This is an English adaptation of a FoodBud historical article originally published on June 12, 2022.
According to Chunjian Capital, Guo Bin, founder of Vietnamese restaurant brands Me Nai Xiao Guan and Yue Xiao Pin, said the Covid period unexpectedly became a growth window for the company: store openings, revenue rebound, employee development and customer satisfaction all reached their strongest levels since the brands were founded.
That momentum was the reason Guo said the company was preparing a new financing round. The planned proceeds were to be used across the operating platform, including IT systems, supply-chain upgrades, processing and warehousing, product development, talent recruitment and a move into prepared dishes.
Both Me Nai Xiao Guan and Yue Xiao Pin sit under Yuepin Catering. Yue Xiao Pin was founded in 2012 and had grown to 24 stores by the time of the article. Me Nai Xiao Guan was launched two years later and had 22 stores.
The brands were concentrated in the Greater Bay Area, especially Shenzhen and Guangzhou. Guo said that after the new financing round, the company would continue focusing on the Greater Bay Area, including Hong Kong and Macau, with a target of at least 300 to 500 stores.
If completed, the round would be the company’s second financing. In 2017, Yuepin received tens of millions of yuan from Baifu Holdings. Baifu Holdings CEO Wang Xiaolong had previously said Vietnamese food looked niche but belonged within the broader Chinese dining market, and that Me Nai Xiao Guan’s distinctive Vietnamese cuisine, flavor profile and French-Vietnamese brand positioning had made it a leader in Shenzhen’s Vietnamese dining category.
Guo had spent 25 years in foodservice before founding the business, working across cuisines but mainly in Western food. After encountering Vietnamese cuisine, he saw it as easier for Chinese consumers to accept than Western food because its ingredients and preparation methods were closer to Chinese cooking.
He also viewed Vietnamese cuisine as healthier because it emphasizes natural seasonings and the original flavor of ingredients. In his words, it is food that can be eaten every day because it is both tasty and healthy.
Guo described Vietnamese cuisine as a meeting point between Chinese and Western food. He noted that Vietnamese pho is pronounced similarly to the Chinese word for rice noodles, and that many Vietnamese dishes resemble Chinese food, including congee, seafood and roast suckling pig. At the same time, Vietnamese cuisine uses Southeast Asian spices and carries the legacy of French colonial influence in food and service.
Guo argued that Southeast Asian cuisine had a sizable and growing market, and that the most important drivers of repeat customers were health and taste, supported by food safety, service and store environment.
Yue Xiao Pin’s English name is Pho Nam, meaning southern Vietnamese beef pho. Guo said he visited Hanoi in northern Vietnam and Ho Chi Minh City in the south before naming the concept. He compared the difference between those two food cultures to the difference between Beijing and Shanghai, saying the southern style was more refined and better aligned with the brand. The restaurants used fish sauce shipped from Phu Quoc Island and many spices shipped directly from Ho Chi Minh City.
Core menu items included pho, rice-paper rolls, large prawns, tom yum seafood soup and snack platters. Guo, who described himself as a product-focused founder rather than a gourmet, said he could often identify from an ingredient list which seasonings would conflict, which would improve the dish and which would weaken it.
For him, consistent output depended on raw materials, seasonings, process and temperature. Even if customers could not immediately identify a changed seasoning or process, he believed they could feel the difference.
Yue Xiao Pin was positioned closer to fast casual, while Me Nai Xiao Guan was positioned as a more premium Vietnamese dining brand. Guo said the reason for running two brands was that one brand could not serve every customer segment.
Me Nai Xiao Guan developed faster in brand awareness because its positioning as premium Vietnamese cuisine was clear from the start. It also conducted ongoing consumer research, kept adjusting its offer and built a distinctive store design. The concept combined Vietnamese styling with French fashion cues, using a recognizable blue theme the team called “Me Nai blue.”
Yue Xiao Pin was also being adjusted and iterated. Guo described it as a fast-casual model with more of a full-service dining feel, while Me Nai Xiao Guan covered the full-service side. Together, the two brands were intended to help the company stand more firmly in the Vietnamese food segment.
Guo said Covid had not materially hurt the two brands’ performance, but it did disrupt supply chain execution. Key ingredients and base seasonings, including rice paper and fish sauce, were shipped directly from Vietnam. Even with longer cycles and higher costs caused by difficult ocean freight, the company continued importing container by container from Vietnam.
Covid also paused overseas technical exchange. Before the disruption, Guo regularly invited Vietnamese chefs to join product development and took team members to Vietnam, including procurement staff, store managers and frontline employees. He believed those visits helped employees understand Vietnamese culture and gave them confidence in serving customers.
The company created Yuepin Academy to train employees. Guo said he started from the lowest level of the kitchen and built his career without elite schooling or family background, which shaped his focus on helping younger employees grow.
He described entrepreneurship as a process of solving problems and an education platform for the team. In the first two years, funding was the biggest issue. After the business produced positive cash flow, new problems emerged around management, product, store design and operations. At around six stores, the company faced a wave of new issues; after that, as store count and headcount grew, organizational management, processes and mechanisms became more important.
Guo said the restaurant industry was becoming harder: operators needed strong food, design, service, positioning, site selection and supply chain. In his view, that made the industry’s moat wider, while the sector was still in an early brand-building stage with many opportunities. He believed that if, 20 years later, there were many listed restaurant companies and the market structure had settled, opportunities would be more limited.
For Me Nai Xiao Guan and Yue Xiao Pin, he said the priority was to strengthen internal capabilities, improve the supply chain and increase brand influence while the market was still early.
Note: financing plans, store targets and IPO-related comments are historical, based on the June 12, 2022 source article.