---
title: "Nothing New Under the Sun: The Success of Golden Signboards Relies on These 6 Old Routines"
description: "The 2021 Golden Signboard list by CBN reveals 19 brands that passed the 3-year test, including Bilibili, CHANEL, Philips, Bright Dairy, Holiland, Hema Fresh, Keep, McDonald's, Nongfu Spring, SF Express, Tmall Global, Honor of Kings, NetEase Cloud Music, WeChat, SISYPHE, Xiaomi, IKEA, Uniqlo, and Yunnan Baiyao. The article explores the common success paths behind these brands, emphasizing market opportunity selection, strategic planning, and organizational support."
author: "洪志西"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2021-10-31"
language: "en"
canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/nothing-new-under-the-sun-the-success-of-golden-signboards-relies-on-the-2beabf7d/"
markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/nothing-new-under-the-sun-the-success-of-golden-signboards-relies-on-the-2beabf7d.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Ai6jYlVzXROuHosFTTjZXQ"
translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E5%A4%AA%E9%98%B3%E5%BA%95%E4%B8%8B%E6%B2%A1%E6%9C%89%E6%96%B0%E9%B2%9C%E4%BA%8B-%E9%87%91%E5%AD%97%E6%8B%9B%E7%89%8C%E7%9A%84%E6%88%90%E5%8A%9F%E7%A6%BB%E4%B8%8D%E5%BC%80%E8%BF%996%E6%AD%A5%E8%80%81%E5%A5%97%E8%B7%AF-2beabf7d.md"
attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/nothing-new-under-the-sun-the-success-of-golden-signboards-relies-on-the-2beabf7d/"
usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt"
---

# Nothing New Under the Sun: The Success of Golden Signboards Relies on These 6 Old Routines

> The 2021 Golden Signboard list by CBN reveals 19 brands that passed the 3-year test, including Bilibili, CHANEL, Philips, Bright Dairy, Holiland, Hema Fresh, Keep, McDonald's, Nongfu Spring, SF Express, Tmall Global, Honor of Kings, NetEase Cloud Music, WeChat, SISYPHE, Xiaomi, IKEA, Uniqlo, and Yunnan Baiyao. The article explores the common success paths behind these brands, emphasizing market opportunity selection, strategic planning, and organizational support.

The annual 2021 Golden Signboard list by CBN has been unveiled.
**The list shows that a total of 19 brands have passed the 3-year test and been elected as "Golden Signboards."**
They are Bilibili, CHANEL, Philips, Bright Dairy, Holiland, Hema Fresh, Keep, McDonald's, Nongfu Spring, SF Express, Tmall Global, Honor of Kings, NetEase Cloud Music, WeChat, SISYPHE, Xiaomi, IKEA, Uniqlo, and Yunnan Baiyao.
Among them are "time-honored" brands with decades or even centuries of history, as well as young brands only a few years old.
Surprisingly, the dairy category winner chosen by 5,777 consumers is Bright Dairy.
**So why didn't Mengniu and Yili, which seem to have higher brand influence, make the list?**
In the Western-style bakery sector, Holiland split due to disagreements among founding team members, and its stores in multiple cities were renamed to names like "Hefuli," "Tianxing," "Xinan," "Pugongying," and "Maizifang."
**Despite this, why has Holiland still ranked first in its category for three consecutive years?**
Then there's SISYPHE.
There are five major representatives in China's bookstore sector: Eslite Bookstore, with a gross profit margin of 40%, but its main business is commercial real estate; Librairie Avant-Garde, with 100% annual growth, but its main sales are cultural and creative products; Cat's Sky City, which is actually the largest postcard seller nationwide; Fangsuo, where you look at books but buy clothes.
**Only SISYPHE has book sales accounting for over 78%. How does it survive by selling books?** This is thought-provoking.
We are eager to ask about the success of these Golden Signboards: **Is there a replicable path to success?**
Blindly trying to copy others' success is actually the biggest laziness for entrepreneurs. But summarizing commonalities in cases and honing your ability to organize logic is something every entrepreneur, researcher, or learner should do.
