Restaurant chain Haidilao offers customers free perks like manicures and shoe-polishing while they wait
China’s insatiable demand for spicy hotpot is placing the founders of a restaurant chain atop one of the world’s fastest-growing fortunes, allowing them to outpace many of the wealthiest families globally.
Haidilao went public in September, and it’s been a lucrative time for China’s largest hotpot chain, popular for the spicy broths in which diners cook their meats and vegetables. The company is pushing to make its restaurants more efficient by creating automated kitchens. Perks like the free manicures it offers waiting customers have kept families coming in. And the brand is expanding overseas with new locations planned in New York and London.
Another power couple behind Haidilao, co-founder and executive director Shi Yonghong and his wife Li Haiyan, have also grown 79 per cent wealthier this year, based on Monday’s data. Their fortune is now worth US$6.4 billion. Besides small, privately owned restaurants, there are other competing brands like the publicly listed Xiabuxiabu Catering Management China Holdings. Haidilao has a less than 3 per cent share of the Chinese hotpot market, according to its September prospectus.
In October last year, one of Haidilao’s restaurants began introducing robots to take orders, and deliver raw meat and vegetables to customers to cook in the simmering pots of soups placed at their tables. Now, Haidilao and other Chinese hotpot brands are attempting to expand overseas. Little Sheep, a hotpot chain owned by Yum China Holdings Inc., opened its first overseas branch in Los Angeles in 2003.
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