Slightly before 5 p.m., a group of guests assemble in the HaiDiLao Hotpot Restaurant in Wangjing, Beijing. A few of them wait for their friends while enjoying free manicures and Wi-Fi services.
Large waiting areas like this are available in every HaiDiLao restaurant. Apart from comfortable sofas, tables and chairs, HaiDiLao also offers free services including shoe polishing, manicure, and Wi-Fi. In addition, the chain also supplies a free valet parking service. The number of staff in each HaiDiLao is nearly a third more than in other hotpot restaurants.
HaiDiLao employees are entitled to all kinds of welfare. They live in air-conditioned apartments where hot water is available 24 hours a day, and they also have healthy and delicious food prepared for them almost every day. Fruit is supplied every weekend, and bread and yoghurt are provided at 9 p.m. every night as bedtime snacks. There’s no need to worry even if they are sick, because the dormitory manager will look after them, colleagues will bring them food, and senior managers in the company will pay them a visit. Their children can even attend a private school in Jianyang, Sichuan province, sponsored by the company.
But if you hold HaiDiLao shares, you may be a little worried about how much money the company can earn if it’s operated this way.
Seeking Satisfaction
“The restaurant manager is not responsible for the turnover of the restaurant,” said Yuan Huaqiang, the regional manager in charge of Beijing and Shanghai HaiDiLao chains. “Neither the general manger or I am responsible for it. In fact, nobody is responsible for turnover.” The general manager is Zhang Yong, founder of HaiDiLao Hotpot Restaurant Chain. A working-class man, Zhang started his business with RMB10,000 (US$1,463) and now owns 30 restaurants nationwide with an annual turnover of nearly RMB300 million (US$43.9 million). But unlike most restaurant owners who are great cooks themselves, Zhang is not good at cooking. His key to success has been offering better service since he began his hotpot business in Jianyang, Sichuan.
Also different is HaiDiLao’s approach to business. It uses customer satisfaction levels and employee satisfaction levels-even though they are not quantitative indicators-to evaluate the performance of its restaurant managers. “I am in charge of all the restaurants in Beijing and Shanghai, and I will get a rough idea about the restaurant just by walking around it for ten minutes,” said Yuan.
HaiDiLao hired some external talent for its engineering, logistics, and accounting departments, but the prevailing tendency is internal promotions, with all HaiDiLao restaurant managers promoted from the shop floor. Since joining HaiDiLao in 1999, Yuan has worked in several positions including dishwasher, receptionist, pantry casual, waiter and supervisor. He’s also worked as a front office manager and regional manager. With their remarkable insight and judgement, managers like Yuan feel that any quantitative appraisal method is flawed, especially for satisfaction levels.
Transferring Costs Upstream
In contrast to the human-oriented management approach in the front office, strict quantized management is applied in background production of HaiDiLao. HaiDiLao has an array of modern equipment for cleaning, processing, inspection and refrigerating in its Beijing distribution centre. The distribution centre operates a standard production line and delivers raw materials to the ten HaiDiLao restaurants in the capital.
For example, vegetables bought from contracted farmers will be refrigerated, carefully inspected, and then handpicked the next morning before they are washed and sent to washing equipment. Aerated sterilised water containing electrolyte flows through the vegetables; the process is repeated to remove as much residual pesticide as possible. Clean vegetables will then be dried in the spinning machine. Another inspection will be carried out under the constant supervision of the quality inspection (QI) staff from the quality control department before the vegetables are packed, and any dirty ones will be sent back for re-processing.
Clean and processed finished products will go through a bacteria test in the laboratory, and the ones passing the test will then be packed and refrigerated according to the requirements of different restaurants. In the afternoon, sterilized refrigerator trucks transport the packed vegetables to various HaiDiLao restaurants. Thanks to this standardized processing procedure, kitchen staff has it easy. They still need to slice beef and potatoes, for example, but otherwise they simply unpack vegetables and put them on plates.
Member Comments