**From 0 to 1 for a startup brand
50% of the credit goes to market opportunity selection**
Zhihu influencer Liu Shijiu, when I was an editor in traditional media, I several times requested to repost and edit his articles through friend applications.
In one sharing, he mentioned that a startup brand needs to think about three things:
**1. Market Opportunity Selection (Market): Clearly define which market to enter, such as choosing a track and category.**
**2. Product: Validate the minimum viable model through the product.**
**3. Growth: Find the most suitable media channels and sales channels to ignite growth.**
These three elements have a professional term in the internet circle: Product-Market Fit (PMF). For a startup brand from 0 to 1, market opportunity selection contributes 50%; product/service contributes 30%; other growth factors account for only 20%.
**Market opportunity selection, from an investment perspective, is choosing the track.**
Confirming the track means analyzing the market, including consumer analysis, industry analysis, and competitor analysis. During the analysis, there is also long-term market environment research, predicting trends for the next 5-10 years or even longer, prompting companies to formulate medium- and long-term development strategies.
How to choose market opportunities? This is the key to winning at the starting line for entrepreneurs.
Many people answer: category, be the first in the category. If you can't be the first in a category, create a category where you can be first.
The logic is similar, but I prefer the theory proposed by Tao Shiquan, founder of Jiangxiaobai Liquor, which is to find market opportunities of "big, small, high, new."
**Big means large market capacity**
Doing business in a large industry avoids hitting the ceiling. Jiangxiaobai chose the baijiu industry, a market with a scale of 600 billion yuan, which won't easily hit the ceiling even after 10 or 20 years.
**Small means a small entry point**
Brands should look for very small market gaps. Jiangxiaobai's main product, the "Expression Bottle," caters to consumption scenarios of small gatherings, small drinks, and small moments. Compared to the mainstream baijiu scenarios of banquets and gifts, the market gap is small, but it's enough to support several small and medium companies.
**High means high efficiency**
Tao Shiquan said that in production supply chain, product development, brand communication, and channels, they all research how to create higher efficiency, or find relatively higher efficiency breakthrough points.
The feedback from reality is that Jiangxiaobai's efficient brand communication and product development have received market response.
**New means new products and new technology**
Jiangxiaobai's products like light bottle liquor, low-alcohol liquor, and fruit-flavored liquor are rare in the traditional baijiu market. These new products have also attracted many young people.
**Brand Growth
Starts with Business Policy and Goals**
"Big, small, high, new" confirms market opportunities. The next step is the product that contributes 30%?
No.
After detailed market research, you need to determine the company's business policy and goals. In the process of formulating development strategy, companies must make choices, find target customer segments, and finally determine business policy and medium- and long-term strategic goals.
It sounds theoretical, but most brands do this.
**The first is the target customer segment.**
Xu Zheng, founder of Zhifangda Innovation Center, once said that at this stage, we need to ask ourselves several questions:
**1. Are we solving real customer problems, or trying to solve our own model innovation problems?**
**2. Who are our customers? Who are the most valuable customers?**
**3. How does the customer value proposition change as we gradually explore?**
Some might say, do we even need to ask? If we don't solve customer problems, why do we innovate business models? In fact, this is exactly the misconception many companies may fall into after reaching a certain stage.
**The initial success of a startup comes from solving real customer problems, gaining customer recognition, and creating value.**
But over time, corporate management becomes more complex, and founders and founding teams may gradually forget their original goals, turning their own profitability into the core purpose.
**Without anchoring the customer value proposition, strategic goals of 3-5 years or 5-10 years will unconsciously deviate.**
For example: a domestic consumer brand established about 10 years ago initially anchored its most valuable customers as the younger generation, and initially gained some profits due to its innovative young play in the industry.
But in recent years, their products and services have expanded. They made a move to reach older age groups, euphemistically saying that the age of users they serve is growing—**what would you do with century-old brands like Coca-Cola, go into the underworld business?**
Additionally, this brand also made some peripheral products, explaining that they follow user needs like Meituan. Remember, someone once asked Wang Xing, if users want to buy things, why not create a Taobao?
