This is an English adaptation of a FoodBud historical article originally published on July 18, 2022.
According to reporting by Zhixiang.com, Haidilao’s move to separate its overseas business marked a milestone for Chinese foodservice brands looking beyond the domestic market. The wider pattern is clear: as China’s restaurant supply chains mature and domestic competition intensifies, brands such as Tanyu, Zhangliang Malatang, Juewei Duck Neck, Tai Er Sauerkraut Fish and Mixue Bingcheng have all looked overseas, with Southeast Asia often the first stop.
On July 11, 2022, Haidilao announced plans to spin off its overseas business and pursue a Hong Kong listing through a distribution in specie and listing by introduction. At the time, Haidilao had 97 overseas restaurants, including 57 in Southeast Asia, more than half of its international footprint.
Before the pandemic, Chinese consumers in Singapore were already accustomed to queuing for Haidilao. Since entering Singapore in 2012, Haidilao had built a strong local presence and was described as one of the most popular Chinese restaurant brands in the market.
Singapore offered several advantages for Chinese restaurant operators:
Mala xiang guo and malatang became early gateways for Chinese cuisine in Singapore. Operators adjusted the numbing and spicy profile to suit local tastes, and “mala” eventually became a common category term in English-language coverage.
Haidilao then helped shift local perceptions of Chinese restaurants from informal and low-profile to service-led and premium. By 2022, Haidilao had opened 19 restaurants in Singapore, using high-touch service to reposition Chinese dining in the market.
In April 2018, Chengdu Bowl founder Stella opened her first Sichuan restaurant in Singapore. She told Zhixiang.com that the restaurant drew attention even before formal opening, as diners heard that a Sichuan restaurant was coming to the CBD.
The site had previously been a Korean restaurant. Stella acquired the restaurant and retained the local team, avoiding some of the friction of starting from scratch. Three months after converting the concept from Korean food to Sichuan cuisine, the restaurant reached break-even.
Stella adapted the menu for Singaporean diners by reducing oil, spice and numbing intensity. She also added vegetarian options and blended Sichuan flavors with more refined, Western-style presentation.
The restaurant became one of Singapore’s better-known Sichuan venues, with annual revenue per store of about RMB 7 million to RMB 10 million. Stella said the brand initially relied on WeChat groups, filling three groups with about 1,500 seed customers within roughly two months. Social media and coverage from established media then helped lift brand awareness within about six months.
After the first restaurant succeeded, Stella developed Chengdu Bowl around a Chinese-style interpretation of poke bowls, a lighter and health-oriented format already familiar to Singaporean consumers.
Tanyu, known in China for Chongqing-style grilled fish with tofu pudding, had four stores in Singapore at the time of the article and planned to open a fifth by year-end.
Li Xiaoshuai, a spokesperson for Tanyu’s franchise expansion, told Zhixiang.com that the brand prioritized locations close to its target customer profile, especially areas with more ethnic Chinese consumers and Chinese students. Tanyu kept its overseas menu broadly consistent with China, aiming to give overseas Chinese customers the original home-market flavor.
Most Chinese restaurant brands overseas were still in an early stage, mainly serving Chinese communities rather than broader local consumer groups. That made Singapore a practical first step.
Singapore is sometimes compared to “a small Shanghai,” but restaurant operators still face a different supply-chain, legal and labor environment.
Haidilao established a central kitchen in Singapore for food manufacturing and processing, including meat and vegetables, while sourcing other ingredients locally.
Tanyu imported more than half of its raw materials from China through third-party channels, including some kitchenware and walkie-talkies, while its core fish supply came from Vietnam. Li said Tanyu planned to build out supply-chain capabilities gradually as overseas markets became a strategic priority.
Stella said Chengdu Bowl could source most ingredients locally, except for some dry goods such as chilies and spices. However, she noted that Singapore’s foodservice supply chain still lagged China’s by several years, and some Sichuan ingredients, such as green Sichuan pepper, were difficult to procure locally. She said the local Chinese food supply ecosystem had improved over the previous decade as more major Chinese brands entered the market.
Labor was another constraint. Under Singapore regulations, companies must hire a certain number of local employees. As businesses grow, they may also need local store managers or partners. Tanyu used a franchise model in Singapore, with local teams operating stores and headquarters providing management support when needed. Annual product updates were trained online to preserve standardization with China.
Chengdu Bowl’s approach was to acquire an existing local team. Stella said integration with local employees was still difficult: some Singaporean workers viewed Chinese restaurants as more physically demanding than cafés, and younger workers often preferred café jobs.
Despite these challenges, the economics were attractive. Tanyu’s annual revenue per Singapore store could reach SGD 4 million, about RMB 19 million. Chengdu Bowl’s annual revenue per store was about RMB 7 million to RMB 10 million.
Haidilao’s overseas spin-off, later identified in the prospectus as Super Hi International, reported revenue of:
Southeast Asia was its largest market. In 2021, Super Hi generated USD 166 million in Southeast Asia, accounting for 56% of full-year revenue. Before the pandemic, its Southeast Asia table-turnover rate reached 4.8 times, comparable to Haidilao’s domestic China level.
The business had not yet reached profitability at the time. In 2021, Super Hi recorded a net loss of USD 150 million. However, by the end of the first quarter of 2022, 95% of its restaurants had achieved their first monthly break-even point.
While full-service Chinese restaurant brands often chose Singapore first, tea and beverage brands sometimes entered other Southeast Asian countries earlier. Mixue Bingcheng’s first overseas market was Vietnam, while Chagee’s first overseas market was Malaysia.
The article attributed this difference to store economics and operating models. Beverage outlets require lower investment per store and are often franchise-led, making them more suitable for rapid expansion. Around the same period, Hua Shan, chairman of Hua & Hua, said on social media that Mixue Bingcheng had exceeded 1,000 overseas stores, including more than 200 in Vietnam.
Not every operator saw Southeast Asia as the easiest route. Gao Yuan, a shareholder in the Canadian company behind Bingz, said North America was more unified as a market, while Southeast Asia had more complex cultural and social differences and was harder to replicate at scale.
Stella made a similar point. In China, she said, users in Shanghai, Shenzhen or Chongqing may have broadly similar needs. In Southeast Asia, each country has different conditions, religious cultures and dining habits.
She cited Indonesia as an example: in 2021, GDP per capita was about USD 4,000, but operators still needed to research how much consumers were actually willing to spend on dining. Taste adaptation and team composition both required long periods of adjustment.
Operational infrastructure was also less mature in parts of Southeast Asia. Online ordering and reservations were not always established, requiring operators to invest in queuing, ordering and on-site systems. Outside Singapore, cash payment could remain important, creating additional challenges in offline cash management.
The conclusion for operators is pragmatic: overseas expansion is becoming a long-term direction for Chinese restaurant brands, but Southeast Asia is not a single market. Each country may require a fresh operating model, supply chain, team structure and menu adaptation.
Note: listing plans, overseas store targets, revenue, loss, break-even and expansion figures above are historical, based on the July 18, 2022 source article.