The snack store is very busy and opened in Songjiang University Town, it's not an accident.

Woke Up Thanks to a Single Article

To put it plainly, these bulk snack stores aren’t set up for tourists. They thrive on high-frequency repurchase, stable foot traffic, and whether young people are willing to come back repeatedly.

Songjiang University Town has perfectly assembled all these conditions. In its public statements regarding 2025, the Songjiang authorities have already framed the university town in terms of a scale of “8 universities and over 120,000 students and staff.” The Guangfulin Subdistrict where the university town is located also explicitly mentions Wenhui Road as a core commercial street, which is “about 2.5 kilometers long” and features “over 800 shops.” This isn’t just an ordinary snack street near a school; it’s more like a miniature commercial district with its own built-in young demographic flow.

This kind of place is particularly suitable for discount retail. Students need cost-effectiveness, newly working young professionals also need cost-effectiveness, and the surrounding community residents still demand cost-effectiveness. Stores like “Snacks Busy” or “Great Deals” aren’t selling how high-end a single item is; they are selling the certainty that “you can wander in casually and always walk out with some cheap finds.” When young foot traffic is dense, repurchase is stable, and turnover is fast.

Looking further afield, Songjiang District’s permanent resident population reached 1.9589 million in 2024, with total social consumer retail sales reaching 72.663 billion yuan. This scale means that while it might not be the play style of a central Shanghai business district, it is absolutely not on the level of “just opening a random store in the suburbs and seeing what happens.” Many people’s perception of Songjiang is still stuck on being far, remote, and having long commutes. While this impression isn’t entirely wrong, it is clearly outdated compared to reality.

Songjiang is Not Just “Next to Shanghai”

If you look at this issue more broadly, it’s actually about the changing spatial structure of Shanghai. Over the years, Shanghai has been promoting five new towns, and Songjiang is one of them. The official positioning for it isn’t vaguely described as an “outer receiving area,” but rather clearly defined as a comprehensive node city in the Yangtze River Delta, while also serving as the southwest gateway to Shanghai and the source point for the G60 Science and Innovation Corridor. This statement is very key; it doesn’t mean that Songjiang should merely exist to house, commute from, or absorb overflow from the central urban areas, but rather that it must develop its own complete set of urban functions. So, if you look back at places like the University Town, Wenhui Road, Yinxiang City, Guangfulin, and the Songjiang Hub, they didn’t just pop up scattered around. It’s when they are pieced together that we see the true face of Songjiang today: young population here, schools there, commerce here, transportation nodes there, and cultural/tourism resources also present. The snack chain stores have simply chosen the easiest entry point to penetrate this existing urban structure. My personal feeling is that many people still understand Shanghai by focusing on those old downtown areas in Pudong West, or the financial narrative of Pudong East. The problem is that Shanghai hasn’t just had one face for a long time now. A place like Songjiang, which appears far from the city center, actually seems more like the kind of residential area, functional zone, and population hub that Shanghai will focus on in its next phase.

Looking further back, Songjiang was never insignificant.

If one only views Songjiang as “a suburb of Shanghai,” it is easier to overlook its historical weight. Songjiang was formerly known as Huating. Official records clearly state that in the tenth year of Tianbao in the Tang Dynasty, which was 751, Huating County was established here; during the Yuan Dynasty, it was elevated to Huating Prefecture in 1277, and the following year it became Songjiang Prefecture. By the Qing Dynasty, under Songjiang Prefecture were administered areas including Huating, Shanghai, Qingpu, Fengxian, Jinshan, and Nanhui. In other words, before modern Shanghai fully emerged as a port city, Songjiang was not on the periphery; rather, it was one of the regional centers. This is also why Songjiang has long emphasized that it is the “Root of Shanghai.” This is not merely a cultural tourism slogan, nor is it just an archaeological narrative put forth by Guangfulin. What lies behind it is actually a reminder: the historical source of the city of Shanghai does not solely reside in today’s most prosperous circle. Later, Shanghai’s center of gravity naturally shifted. The opening of ports, trade, foreign commerce, and finance gradually pulled the city’s main focus downstream along the Huangpu River, causing Songjiang to no longer be the center of that old era. But what is interesting here is that Songjiang did not retreat into a mere background setting; it simply transitioned from an “old center” to a “new gateway.” The current positioning of Songjiang New City is, in a sense, the institutionalization of this role change.

So, why did “Snack Very Busy” first appear here?

I’d rather understand this as a precise identification by chain retail of the city’s layered structure. Bulk snack stores have been surging in recent years. A report from Jiemian News on April 4, 2026, mentioned that as of the end of 2025, Ningming Very Busy’s total number of stores under “Snack Very Busy” and “Zhao Yiming Snacks” reached 21,948, and this store opening trend is still penetrating first-tier cities. Simply put, these types of businesses are no longer typical “county-limited” concepts; they now follow the most suitable locations in large cities based on population density, rent levels, young customer base, and transportation accessibility. So, where would be the most suitable place for it to land first in Shanghai? It’s probably not Huaihai Road or Lujiazui, but rather a place like Songjiang University Town. There are people here, and they are young; there is consumption here, but it doesn’t follow the logic of high rent and high decoration found in central commercial districts; the commerce here is dense enough to form paths for browsing and picking up snacks; and it’s also connected to new city development, community life, and overflow foot traffic from university towns. When you lay out these conditions, the appearance of “Snack Very Busy” here suddenly seems not strange at all. Taking a walk around during Qingming was quite worthwhile for me. When I stay cooped up for too long, my understanding of Shanghai tends to be limited to the few lines I’m familiar with. By venturing out more, you can discover that Shanghai doesn’t only have the expression of Lujiazui, Xuhui, and Jing’an; places like Songjiang actually reveal where this city is growing now. And the “Snack Very Busy” store I saw on Wenhui Road is ultimately just a very small signal.

References

Writing Notes

Original Prompt

Prompt: A rare trip around Shanghai. Usually, I just stay at home. On Qingming Festival, I went to the University Town in Songjiang District and found many snack discount stores there. Good deals are everywhere in Shanghai, but I didn’t expect to see snacks so much on sale; before, I could only see this back in my hometown. I thought this brand couldn’t open a store in Shanghai. This leads to some thoughts: Why can Songjiang District have these discount stores? What is the historical positioning of Songjiang District in Shanghai?

Writing Outline Summary

The opening retains the authentic trigger point, “Went for a walk during Qingming and saw how busy it was with snacks in Songjiang University Town,” rather than starting with city history background.
The main argument is placed in the first two paragraphs: This is not an accident of single brand expansion, but something determined by Songjiang’s position within Shanghai’s urban structure.
Fact anchors are strengthened by focusing on university town scale, commercial density along Wenhui Road, and Songjiang’s population and wet/dry retail data, avoiding vague judgments like “it can open a store.”
The historical section only retains the threads most relevant to the main narrative: Huating County, Songjiang Prefecture, Shanghai’s roots, and today’s re-emphasized role as a gateway and node.
The conclusion ties together the expansion logic of the bulk snack retail format with Songjiang’s current conditions, returning to the question raised when the user first saw that store.