No. 20 Liquor Easy (酒便利)
177 stores
Liquor Easy was chasing omnichannel retail before the word existed. Founded in 2010, the chain sells baijiu, China’s potent grain spirit, alongside wine, imported spirits, beer, and yellow rice wine across more than ten cities including Henan, Beijing, Shaanxi, and Zhejiang, knitting together an “internet platform + call center + physical stores + instant delivery” model years before rapid alcohol delivery became routine.
That early ambition once made it a market darling. After listing in 2016 on the New Third Board, China’s over-the-counter exchange for smaller companies, Liquor Easy became one of the most closely watched names in liquor distribution. Then the industry hit a wall of zero-sum competition: growth stalled, margins thinned, and the story turned darker still when de facto owner Yu Zengyun was placed under investigation on suspicion of fundraising fraud, his pledged shares throwing the company’s governance into doubt.
Control changed hands at the end of 2025 through a court-ordered auction, with the state-backed Tianyin Holdings group taking over. The numbers behind the rescue are stark: 2025 revenue fell 39.71% to 1.012 billion yuan (about US$141 million), while net losses widened 47.38% to 161 million yuan (about US$22.36 million) – a slide the company blamed on shuttered stores and restructuring.
No. 19 The Amber House (琥珀酒铺)
180 stores
Founder Pan Jiachun came up in e-commerce, and in 2019 he steered The Amber House away from selling imported spirits online and toward instant retail, the on-demand model that promises a bottle at your door in minutes. Its stores now reach Beijing, Qingdao, Tongliao, and beyond.
The setup is unusually hands-on. Instead of the usual sign-up-and-hope franchise arrangement, headquarters runs the stores itself under a “fully managed” system and, by the company’s account, even shoulders some of the operating risk—lowering the bar for would-be franchisees. Rather than rely purely on delivery-only “dark stores,” The Amber House serves walk-ins and online orders alike, using a handful of model stores to prove out the economics before expanding into a new region.
Those test stores tell the story. The Qingdao branch reportedly logged more than 2,600 orders in its first month; the Tongliao store, in a less crowded market, clears monthly profit above 12,000 yuan (about US$1,667); and the flagship in Beijing’s Sanlitun district handles roughly 5,800 orders a month at an average ticket of about 200 yuan (about US$28).
No. 18 Zhongjiu Wine (中酒连锁)
200 stores
Zhongjiu Wine keeps its center of gravity in physical stores, clustered across Shandong, Shanxi, Sichuan, Gansu, and Qinghai. It sits under Zhongjiu Age Wine (Beijing) Co., Ltd., which also runs the online marketplace Zhongjiu.com, pairing bricks with clicks.
The family tree goes one level higher: Zhongjiu Age Wine is controlled by Qinghai Huzhu TianYouDe Highland Barley Spirit Co., Ltd., a publicly listed maker of highland-barley liquor, a specialty of the Tibetan plateau. As online sales climb, the group has leaned harder into e-commerce—TianYouDe’s filings show that arm pulled in 144 million yuan (about US$20 million) in 2024, up 64.03% year-on-year, on the strength of Zhongjiu Age’s online business.
No. 17 Qintai Wine Shop (琴台酒铺)
245 stores
Qintai Wine Shop – also known as Qintai Dajiupu – is a poster child for the dajiupu, or liquor-on-tap, format sweeping China.
Picture a craft-beer growler station, but for spirits: using professional dispensing taps, the stores sell baijiu, yellow rice wine, fruit wine, and craft beer by the measure – by the liang, the jin (about a pound), or even the milliliter – so a customer can buy a taste rather than commit to a whole bottle.
It is, in effect, the old business of loose bulk liquor reinvented for the chain era: standardized, branded, and engineered for fast turnover and high sales per square foot. Qintai was an early mover. Founded a decade ago in Zhengzhou, Henan, it runs both company-owned and franchised outlets, and founder Wu Shuqing has been selling a “replicable, profitable, scalable” pitch under a “thousand cities, ten thousand stores” banner. As bulk liquor draws fresh interest, Qintai has become one of the clearest windows into where the format is heading.
No. 16 Wine Library of City (同城酒库)
312 stores
Wine Library of City is built for speed: an app, a mini-program, third-party marketplaces, and a handful of offline showrooms, all pointed at same-hour booze delivery.
Its roots, though, are in old-fashioned wholesale. The brand grew out of Shanxi Jinghe Trading Co., Ltd., which once distributed wine and mineral water across all 11 prefecture-level cities in Shanxi province, through 108 county-level distributors and more than 200,000 retail outlets.
In 2014, founder Gong Quansheng decided the traditional model was ripe for an upgrade and launched Wine Library of City, gradually turning a regional wholesaler into a delivery platform. By 2023 it was handling 15,000 orders a day, more than 4,000 of them instant deliveries—making it one of Shanxi’s fastest-growing liquor retailers.
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