Snack Kingdom opened in Changsha, China, on April 17, set a Guinness World Record on the same day, and immediately had to shut down sales two days later because too many people showed up. (Are we surprised?)
The store spans more than 13,000 square meters, comparable to roughly 30 standard basketball courts, and was built by Busy Ming Group, the parent company behind China’s largest snack retail chain, Mingming Henmang. More than 35,000 kinds of snacks from 70 countries and regions stock the shelves, with about a third of the products imported. If you ate one new snack per day, it would take approximately 96 years to try everything.
The entrance is a long corridor of glass cupboards loaded with snacks floor to ceiling, which gives you some idea of what you’re getting into. Inside, the store runs on a section-by-section layout. “Instant Noodle City” carries over 3,500 varieties. The cola shelves cover about 20 countries, with classic brands and flavors sharing space alongside things like salted cola.
Snack Kingdom’s Product Range Is a Lot to Take In
Next to Chinese staples like Pingjiang spicy strips from Hunan and Chongqing’s Tianfu Cola, the shelves carry chocolate from Hokkaido and candies from Russia. The more adventurous offerings include braised pork belly-flavored yogurt and ginger-scallion poached chicken-flavored milk.
Nearby, a candy pipeline made up of 34 transparent tubes holds about half a million real candies, and 70,000 lollipops recreate the cover of Jay Chou’s album Fantasy on the wall.
“We hope to bring snacks from around the world here for consumers and create a place that both adults and children will want to visit at least once,” said Yang Wei, head of the marketing center at Busy Ming Group.
Two days after opening, Snack Kingdom suspended sales entirely. The official reasons were restocking, checkout efficiency, and system capacity—the full trifecta of a launch that moved faster than the infrastructure behind it. Visitors could still come in and look around. They just couldn’t buy anything.
Changsha, it’s worth noting, was apparently already doing just fine in the snack department. The city is also home to a separate store that sells giant versions of popular snacks—oversized Lay’s bags, massive Oreo cookies, enormous bricks of instant noodles—all available for purchase. Changsha is out here treating snack retail as a competitive sport, and honestly, respect.
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