Snow Fungus Soup OEM – Custom Manufacturing for Chinese Dessert Bowls | ZeaGrove

Snow fungus soup is a Chinese dessert built on Tremella fuciformis. The fungus is steeped, simmered until the broth turns slightly viscous, sweetened and served warm or chilled. In a retail pack it is a low-acid liquid with a fragile gel body, which is why it is retorted in a sealed bowl rather than hot-filled.

The dessert has moved from kitchen work to shelf stock because the kitchen version does not scale. Steeping and simmering take hours, the pot has to be sold the same day, and every site that makes its own batch produces a slightly different bowl. A shelf-stable bowl removes the timing problem and turns a daily decision into inventory.

Snow fungus soup OEM is how a brand or a menu operator gets that product without building a retort line. The brand brings the market, the recipe and the artwork, or asks for a recipe to be developed, and the manufacturer brings the format card, the validated thermal profile, the batch records and the export documents.

ZeaGrove is an OEM and ODM manufacturer of Chinese desserts, soups and drinks based in Guangzhou, China. The plant has run since 2018, and most of what it makes is exported: 80% to 90% of output leaves China.

The line produces the dessert in several versions, and a project starts by fixing which one:

• Classic rock sugar snow fungus. Fungus, water and rock sugar, with the gel body as the only thickener. The simplest formula and the least forgiving.
• With goji berry and red jujube. The common retail combination, where the dried fruit is rehydrated in the cook and contributes colour to the broth.
• With lotus seed, lily bulb or pear. A denser bowl, usually served as a dessert soup rather than a drink, with a higher solid load.
• Reduced-sugar versions. The sugar solids are lowered within a band the thermal profile was validated against; below that band the request becomes a reformulation, because the solids change the load on the retort.
• Single-serve bowls. The retail format: a sealed bowl with a lid and a sleeve, sold ambient and served after a few minutes of heating or chilled.
• Catering pouches. A larger pouch that a kitchen decants into its own serving vessel, which lowers material per portion and freight weight.

Each version is adapted to the brand's specification: sweetness, fungus cut, added ingredients, net content, bowl geometry and the declaration for the destination market. More than 5,000 formulas have been developed across the company's dessert, soup and drink lines.

The sequence is fixed, and every step produces something the buyer keeps.

1. Brief. The brief names the destination market, the pack, the net content, the sugar level, the fungus grade and the shelf life the channel requires. It is the document the project is quoted from.
2. Recipe development or specification transfer. Under ODM we develop the formula and you approve it. Under OEM you bring the formula and we run it. Both run on the same line with the same parameters and the same batch record format.
3. Sampling. Samples are made against the brief, with the specification attached. A sample is evaluated on texture and colour as well as taste, because a bowl that looks thin in the sample will look thinner after the retort.
4. Format card and thermal profile. Bowl size, lid and fill weight are fixed together, and the profile is validated for that geometry. Headspace is a proportion, not a fixed volume, so a taller bowl with the same net weight is not the same product.
5. Trial run. The product runs on the line, where the fill head, the headspace target and the retort are tested together. The first three runs of a new format go through full post-retort inspection instead of the sampling plan.
6. Production and quality control. Every batch records its incoming fungus, steeping time and temperature, syrup solids, fill weight and temperature, closure integrity, the retort chart and the cooling profile. A value outside its limit holds the batch; it is not noted and released.
7. Documents and shipping. Each lot leaves with a certificate of analysis, a retained sample reference and the export documents the market requires, and the retained sample is held longer than the shelf life claimed.

• A retort plant, not a kitchen. Founded in 2018 in Guangzhou, with more than 30 high-speed lines, 350 to 400 staff and low-acid retorting at 121 °C. Desserts and soups share the same validated equipment, which is why a dessert joins an existing line rather than a pilot one.
• Format cards per geometry. Fill weight, headspace and thermal profile are recorded per format, so a change of bowl is a defined project rather than an assumption that the old cycle still fits.
• Formulation depth. More than 5,000 formulas developed to date, with over 10% of revenue going back into research and development. Utility patents were granted in 2020 for packaging and sterilisation equipment, and design patents in 2021.
• Export experience. 80% to 90% of output is exported, and more than 2,000 brand clients had been served as of April 2024. Ingredient declaration, net content and storage conditions are prepared for the destination market before artwork.
• Records that answer an audit. Incoming lot sheets, process records, retort charts, release results and retained samples are kept per batch, and a deviation is written on the record with the time, the parameter and the person who decided.

Start with four answers: the format and net content, the destination market, whether the product is served cold or hot, and whether the formula is staying. With those we can say whether the enquiry is a new card on an existing product or a product with a new card, and those two carry different schedules.

From there a sample is made against the brief, and the trial run follows. Once the trial holds, production is scheduled on the same line with the same records. A shelf-life figure is not assumed at any point; it comes from accelerated storage testing with sensory and colour comparison against a retained standard. A 2012 study in the Journal of Food Science that followed 13 retort pouch products through 36 months of accelerated testing found that off-flavour and off-colour, rather than microbial growth, set the end of shelf life.

Explore ZeaGrove's Chinese dessert manufacturing capabilities.