BreadTalk, Jumbo, SongFa: Why S’pore’s F&B giants are retreating from China

Singapore brands used to thrive in China. Today, they’re fighting to survive.

For about two decades, a Singapore brand in a Chinese shopping mall exuded “quality,” “hygiene,” “trustworthy”—a halo effect so strong that brands like BreadTalk, Jumbo Seafood, Toast Box and Food Republic could set up premium real estate in Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu and watch the country’s rising middle class come to them as it rode the wave of China’s consumption upgrade.

However, the appeal of “Singapore quality” has since faded, and that golden era is over.

Food Republic closed its last Beijing outlet on Jun 15, 2026. Its parent company, BreadTalk, had already exited the capital completely at the end of Mar, down from 460 China outlets at its peak to roughly 200 today.

Jumbo Seafood is planning to close its outlets across China and consolidate its operations in Shanghai. Song Fa Bak Kut Teh has already made a similar move, having exited other Chinese cities; its sole remaining outlet in the country is also located in Shanghai.

Evidently, the Singapore F&B retreat from China is not just a single brand’s failure, but rather a structural reckoning, and the story of what comes next is only beginning.

The golden age for Singapore brands in China

In the early 2000s, “Singapore quality” was seen as a genuine competitive advantage in China.

As Chinese incomes rose and the middle class expanded, there was a real appetite for international dining experiences that felt premium yet accessible. 

Singapore’s hawker heritage, such as bak kut teh, chilli crab, kaya toast, offered the Chinese middle-class familiar Asian flavours with an international pedigree.

BreadTalk was a pioneer amongst Singapore businesses in overseas expansion to China. Founded in Singapore in 2000 by George Quek, the group grew to nearly 1,000 outlets across 17 countries at its peak, with China as its largest market.

Jumbo claimed to serve 1.6 tonnes of crab per day at its three Shanghai outlets in 2017. Song Fa, Putien, Paradise Group, and Toast Box all expanded into first-tier cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, and, buoyed by success, pushed further into second-tier cities like Chengdu, Hangzhou, and Nanjing.

For about two decades, the aura of “Singapore quality” worked in China—until around 2023.

What broke the spell

The turning point was not just one event but several overlapping shifts that fundamentally changed what Chinese consumers want and who they are willing to pay for.

Firstly, consumer spending has contracted greatly over the years. China’s property market downturn eroded middle-class wealth, while youth unemployment hit record highs in 2023. As such, the aspirational spending that once fuelled premium dining retreated sharply. 

Those with more wealth also weren’t spending as much as they used to. Jumbo Group CEO Ang Kiam Meng told Lianhe Zaobao that consumer confidence is the main issue and that the CCP’s “eight-point regulations” limiting corporate entertainment spending had hit the entire mid-to-high-end F&B environment hard.

The Jumbo Group financials show that out of the total revenue of S$178.8 million in 2023, China’s revenue was S$26.1 million, but it dropped by a whopping 27.6% to S$18.9 million in FY2024 and S$18.3 million in FY2025.

Secondly, it’s important to acknowledge that local Chinese brands have become formidable world-class competitors. While Singapore operators were managing existing outlets, Chinese competitors were investing in R&D and digital marketing, building social media presences on Douyin, and getting onto food delivery platforms like Meituan with aggressive discounts, building loyal followings online and physically that Singapore brands struggled to match.

Putien’s general manager for China, Ling Ling Kong, observed that market traffic is now increasingly concentrated among leading Internet-famous brands, making it harder for traditional quality restaurants to attract new customers. 

BreadTalk’s own spokesperson acknowledged that the rapid rise of Chinese brands, coupled with the growing importance of food delivery and e-commerce platforms, has reshaped the entire competitive landscape. 

Underlying all of this was the fading of the Singapore premium itself. Jianggan Li, CEO of consultancy Momentum Works, explained that “the place of origin of overseas brands, including Singapore’s, has shifted from a competitive advantage to mere background information.” 

Chinese consumers today care about product quality, whether prices are reasonable, and whether the experience is worth sharing online. A brand being from Singapore no longer moves the needle the way it once did.

As such, with the added pressures of high rents in core commercial districts and the cost of high-quality ingredients, shrinking profit margins have increasingly become a reality for the entire industry, including Singaporean businesses. 

China is not the endgame

Since around 2023, most Singapore brands have been quietly consolidating—and by now, Shanghai has become the last viable city for almost all of them, but even there, the competitive environment is brutal.