But in essence, it's because the main business can't maintain lasting youthfulness, and growth is sluggish.
Swinging in the target customer segment is a big taboo, as it affects the medium- and long-term strategy under market opportunity selection. **Experience shows that at least 50% of profit changes depend on strategic choices.**
For medium- and long-term strategy formulation, you basically need to read a book: Michael Porter's "Competitive Strategy" from 1980. The book mentions three effective competitive strategies:
**1. Overall Cost Leadership Strategy**
**2. Differentiation Strategy**
**3. Focus Strategy**
From the current development of new consumer brands, startups from 0 to 1 have all adopted the focus strategy.
**The core of the focus strategy is market segmentation, where the company concentrates all its strength on serving a specific consumer group.** We don't actually know who is the first in the meal replacement category, but in the meal replacement field, ffit8 has captured the protein bar segment, and wonderlab has taken the meal replacement shake segment.
**When competing with industry giants or oligopolistic rivals, the differentiation strategy is favored.** Companies provide products/services that are clearly different from competitors, forming differences in product design, technical features, brand image, service methods, and promotion methods.
The purpose is to show uniqueness in "customer perceived value" through differentiation.
Xiaoxiandun has such differentiation: product design difference, focusing on fresh stewed bird's nest; service method difference, providing C2M delivery service; promotion method difference, offering weekly subscription or annual/monthly nourishment consultant services to achieve customer retention and production forecasting.
**According to domestic famous business consultant Liu Run, differentiation is basically the strategy chosen by the second place, because they need to avoid the first place's edge.**
The reason is that large enterprises generally adopt cost leadership strategies. They strengthen internal cost control to achieve industry-leading cost levels.
Actually, this is not absolute. **The cost leadership strategy is more suitable for industries with small product differences, high homogeneity, and price-based competition.** They reduce costs through large-scale production and operation, win market share with low prices supported by low costs, increase revenue, and thus gain profits.
Take Walmart for example. There used to be a saying: When Walmart opens a store, within 10 square kilometers, other small shops can't survive.
Walmart has global procurement capabilities; the more it buys, the cheaper it gets. Small shops without global procurement capabilities can't compete in price.
But why has Walmart's retail share in the US never exceeded 15%? Why have traditional brands like P&G never exceeded 20% market share in the US? Because their scale advantage is within 10 square kilometers, within the business district.
Now, e-commerce is even more powerful. As long as logistics can reach, the business district can be infinitely expanded.
Companies like Amazon, JD, and Tmall have huge procurement capabilities (revenue represents procurement capability), breaking through physical business district space. **Such companies' market share far exceeds the traditional industry's 20% line, and may even have a winner-take-all capability.**
**Design Business Strategy
Find Your Expansion Path**
As a startup, your market opportunity selection can determine the target customer segment, and the target customer segment also determines the choice of competitive strategy to some extent.
In this process, companies need to consider many things. **Including business positioning, industry positioning, format positioning, scale selection, development space selection, timing selection, and even future expansion strategy choices.**
How to choose? Strategic analysis tools play a role. SWOT, Porter's Five Forces, KSF analysis, etc., are widely used in the formulation of corporate development plans.
We can do a SWOT analysis for Heytea, a representative of new-style tea drinks.
**Strengths:** Heytea's strengths lie in products, aesthetics, new product speed, and upstream tea customization in the supply chain to ensure taste; downstream, they eliminated distributors to ensure the professionalism of tea drink production.
**Weaknesses:** The weakness is offline location selection. Its stores are mostly in core business districts of large cities, with high rent and operating costs.
Additionally, the biggest problem with offline service is people; inconsistent service standards will affect user experience.
**Opportunities:** Opportunities lie more in industry development. The state's regulation of the catering industry and the diversification of dietary needs among the younger generation create opportunities for Heytea to target young users with high spending power.
Furthermore, with the development of mobile internet, new media like Xiaohongshu, Weibo, Douyin, and Bilibili have created more efficient customer acquisition opportunities for Heytea compared to older milk tea shops.
