Thousand-outlet Chinese chains are opening up shop fast in Singapore
Luckin Coffee opened its 100th Singapore store in Sept, just three years after entering the market with two. When you step into a mall, a Mixue or Chagee seems to be just a few shopfronts away. A mala or hotpot restaurant might occupy a space where a familiar local name used to be.
It’s easy to see why the “Chinese takeover” narrative has taken hold, and why Chinese brands are being blamed for rising rents and the closure of local eateries.
But what do the numbers actually tell us? And what can’t they?
Chinese-owned businesses make up only 3% of Singapore’s retail sector
In a written parliamentary reply in Jan, Deputy Prime Minister and Trade and Industry Minister Gan Kim Yong gave an official breakdown of retail businesses by ownership.
Of the 45,631 registered retail entities as of Jan 8, 2026, 40,931 (89.7%) were Singapore-owned. Businesses owned by China, including Hong Kong, came second at 1,390 entities, or 3%, just ahead of Malaysia (432) and India (427), which each accounted for 0.9%. Ownership is decided by whoever holds more than half of a company’s shares.
In a separate reply in Jul, MTI said locally owned enterprises still make up about 90% of the F&B and retail sectors.
There’s a catch, though. These figures count registered entities, not outlets, and one company can run dozens of stores.
Luckin, for example, had 103 stores in Singapore as of Sep. NUS real estate professor Sing Tien Foo made the same point to Lianhe Zaobao: chains use their scale to open many outlets, so their presence in shopping centres is far bigger than their share of entities suggests.
Which is why the more useful question is what’s actually inside the malls.
Inside the malls, Chinese brands’ share has doubled
Official data on mall tenants is harder to come by. MTI said in a Feb parliamentary reply that it does not collect information on tenant profiles in privately owned or REIT-owned malls, as tenant mixes are commercial decisions made by landlords and tenants.
So there is no official mall-level figure, and the best numbers come from journalists who counted for themselves.
The most thorough is Mothership’s analysis published in late Sep. It shortlisted 26 malls, from ION Orchard and Plaza Singapura to Jurong Point and Hougang Mall, and compared each one’s 2023 directory with its 2026 directory, noting where every tenant brand came from.
Across all 26 malls, Chinese brands held 254 tenancies in 2026, or 4.97% of the total, up from 122 (2.46%) in 2023. That is a doubling in three years, and all but one of the malls (Compass One) saw an increase. The writer said they had expected a figure closer to 15%.
Singapore brands, though, were not the ones giving way. Their share held steady at about 66% in 2026, with the count rising from 3,260 to 3,366.
In addition, the Chinese retail share seems orchestrated, with a sizable decline coming from other foreign brands: American tenancies fell by 22%, Hong Kong by 35%, Australian by 15%, and Taiwanese by 6%. Nonetheless, these American (6.36%) and Japanese (5.97%) brands still hold a larger share of mall tenancies than Chinese brands today.
Eatbook’s smaller count lands in a similar place. It sampled three high-footfall malls in each of Singapore’s five regions in May, counting only F&B chains that originated from mainland China, and found they averaged 5.6% of outlets.
Some malls sit far above that, like Grantral Mall @ Clementi, where seven of the 12 F&B listings on Google Maps appeared to serve mainland Chinese food, though some seem to be locally founded.
However, it’s crucial to note that tenancies are not the same as floor space.
As Mothership points out, a large Haidilao flagship, like its JCube outlet spanning six units, can create a bigger impression than a small-format stall.
The growth feels bigger than it actually is
Chinese brands may still make up a small slice of Singapore’s retail scene, but their rapid expansion is hard to miss.
Across Singapore, some 85 Chinese F&B brands were running around 405 outlets as of Aug 2025, more than double the 32 brands and 184 outlets a year earlier.
Chains that have grown fastest. Mixue went from 10 outlets in 2023 to 38 outlets today. Luckin Coffee, meanwhile, entered Singapore’s mature and highly competitive coffee market relatively late, but expanded from 31 outlets in 2025 to 103 by Oct 2026, attracting nearly two million app members locally.
