What makes a regular snack suddenly turn into a premier snack?

Well, in China, it's when the Premier comes buying the snack.

Premier Li Keqiang, who was attending the Boao Forum for Asia in Hainan this week, momentarily took a break from official functions to buy snacks at a convenience store.

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Like any other customer, he dug into his pocket for 19 yuan for a box of coconut chips and coconut cream rolls sold at the Yi Zhia Jia convenience store in Haikou.

Premier Li's spontaneous snack-buying break happened around past 10am on Friday.

By noontime, all the coconut chips and coconut cream rolls at the store had been wiped out by customers who heard about the news and were eager to buy what the Premier had just bought.

Even the 2,000 remaining boxes of coconut snacks at the store's warehouse were all sold out by Friday afternoon.

A store girl at Yi Zhia Jia said they were stunned by Premier Li's sudden appearance and didn't think he would actually buy the snacks as he was making small talk as to whether their products were fake or not.

But the food company that makes the coco snacks, Hainan Chunguang Food, was quick to cash in on the unexpected top-level promotion their products got.

"We will produce 'Premier Set Snack Meal' of coconut chips and coconut cream rolls", said Ms. Yan, a representative of the snack manufacturer, in an interview with hi.people.cn.

The company has set off an emergency dispatch of goods from Wenchang City, a beautiful coconut growing region in Hainan province.

Netizens have endearingly referred to the coco snacks' instant popularity as the 'economic effect' of Premier Li.

Late last year, President Xi cast a similar 'economic effect' on the Yuetan Qingfeng Steamed Bun restaurant in Beijing when he casually walked in for lunch and ordered a bun filled with pork and spring onions, and stir-fried pig liver.  

The steamed bun restaurant has since been dealing with long queues of people wanting to order the president's lunch and to sit at the same table that he occupied.