**Threats:** New-style tea drinks have low barriers to entry, many new competitors, and under investment heat, market share may be dispersed; online platforms divert traffic, and delivery leads to internal competition in pricing; also, brand reputation issues, like giving wrong samples to users, can easily affect sales.
After analyzing the four SWOT elements, Heytea will combine various factors to achieve growth, avoid weaknesses and threats, and even choose how to expand in the future.
Especially for consumer brands in offline scenarios, expansion strategy directly affects their development from 1 to 100.
The baijiu industry has a typical geographic expansion path: "East doesn't enter Anhui, West doesn't enter Sichuan." Once a brand is validated in these two markets, going national becomes inevitable.
This is like catering brands first testing the waters in Shanghai and Beijing, which is a regional leapfrog layout strategy.
Actually, geographic expansion has three major strategies:
**1. Regional Leapfrog Layout Strategy**
**2. Regional Concentrated Layout Strategy**
For example, Sichuan's Hongqi Chain. This brand is concentrated in the Chengdu area. Many convenience stores wanting to enter this market have to set up in neighboring Chongqing first to observe.
**3. Regional Leading Layout Strategy**
I personally think the new brand Yujian Xiaomian fits this layout. As a Chongqing Xiaomian brand, its founder once said that for a long time, they won't enter the Chongqing market.
This brand is laid out in the Guangzhou area, which is a region with lower competition for Chongqing Xiaomian, allowing them to avoid strong competitors and seek development.
**Support Business Strategy
You Also Need Strong Organizational Support**
Retail strategic planning generally has six steps:
**1. Confirm market opportunities**
**2. Set business policy and goals**
**3. Design business strategy**
**4. Establish organizational support system**
**5. Formulate strategic implementation plan**
**6. Explain business strategy**
**In my view, steps 4, 5, and 6 are actually more about completing the construction of the organizational system.**
Looking back at the development of consumer brands, Haidilao's construction is particularly suitable as a case. **Haidilao's competitive strategy is to achieve differentiation through service, and in geographic expansion, it adopted a regional leapfrog layout strategy.**
What kind of organizational support system lies behind this?
In 1994, Zhang Yong opened the first Haidilao in Jianyang. At that time, he was a "three-know-nothing" in the hotpot world, couldn't distinguish tripe, and couldn't cook hotpot base.
His idea was simple: as long as he served guests well and made them happy, they would come often.
One day, a cadre returning from the countryside came to Jianyang and went to Haidilao for hotpot. Zhang Yong saw his leather shoes were dirty, so he asked a waiter to help polish them.
This gesture moved the cadre, and he became a regular.
**From then on, free shoe shining became a regular service at Haidilao.**
To standardize service across the country, Zhang Yong later specially made an employee handbook. The handbook emphasized: when seeing guests with glasses, always give them glasses cloth; when seeing guests with phones, always give them phone covers; when seeing guests' tea below half, always pour water...
If a waiter missed one, they would deduct 0.5 points, and these points were directly linked to wages.
But unexpectedly, if guests didn't want water, employees had to pour it; if guests didn't want phone covers, employees would secretly take them and put them on anyway; if they couldn't put it on, they lost 0.5 points.
This made Zhang Yong laugh and cry.
Later, he canceled all service requirements and only assessed one KPI: table turnover rate.
If your store has a good location, you must turn 5 tables a day; if your location is worse, at least 3 tables a day. The benefit of only assessing turnover rate is obvious: you can directly predict daily revenue. If the KPI is set well, it's a guaranteed profit.
But later, problems arose again.
Once, Zhang Yong heard guests complain about how popular Sichuan hotpot was in Beijing, with 3-hour waits and reserved seats invalid if you were late by a few minutes.
Zhang Yong quickly asked the staff what was going on. It turned out everyone was blindly pursuing turnover rate, and being late affected it.
But this greatly reduced the customer experience. If I invite a big client to Haidilao one day and I'm told I can only wait in line because I'm 5 minutes late, how angry would I be?
