Sichuan's hot pot is very famous, if you want to count the famous hot pot brands in Sichuan, Haidilao must be among them. Haidilao is not an old hot pot brand, and its sudden rise has spread all over the country, inside and outside the Great Wall, and it has only been in the past 20 years at most. Who single-handedly created the legend of Haidilao? It is a native of Jianyang, Sichuan named Daniel Zhang. If the rise of Haidilao is a legend, then Daniel Zhang's gorgeous transformation from a welder to a billionaire by boiling a pot of hot pot is even more legendary.
Daniel Zhang was born in Jianyang, Sichuan Province in 1971, and his parents were authentic farmers. Because of his poor family background and the fact that he did not like to study much when he was a child, Daniel Zhang was sent by his father to a technical school to learn electric welding after graduating from junior high school. After graduating from technical school, Daniel Zhang entered a tractor factory in his hometown as an electric welder.
Napoleon said that a soldier who does not want to be a general is not a good soldier. Daniel Zhang is a person who has had dreams since he was a child. When he saw that an aunt in the same hospital had become a 10,000-yuan household by selling roast goose, his heart was greatly shaken. Since then, making a lot of money by his own skills has become his goal. In the first few years of entering society, Daniel Zhang tried to do gambling business, resold gasoline, and sold spicy hot, but for various reasons, he failed to make money, for which Daniel Zhang was not discouraged and has been looking for business opportunities.
After learning the lessons of the previous entrepreneurial failures, after careful consideration and investigation, Daniel Zhang chose to do hot pot business and start a business again. In 1994, 23-year-old Daniel Zhang and his girlfriend, as well as his friends and girlfriend, pooled a total of 8,000 yuan to open a hot pot restaurant in their hometown, and gave the hot pot restaurant a loud name - Haidilao.
The humble storefront, with 4 tables and a pot, was all the belongings of the hot pot restaurant at that time. Because of the small number of people, Daniel Zhang personally went to the kitchen to operate. He holds a book in his left hand and stir-fry the sauce in his right hand, and now he learns and sells it, so the taste of the hot pot can be imagined.
The hot pot restaurant opened for 3 days before a table of customers came. Daniel Zhang and the four of them were very happy when they saw this, serving tea and pouring water for the guests, serving the guests diligently, until the guests left the store, they did not say that the hot pot was unpalatable. Looking at the figure of the guests leaving satisfied, Daniel Zhang realized such a truth: in the future, when opening a hot pot restaurant, it is not only necessary to make the hot pot taste delicious, but also to rely on warm and thoughtful service to make the guests happy and satisfied when they come to the store.
Since then, thinking about customers everywhere and providing customers with meticulous and thoughtful service has become an important principle of Haidilao's operation, and it has become one of the most distinctive features of Haidilao that distinguishes it from other hot pot restaurants. I have to say that this has become one of the cheats for Haidilao to stand out.
Customer-centric, think about problems from the customer's point of view, and do a good job in service. As a result, in Haidilao, there are shoe shines and nail art, bags and babies, beauty salons, fruit snacks and other services that customers need, almost all of them are available in Haidilao. Not only are the service items complete, but the smile and carefulness shown by the Haidilao waiters in the service process are sincere and natural from the heart. Haidilao is not only good to customers, but also to employees, from caring for employees' lives, treatment to promotion channels, etc., all of which reflect the company's humanistic care for employees. The employees are motivated, the hot pot tastes good, the service is first-rate, and it is delicious to go to Haidilao to consume, which is delicious, comfortable, and convenient, and gradually spreads in the society, so it is natural for Haidilao to become more and more popular.
With the increasing prosperity of Haidilao's business, Haidilao hot pot restaurants have also opened from Jianyang, Sichuan to Xi'an, Zhengzhou, Beijing, Shanghai and other parts of the country, not only that, Haidilao hot pot restaurants have also opened to Singapore, Japan, South Korea, the United States and other parts of the world. By the end of 2022, Haidilao had 1,349 restaurants in mainland China, 22 in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, and more than 1,000 stores worldwide as early as 2020.
In 2018, Haidilao was successfully listed in Hong Kong, becoming the first stock in China's catering industry. The stock price jumped 10% on the day of the IPO, with a market value of more than $10 billion, making Daniel Zhang one of China's richest restaurant entrepreneurs, worth more than $8 billion.
From a technical school graduate to a big man in China's catering industry, from a farmer's child to a billionaire with billions of assets, Daniel Zhang has written his glorious life with his wisdom and diligence. Daniel Zhang's life experience and practice of entrepreneurship have also provided an inspirational example and a benchmark for aspiring entrepreneurs to follow.