BreadTalk took the deepest cut, contracting from 460 China outlets to roughly 200 while Food Republic retains four remaining Shanghai outlets, and pivoted to a new avenue of growth in operating canteens for schools and companies. The group’s sights are now firmly set on a S$1 billion revenue target by 2029, built on its Singapore and Thailand bakeries and its Din Tai Fung franchise rights.

BreadTalk still operates across 14 international markets.

Jumbo is making a similar pivot, foreseeing the closure of six restaurants in six Chinese cities to focus on Shanghai while betting on a different kind of growth at home: a new S$10 million Tai Seng headquarters with a dedicated catering kitchen and a new subsidiary, Jumbo Catering Services, with Jakarta and Ho Chi Minh City next on the list.

On the other hand, Jumbo still has outlets in South Korea, Thailand, and Cambodia, maintaining its overseas footprint to comprise more than just China.

These overseas expansions operate on the logic that Asian markets offer growing middle classes, cultural familiarity with Singaporean food, and less savage competition than in China.

Song Fa, meanwhile, has drawn a quiet line under its China ambitions entirely, condensing to just a single Shanghai outlet while refocusing on Singapore and tourist-facing spots like Jewel Changi Airport.

Of all these retreats, Putien is an outlier, holding on. By capping its China presence at 20 to 30 outlets from the start and holding 27 today, it never overextended, and that discipline now looks like it’s paying off as it never badly exposed the company in the first place.

What’s striking is that none of these is failing companies.

Jumbo’s first-half 2025 revenue grew 7.9% to S$105 million, driven by Singapore operations, while BreadTalk hit nearly S$600 million in 2023 revenue.  They are companies recalibrating, rather than collapsing, shedding China exposure that was diluting returns and doubling down on markets where they still have genuine advantages.

The harder question is what happens when those alternatives face the same pressures.

China is now coming here

As Singapore’s F&B brands retreat from China, Chinese F&B brands are also flooding into Singapore at an unprecedented pace.

About 85 Chinese F&B brands were operating approximately 405 outlets in Singapore as of Aug 2025, more than double the 32 brands running 184 outlets just a year earlier, according to data from Inside Retail. 

Chagee, Mixue, Tai Er, Nong Geng Ji — brands Singaporeans now see in every major mall — are using Singapore as a launchpad to greater expansion, leveraging the city’s regulatory clarity, international reputation, and diverse consumer base to validate their concepts before moving into broader Southeast Asia.

There’s a temptation to frame this as China got hard, so Singapore’s F&Bs are coming home. But home isn’t a soft landing either. 

Singapore’s F&B sector recorded over 3,000 outlet closures in 2024—the highest in almost two decades—and closures continued at roughly 300 every month through 2025.

The format that’s struggling in China is also struggling in Singapore.

This exposes a much bleaker read of Singapore businesses than a simple East-versus-West business environment contrast, and it raises the question of where these companies can expect growth to come if they’re to continue in their old ways in the seemingly foreign retail landscape back at home.

The dynamic is a direct inversion of what happened in China a decade ago, where Singapore brands rode the wave of China’s consumption upgrade.

Now, Chinese brands are riding Singapore’s position as Southeast Asia’s gateway city and bringing the capital backing, digital marketing muscle, and operational scale that Singapore brands found themselves lacking when competing in China.

The lesson in the retreat

Momentum Works’ Li felt that Singapore brands’ retreating from China aren’t necessarily poor brands, but rather brands that were once successful but failed to keep pace with the speed of change in the Chinese market. 

China’s market has never lacked opportunities, but it is simply changing too quickly. Many Singapore brands entered, attempting to solve the needs of consumers a decade ago, and found themselves stranded when those needs shifted.

A restaurateur who has operated a Singaporean restaurant in Beijing for 14 years noted that Singapore companies were not aggressive enough in capturing market share, were underinvested in their frontline teams, and were too slow to embrace digital marketing.

What they lost in China was not just outlets, but also the assumption that being Singaporean was enough. 

As Li advices: “Singapore brands that can continue to survive in China would either have to offer Singaporean characteristics and experiences that other Chinese brands cannot replace, or fully localise themselves.”

• Read other articles we’ve written on Singaporean businesses here.

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Featured Image Credit: Jumbo Seafood, JonasCN via Tripadvisor