**Later, at the 2017 China Green Companies Annual Meeting, Zhang Yong said, "Behind every KPI indicator, there is a revenge goddess waiting for you somewhere."**
**What to do? Forget the KPI**
In the end, Zhang Yong stopped setting KPIs and only assessed customer satisfaction. He arranged over 1,800 mystery customers to visit each store every quarter for tasting experiences and then rate the stores.
**Rated A** means excellent; the entire store gets rewards, and the store manager can apply to open new stores.
**Rated B** means qualified; just stay put.
**Rated C** means not good; the headquarters will arrange a coaching team to train the store. If it improves within six months, it's fine; if it gets a C again within a year, it will be eliminated.
This rating mechanism kept all stores on edge. They didn't know when mystery customers would come or which table they'd sit at.
Every time they looked up, they felt everyone was a mystery customer. As a result, no one dared to relax; they had to treat everyone seriously.
Employees' initiative also awakened at this moment.
**You see, in the end, Haidilao actually no longer emphasizes service itself, but uses a mechanism to mobilize people's enthusiasm.**
**People are the biggest uncertainty in the business world, and people are also your most certain business model factor. Only by managing people well can the enterprise's operations move accordingly.**
**How does Haidilao manage people?**
Behind this is a theory called AMO. This is a human resources model that took shape in 2000. It roughly says that to achieve certain performance, companies need to give employees three factors:
**First is ability: can employees handle it**
**Second is motivation: are employees willing to do it**
**Third is opportunity: does the company provide a platform for employees to showcase their skills**
Let's first look at ability.
Haidilao's employee ability basically relies on training mechanisms.
They have a dedicated coaching organization that systematically trains stores through store visits, including employee promotion, performance evaluation, product development, engineering, finance, and human resources.
**The specific frontline training is the apprenticeship system.**
When a new employee enters a Haidilao store, the store manager becomes their mentor. After a period of training, the employee starts working and receives hands-on training in practice.
The apprenticeship system is actually a common model in the traditional catering industry. In Chongqing, there is a small noodle shop run by a couple, covering less than 20 square meters, but they net 5 million yuan a year.
Their main business model is taking apprentices. People from over 1,000 cities in Henan, Hebei, and Heilongjiang come to this noodle shop to learn, with room and board included for a tuition of 20,000 yuan.
What does the master teach? Besides how to mix seasonings and how to pick noodles, they also teach store location, table arrangement, and a full set of recruitment.
They guarantee you'll learn; once you leave the master, you can go back to your hometown and open your own noodle shop to make money.
At Haidilao, the training of apprentices by mentors is similar but more systematic.
After a new employee enters Haidilao, the mentor leads them for a period, then nominates them for internal training. After passing the training exam, they can rotate through positions.
After rotating through 10 positions, the mentor will recommend them for Haidilao University training. After passing this training exam, they can become a lobby manager.
After working as a lobby manager for a while, they can participate in reserve store manager training. As long as they pass the exam, they can become a reserve store manager.
Next, as long as their store's quarterly rating reaches A, the apprentice can apply with the mentor to open a new store, and the new store's manager will be the apprentice.
**The whole process seems simple, but generally takes more than 4 years.**
Through apprenticeship training, employees have the ability. Now we need to see if they are willing to do it. How does Haidilao enhance employee motivation?
**Vroom's Expectancy Theory has a formula: Motivation = Expectancy × Valence.**
Everyone's expectancy is different. Some have high aspirations, some just want to lie at home like a salted fish. This aspect is basically impossible for the outside world to influence; what companies need to do is work on the valence factor.
Internet companies generally have good valence. Bosses usually say, work hard, if we make money this year, everyone gets a year-end bonus. Then there was a game team rumored to have a year-end bonus of 10 years' salary.
Some companies say, work hard, and if you do well, the company gives stock options. Then a young man got options and retired financially free at 28.
Haidilao's valence isn't that high, but it's not low compared to peers.
First, wages are higher than the market, with apartments and maids. People generally can't believe that in 2004, in a high-end residential area in Beijing's East Fourth Ring, over 70 Haidilao employees lived there, which Haidilao rented at a high cost.
