Could Fast Food Produce a Healthier McDonald’s?

This is an English adaptation of a FoodBud historical article originally published on November 12, 2024.

China’s post-pandemic consumer market has seen “health” become a recurring theme, from sugar-free tea to outdoor apparel. In foodservice, one question is whether a healthier fast-food chain can scale without sacrificing taste or operational speed.

FoodBud’s podcast discussed that question with Gao Song, founder of Super Bowl, a fast-casual brand backed by Huanghai Investment.

What Super Bowl Is Trying to Be

Super Bowl is not positioned as a salad brand in the narrow sense. Gao describes it as healthy light food, but says the company started from a consumer problem rather than a category definition: making healthy fast food easier and more convenient to access.

In China, Gao argues, “healthy meals” are often associated with cold salads, sandwiches, or “eating grass,” which limits repeat purchase. Super Bowl’s answer has been to localize the format around two principles:

• Make the food warm, because traditional cold light meals do not fit many Chinese consumers’ eating habits.
• Use Chinese flavors, because salad-style light food is an imported format with limited mass-market appeal.

The menu applies Chinese-style preparation and seasoning to individual ingredients, including honey-glazed chicken thigh, red-braised beef brisket, and a Sichuan chili powder first developed for Chengdu.

On health, Gao says the brand focuses on healthier ingredients and a more balanced meal structure. Stores use a four-step ordering method: choose carbohydrates, then protein, then plant fiber and toppings. Protein options include chicken, beef, shrimp, and seafood. The goal is not “absolute health,” which most consumers struggle to sustain, but “relative health”: more vegetables and protein, a more balanced structure, and a healthier alternative to conventional fast food or delivery meals.

Building From Beijing

Super Bowl currently operates in Beijing, Shanghai, and Chengdu. The brand started in Beijing, which Gao says was partly a practical decision: he studied there, understood the market better, and had more local resources. He also felt Beijing had a higher tolerance for early mistakes than Shanghai’s more competitive dining market.

Beijing has challenges for restaurant startups, including fewer ideal sites, weaker street traffic, and long winters that hurt evening business. But it also has fewer direct competitors in this category. Gao says the team spent six to seven years in Beijing refining three things: the single-store model, the product system, and the organization.

Super Bowl entered Shanghai in June 2023. Gao says the city has performed well overall, helped by stronger acceptance of light food, a higher share of foreign residents, more Westernized tastes, and a more evenly distributed commercial geography.

Chengdu brought a different challenge: local consumers are highly demanding on flavor. Super Bowl prepared more differentiated products and menus there, including the Sichuan chili powder that later rolled out nationally. Gao says the positive response from younger Chengdu consumers gave the brand confidence that demand for healthier meals exists beyond first-tier cities.

The company has discussed entering Guangzhou and Shenzhen next, and Gao says future expansion could include new first-tier, second-tier, and third-tier cities.

From Physics Student to Chain Founder

Gao studied physics at Renmin University of China, then pursued a graduate program in hospitality management at National Kaohsiung University of Hospitality and Tourism. He says he had long been interested in food and entrepreneurship, and wanted to build something standardized, broadly accessible, and less dependent on a chef’s individual craft.

During graduate school, he researched North American restaurant brands, including Chipotle, which at the time had fewer than 2,000 stores. Chipotle influenced Super Bowl’s self-service ordering flow and broader logic: a fast-casual format offering more balanced ingredients and a healthier alternative to legacy fast food.

At the time of the podcast recording, Chipotle’s market capitalization was about US$90 billion, despite operating mainly in North America and Europe. Gao notes that McDonald’s previously invested in Chipotle and generated significant returns. His view is that China could eventually reach a similar stage, where rising income and changing consumer expectations create room for a healthier fast-food model.

Product Lessons And Consumer Insights

Super Bowl opened only about four to five stores in its first three years, using profits from one store to fund the next and continuing to refine the model.

Gao says direct copying from North American formats would not work. One example was pulled pork: while pork can be a good protein source, many Chinese consumers did not perceive it as healthy, so the item was eventually removed. Vegetable treatment also required localization: American brands often lean toward raw or cold vegetables, while China offers more vegetable variety and many products work better lightly heated.

The brand’s user research also challenged its assumptions. Gao originally thought Super Bowl’s core customers would look similar to lululemon’s: more female, white-collar, and higher income. In Shanghai, female customers do account for a higher share, but in Beijing the gender split is now close to even.

More importantly, Gao says about 80% of customers are “general health” consumers. They are not necessarily pursuing muscle gain or strict body-fat targets. They mostly want more vegetables, fewer refined carbohydrates, and more whole grains.

Super Bowl’s 30-50 yuan price range is not cheap for a work meal, but Gao argues the brand uses more and better ingredients, which keeps gross margin relatively low. The company is trying to broaden its price range so consumers have choices at different spending levels. Compared with Wagas and Gaga, Gao says Super Bowl is aimed less at business dining and more at value and speed.

The brand sees its main competition as traditional fast food, including McDonald’s and Lao Xiang Ji, because customers are already trying to assemble healthier meals within those formats.

Scaling A Healthier Fast-Food Chain

After nine years, Super Bowl had about 100 stores. Gao says the pace is not fast by China’s chain-restaurant standards, but he views the slower build as part of the company’s model refinement.

FoodBud compared this with other markets and brands: Chipotle reached about 3,000 stores over 30 years, while Saizeriya’s former CEO said the brand opened just over 100 stores in its first 20 years and more than 1,400 in the following 30 years, taking about 50 years to reach 1,500 stores.

Gao says China’s restaurant industry is now faster than Japan’s was in Saizeriya’s early era, helped by stronger supply chains, digitization, the internet, and faster consumer iteration. Tea chains can scale faster because of higher standardization, but restaurant brands still require more groundwork.

He sees several challenges ahead:

• Product innovation: Super Bowl has accelerated new launches and increased user tasting sessions from once every six months to monthly.
• Supply chain capability: not every good product can be scaled into stores and delivery, especially textures such as fresh, fragrant, tender, spicy, crispy, and refreshing.
• Talent: fast food receives less attention than tea drinks, which can make hiring harder, though Gao believes Super Bowl benefits from operating in a newer category with younger consumers.

Operating Model: Direct-Run Today, Joint Operation Later

Super Bowl has historically operated direct-run stores. Gao says the company has studied incentive structures for years but must deal with high freshness requirements, many ingredients, complex processes, and store-management demands.

For now, the company uses a competition-based incentive mechanism to bind employee interests more closely with the company, rather than simple profit sharing. In the future, Gao says Super Bowl may consider a mix of direct-run and jointly operated stores.

For joint operation, Gao says the key is finding strong local partners who understand site selection, local consumers, product iteration, and marketing. He emphasizes that the model would not be passive financial franchising; partners would need to participate in building the market.

As Super Bowl approaches its tenth year, Gao’s stated focus is less on being an internet-famous brand and more on long-term chain building.

Note: market-capitalization, investment, expansion-plan, and forward-looking figures are historical as of the original November 12, 2024 article.