it is full of vitality; it may not be replicable nationwide, yet it reminds us that the answer to commercial success does not only lie in trend reports — it can also be found in the daily shopping carts of ordinary people.

Amid the industry winter, we have used the shell of new retail to solve an old problem: how can traditional fresh food counters survive? The most appealing aspect of the pastry counter is the deliberate “bustle” it creates: in the open kitchen, masters work nimbly, flipping fried dough sticks up and down; the fried bun area steams with heat, and the savory aroma of pan-fried buns fills the air; for handmade buns, technicians skillfully wrap and steam them on site.

This is no ordinary supermarket — it is a “giant food theater” where people can browse, eat, and even watch the cooking show. Behind this lies a shift in current consumer psychology: consumers increasingly distrust labels and trust their own eyes more. By moving the back kitchen to the front, the pastry counter opens up the black box of production for all to see. Visible preparation is more persuasive than any organic certification or premium label. Paired with tidy 6S management and a bright open-kitchen design, it smartly packages “marketplace vitality” to be clean and orderly, and elevates “local flavors” without being tacky. As a result, black pork buns can stand alongside Swiss rolls, and fried dough sticks can compete with durian mille crepes — a wonderful fusion of “Shanghai nostalgia and upgraded quality” unfolds.

This lively “vitality of daily life” is precisely the most difficult-to-standardize, most challenging part of retail. As the proportion of prepared food rises and the number of stores expands, quality control difficulty increases exponentially. All this reminds every Tianzhi team member: brands that live on trust fear cracks in that trust most. Imagine: the filling ratio of buns at Store A is off one day; a chef at Store B adds too much yeast by accident the next; a small cold chain gap occurs at Store C later on… Every counter is a mini kitchen and a potential quality control risk point. Consumers can tolerate consistent taste in black pork buns, but they can hardly forgive a broken promise of freshness “made right in front of them”. Quality control has become the Sword of Damocles hanging over this bustling scene.

Made-and-sold-on-site is a double-edged sword. It is both a competitive barrier and the most likely area to spiral out of control in the future. It highly relies on the craftsmanship and sense of responsibility of frontline staff, and can easily be affected by ingredient batches, daily customer flow, and even employees’ conditions. When this “bustle” needs to be replicated at the second, tenth store, how can we ensure every fried dough stick is crispy and every pork bun juicy? This requires not commercial inspiration, but restaurant-level, extremely rigorous refinement of the supply chain, standardized operation manuals, and strict quality control inspections. I believe that under the leadership of General Manager Du, every Tianzhi team member is ready. After conquering the mountain of quality, we will surely meet at the summit.

In today’s fiercely competitive era, few local supermarkets can be seriously discussed. Yet Tramy’s pastry counter has stood at the center of the conversation, at the very least, as a refreshing surprise.