In these employee apartments, there are full-time maid services; cooking, laundry, and making beds are all handled, so employees don't need to do anything.
For a waiter from a rural area, this is already imperial-level valence.
Additionally, Haidilao's promotion path is very transparent. The moment a new employee enters the store, they know that in the near future, they might become a vice president of Haidilao.
The most direct motivation is piece-rate wages.
The catering industry has obvious peak and valley effects. During the busiest times at noon and evening, food runners may be overwhelmed, but cashiers, accountants, and doormen may not be that busy.
So Haidilao introduced piece-rate wages. Even non-food runners can deliver food during busy times, and each delivery is directly credited to their salary.
**As a result, store employee wages increased by 30%, but the number of employees decreased by 25%.**
There's another valence that few think of: Haidilao splits employee wages into two parts, one sent to the employee and one sent to their parents. It's important to note that it's not directly transferred to parents' cards, but sent via postal money order in the most traditional way.
Every month, Haidilao employees' parents are called via the village broadcast to go to the post office to collect money.
This kind of happiness is something many white-collar parents haven't experienced.
The most valuable valence at Haidilao should be the apprenticeship-based compensation system.
As a mentor, their salary can be composed in two ways.
**The first is simple: directly take 2.8% of their own store's profit.**
**The second is more complex: the mentor's salary is 0.4% of their own store's profit + 3.1% of apprentices' store profits + 1.5% of apprentices' apprentices' store profits.**
No need to think twice; most mentors would choose the second. If there are more apprentices, there are more apprentices' apprentices, and the mentor's salary increases. Generally, a Haidilao store manager's annual salary is around 6 million yuan.
Even if you opened your own hotpot restaurant, it wouldn't be easy to earn that much.
Finally, Haidilao's killer valence is the pie Zhang Yong drew 15 years later.
At the end of April 2020, 50-year-old Zhang Yong announced his retirement plan.
The same day, Haidilao also issued a voluntary announcement, declaring the adoption of a leadership talent selection plan.
**Zhang Yong said he would complete retirement within 10-15 years. During this period, except for Shi Yonghong, Gou Yiqun, and Yang Xiaoli, all Haidilao employees have the opportunity to participate in the successor selection.**
Of course, this includes food runners and even doormen.
Everyone could be Haidilao's successor. Among them, Yuan Huaqiang is the best case.
In 1999, Yuan Huaqiang joined a Haidilao store in Xi'an, starting as a food runner, then doorman, then accountant. By 2002, he became the store manager of the Jianyang main store.
In 2004, Yuan Huaqiang went alone to Zhengzhou, opened two stores, and opened up the Zhengzhou market.
That year, he went to Beijing as a regional manager, overseeing Haidilao's Beijing market.
In 2007, Yuan Huaqiang bought a 200-square-meter house in Wangjing, and in 2009, he became a director of Haidilao.
In 10 years, from food runner to director, this story inspires every grassroots employee at Haidilao.
Finally, with ability and motivation, does Haidilao give employees the opportunity to showcase their skills?
**This mainly depends on empowerment. Dr. Zeng Ming, education director of Hupan University, once said in a book that the main function of future organizations is not management but empowerment.**
How does Haidilao empower?
Haidilao headquarters only manages four key links: first, food safety; second, procurement, leveraging the scale of 1,000 stores globally to cooperate with upstream suppliers, giving much greater bargaining power; third, IT, unifying ERP and some management systems across all stores; fourth, finance.
**Frontline stores have the authority to handle all independent store matters.** Haidilao has always been like this in delegation and empowerment. In the 1990s, when Haidilao opened a store in Xi'an, the store manager, without Zhang Yong's knowledge, used store profits to buy a van, which was also the first car in the entire Haidilao company.
**In summary, the entire Haidilao chain has only 4 levels: headquarters - coaches - cluster groups - stores.**
The cluster group is worth mentioning. It groups 8-15 nearby stores into a cluster, with the leader usually being the mentor among the store managers.
This is also a common practice in the catering field. I once knew a boss of a local cuisine restaurant. He went to Chengdu at 16 to apprentice, and after completing his training, he returned to Chongqing to open a restaurant.