And since returning to Singapore in August 2024, Chinese tea chain Chagee has also grown to 46 outlets as of Aug 2026.
Such fast growth from a small base is exactly what makes the Chinese retail trend feel like an invasion. New openings draw queues and social media attention, and these tend to land in high-footfall spots. The South China Morning Post reported that observers warn public perception of the retail scene can be skewed for this reason, since chains like Chagee and Luckin sit where the crowds are.
Mothership offers three reasons the share feels bigger than it is.
Many Chinese brands have distinctive names, Mandarin signage and typography, so their origin is obvious, whereas McDonald’s or Starbucks read as generically global. Some arrive with large flagship spaces, and some of the same chains tend to repeat across mall after mall.
Singapore has seen similar waves before. Ernest Tan, a lecturer at Singapore Polytechnic’s School of Business, told Channel NewAsia (CNA) that a wave of Japanese restaurants arrived about 20 years ago, followed by Korean ones. He expected Chinese openings to eventually plateau, and perhaps even decline.
What about rents?
One of the biggest concerns behind the “Chinese takeover” narrative is that these brands are outbidding local businesses for retail space, driving up rents and squeezing homegrown operators out.
Andy Hoon, chairman of the local business group Bosses Network, told CNA that when a local tenant offers S$36 to S$38 per sq ft in a market where S$30 to S$40 is expected, a Chinese brand might offer S$45. Knight Frank’s head of retail Ethan Hsu said large-scale Chinese investment has contributed to rising rents in high-traffic locations.
But the same CNA coverage also reported that Chinese brands denied paying higher rents, and that analysts described what was happening as market dynamics.
We looked at why some of these brands can afford to do this in an earlier piece: large chains such as Luckin Coffee may have greater financial resources to support their overseas expansion, giving them an advantage over smaller operators.
Moreover, the market-wide data doesn’t show a rent spike either. Savills’ basket of prime suburban malls was unchanged at S$14.90 per sq ft a month in Q2 2026, while Orchard Road malls inched up 0.3% to S$23.70. CBRE data cited by EdgeProp put islandwide prime rents up 0.4% quarter-on-quarter in Q2, and 0.9% for the first half.
At the same time, islandwide private retail vacancy rose from 6.4% to 7.0% in Q2, according to URA data, as store closures opened up more space in the market.
These figures do not rule out Chinese brands bidding up rents in particular malls or high-footfall locations. But they offer little evidence of a widespread rental surge driven by Chinese chains. The picture is more complicated than a simple story of foreign brands outbidding local businesses across the board.
The squeeze is mostly about costs
However, what the data does show clearly is how hard it is to run an F&B business here. A total of 3,047 F&B businesses shut down in 2024, the highest figure since 2005, according to Knight Frank.
The closures have not been limited to small local players, either. Local restaurant group Crystal Jade is now down to nine restaurants after another round of closures.
That timing is part of why the two trends get conflated. Chinese brands are expanding in the same stretch that local F&B is struggling, so one looks like the cause of the other.
In reality, high rent and manpower costs are hurting nearly everyone, and the brands that cope best are those with scale.
Luckin Coffee and Mixue, for instance, control much of their own supply chain, which lets them absorb cost pressures that a single-outlet operator can’t.
But it’s important to note that not all Chinese brands are immune to Singapore’s brutal F&B pressures. Haidilao closed its Clarke Quay flagship in Aug 2025, after earlier shutdowns at Downtown East and Bedok Mall, citing labour costs, locations and rental pressures.
So are Chinese brands taking over?
Not by the numbers we currently have. They own about 3% of registered retail businesses and hold just under 5% of tenancies across 26 malls, behind American and Japanese brands, while Singapore brands hold about two-thirds.
Nonetheless, the shift to a stronger Chinese presence in our retail scene is very much obvious.
Their mall share has doubled in three years, many backed by deep-pocketed parent companies, and they cluster where shoppers look first. That is why it feels like there’s a Chinese takeover even when there might not be one.
- Read other articles we’ve written on Singaporean businesses here.
Featured Image Credit: Molly Tea, Strike Gundam via Google Reviews, Sentosa, Entree Kibbles
