Annual revenue of 4.47 billion, profit up 52%. After opening 11k stores, Shanghai Auntie faces growth challenges to be solved.

Ask AI · Is growth sustainable given the franchise-dependent model and heavy marketing spend?

On March 24, Hushang Auntie in Shanghai officially released its 2025 financial report. Revenue and net profit both achieved growth, and the number of stores also smoothly surpassed the 11k mark. However, behind the impressive performance, signs of concerns over growth have already emerged.

In 2025, the company’s revenue reached 11k yuan, compared with 4.47B yuan in 2024, representing a year-over-year increase of 36%. Net profit was 500 million yuan, up 52.4% year over year. Profit growth was 16.4 percentage points higher than revenue growth. Store expansion has also maintained a fast pace. By the end of 2025, the total number of stores reached 11,449, up by 2,273 from 9,176 at the end of 2024. The overseas market also completed its rollout of 45 stores, and the pace of scale expansion has not slowed down.

But when you calculate revenue based on the number of stores, you can see the core logic behind the growth in performance. In 2024, Hushang Auntie’s 9,176 stores generated 3.29B yuan in revenue, meaning annual revenue per store was 358k yuan. In 2025, although total revenue increased, most of the more than 2,000 newly added stores had not operated for a full year that year. If estimated based on the average number of stores throughout the year, annual revenue per store would be roughly 330k–350k yuan—basically flat with 2024. This also implies that the speed of store expansion is actually running ahead of revenue growth.

In terms of operating model and spending, Hushang Auntie’s development characteristics are also quite clear. Among more than 11k stores, only 26 are directly operated, while franchise stores account for as much as 99.8%. It has achieved rapid store rollout by relying on the franchise model. On the cost side, annual sales and marketing expenses were 500 million yuan, accounting for 11.2% of revenue, while R&D expenses were only 53.35 million yuan—about one-tenth of marketing expenses. The spending inclination of “heavy marketing, light R&D” is very obvious. Looking at a longer timeline, from 2023 to 2025, Hushang Auntie’s revenue rose from 3.02 billion yuan to 3.29B yuan, and the number of stores expanded from 7,789 to 11,449. The scale has grown year after year, but per-store revenue has never made a breakthrough. The business model of driving overall performance by opening new stores has never changed.

In its financial report, Hushang Auntie explicitly stated that it will continue to open stores, optimize the supply chain, and expand into overseas markets. But after having 11k-plus stores, whether the company can find new growth momentum—all of this will have to wait for next year’s financial report data to provide the answer.