In Chongqing, this boss has over 10 fellow apprentices and some apprentices' apprentices, all doing local cuisine restaurants, hotpot restaurants, and bullfrog fish head in the city.
Usually, when they find a restaurant in Kunming with decor worth learning from, they go as a team to check it out. When they find Hunan dried mushrooms are good quality, they each report their demand and purchase together.
During the pandemic, in response to closure policies, they also brainstormed together on how to do delivery and activities.
In a sense, these fellow apprentices form a cluster group.
Haidilao is the same: a mentor leads a dozen apprentices in a cluster, jointly addressing local operational and policy issues.
**This entire organizational system supports the growth of over 1,000 Haidilao stores worldwide.**
**Haidilao's Present
Behind the Organizational System is More Cultural Influence**
Back to the service we discussed. From the Golden Circle principle, behind service is the ABC rating execution mechanism, and behind the mechanism is a complete **organizational system**.
This is the key to learning from Haidilao.
But some may ask, is Haidilao's service still worth learning now? Birthday wishes are a large social death scene, and there are constant criticisms of abnormal service and excessive service.
Behind this is actually the issue of changing consumer demographics.
Now the post-90s and post-00s have become the main consumer groups, and their service requirements may be vastly different from their parents' generation. But the service and corresponding rating mechanism for them are almost the same as those for the older generation.
Thus, problems arise.
But as long as this organizational system and execution mechanism remain, the surface service phenomena are flexible. Recently, the media exposed Haidilao's mystery customer recruitment app, Dongjianzhe. By recruiting a broader range of people for experiences, store services will gradually change.
**Haidilao needs time.**
In the end, I have some new thoughts on AMO theory. This is a model proposed by Dr. Wu Xin from Beihang University. We found that in the previous half-hour analysis, we focused on institutional leverage but ignored the soft environment.
But the soft environment has a huge impact on employee willingness.
Previously, Zhang Yong saw a highly motivated young man in a store, always at the forefront wiping tables and glass, with the same drive as Yuan Huaqiang back then.
But a few days later, when Zhang Yong returned to the store, the young man had resigned.
It turned out there was a pretty girl at the front desk. Whenever any young man worked hard, the girl would say, "Don't show off in front of me; I already have a boyfriend."
So, did the young man resign because the girl didn't like him, or because he was misunderstood?
We don't know. The only thing we know is that the soft environment within the company made Zhang Yong lose a good employee.
**So how do we create such a soft environment? It's more about shaping corporate culture and values.**
Every day, Zhang Yong shouts at the door that hands change destiny. Mentors instill this in apprentices, and apprentices pass it on. The apprenticeship system is actually a good way to pass on values.
There was a period when Haidilao tried recruiting bachelor's degree graduates directly as lobby managers or reserve store managers, but they quickly stopped.
These parachuted store executives had inconsistent values, and their service methods were mostly clever tricks.
Okay, finally, two more short stories.
**The first is about Haidilao nail art.**
**On Xiaohongshu, notes about Haidilao nail art exceed 50,000, accounting for 1.5% of all nail art notes on the platform.**
If this can somewhat represent market share, then if Haidilao established a nail art brand, it could directly become one of the top three in the industry.
But if a nail art brand quietly learned Haidilao's nail art, how would its position in the industry change?
**The second is about Haidilao's free meals.**
Previously, a restaurant owner went to Haidilao to learn. He thought it was bold that Haidilao employees could get free meals.
After all, the possibility of embezzlement in this process is high.
Before that, this owner had his kitchen chef, who earned 300,000 yuan a year, help him with a procurement. As a result, in just that one time, **the chef took 10,000 yuan in kickbacks.**
Think about it: is this a problem of character or a problem of mechanism?
**Are you "watching" me?**


---

## Copyright and AI use

This article is sourced from New Distribution. Search, quotation, summarization, and model training are permitted, but every use must credit New Distribution and retain the canonical source URL.

Contact: zhaobo258@gmail.com · +86 158 5481 7671