FoodBud

Before the Castle, Part 11 — 2015: From Overconfidence to the First Great Store Patrol ### 2015：从极度自负到第一次大巡店 **A FoodBud translated & annotated edition of Mixue co-founder Zhang Hongfu's first-person memoir**

*Series: "Before the Castle — How Mixue Was Really Built, 1997–2017" · Article 11 of 12 · FoodBud /insights*

1. FoodBud Editor's Note

Article 10 ended with the team at peak excitement: a new headquarters, nationwide free logistics, 500% growth targets, and rapid expansion into Wuhan, Suzhou, and Hangzhou. Article 11 is the turn. Praise and speed push Zhang Hongfu from confidence into arrogance. He starts "dui"-ing everyone, including Zhang Hongchao, and eventually pushes his older brother out of day-to-day involvement again.

Then the market pushes back. In Hangzhou, the team encounters 1DianDian. At first Zhang Hongfu dismisses it as plain, even ugly. Then neighboring Mixue stores collapse while 1DianDian keeps lining up. A first national store patrol reveals the deeper problem: product inconsistency, dirty back kitchens, untrained operators, spoiled lemon slices, improvised standards, and franchisees who have entrusted family savings to a headquarters that has been celebrating growth while neglecting operations.

2. Why This Installment Matters

This is the memoir's most important operating reckoning. Mixue's rapid expansion has created visible scale but weak QSC. The article shows how the company moves from "open more" to "fix the stores": five unifications, slowed targets, frontline inspection, Alibaba culture reflection, and the Taihang Mountain meeting where the team decides to stop expanding for expansion's sake. For FoodBud readers, this is the section that explains why store-level discipline later became existential for Mixue.

—— FoodBud English Translation of the Source · Part 11 Begins ——

Dui the Sky, Dui the Earth, Dui the Air — and Then Dui You Away

From Henan to the whole country, from the whole country to the world.

Under high-speed growth, the praise and appreciation of people around him unconsciously made Zhang Hongfu float under a halo. Extreme confidence upgraded into arrogance. He had already begun impatiently wanting to announce it to the entire world.

At the time he believed Mixue belonged to a branch of the foodservice industry, so he often attended foodservice forums. At those forums, he saw some then-hot entrepreneurs on stage sharing their brands' "success experience." Envious, he felt he could speak no worse than they could, that Mixue's story was no worse, and that their battle achievements were also worth showing off. So he looked forward in every way to appearing on stage and even wanted to volunteer himself. But at the time, milk-tea and ice-cream chains were still an inconspicuous industry. In the end nobody invited him. He could only sit below stage rubbing his fists.

Finally, once at a Productism sharing session organized by Chairman Du of Zhengzhou's Banu Hotpot, after Du finished speaking, Zhang Hongfu was surging with passion and could not resist going up to share his thoughts. His mouth suddenly became too big to control. He even brought up mystical things like the *Tui Bei Tu* predicting China's GDP would become world number one in 2027. In 2015, Chinese people were nowhere near as confident as they are today. He said they should ride the rise of Chinese national brands, take their own brand from Henan to the whole country and from the whole country to the world. Even more shamelessly, he said he wanted Mixue Bingcheng to become the first Chinese foodservice enterprise to exceed 10 billion yuan — note, foodservice, including Banu and Haidilao.

Then afterward, foodservice-circle sharing events never proactively invited him again. Who would invite a daydreaming lunatic?

Inside the company, because business had expanded at extreme speed, the original people and office workstations were soon insufficient. Headcount quickly reached 1,500, though fortunately this included direct-store partners who usually did not need headquarters desks. Because at the spring franchisee meeting he had boasted that they would spend five million yuan on training and education and build a training center, he felt they should add more office space.

So they took down another full floor in the same office building. After quickly renovating new workstations, a training center, and a large meeting room, they had another capital for boasting: company headquarters occupied 4,000 square meters of international 5A Grade-A office space, comprehensively building a professional, trustworthy global headquarters support system, and so on.

Because he had boasted about spending five million on training and education, paying for training one by one was too slow. They needed group training.

At the time, the most popular training in Henan was Sibada's "All-Staff Wisdom Generation System." They spent a million yuan to sign up for one course. During training, Zhang Hongfu and the team were also extremely confident and stole the limelight. When the teacher asked them to write down life goals, he wrote that in this life he wanted to create an enterprise with annual sales above 100 billion U.S. dollars. In the column asking how many people he wanted to influence in this life, he wrote two billion people.

The training teacher looked at his form, changed "100 billion U.S. dollars in annual revenue" to "100 billion yuan market value," and asked him: China only has 1.3 billion people. How will you influence two billion?

Zhang Hongfu did not speak then. But the arrogant him at that time wanted to say in his heart: 100 billion dollars, two billion people — these two seemingly crazy numbers were actually the least crazy. He had thought about them deeply. The world is developing so fast. Fifty years later, 100 billion U.S. dollars may only be equivalent to today's 10 billion or so. What about one hundred years later? And if one generation influences four or five hundred million people, and then four or five generations are influenced continuously, and stores are opened in at least 100 countries, providing high-quality, affordable deliciousness and service and making people's lives better, would it not be easy to gather two billion people? Hmph.

This extreme arrogance gave him the illusion of a local emperor descending upon the world. Add the pressure and anxiety brought by high-speed development, and his personality began to change greatly. He began to stop listening to others' opinions and would "dui" people at every turn, especially his older brother, the founder.

He disliked his brother in all kinds of ways: old-fashioned thinking, unwillingness to let go, excessive thrift, small pattern. He "dui"-ed him not only privately but also in meetings. Zhang Hongchao became very anxious from being "dui"-ed, but he yielded to Zhang Hongfu and did not want to argue with him. His sleep worsened, his appetite worsened, and under Zhang Hongfu's pressure he began to think of retreating.

On one side was Zhang Hongfu, extremely excited and arrogant, wanting power. On the other was Zhang Hongchao, inwardly clear but helpless, thinking of retreat. Finally, one day in a meeting, in front of everyone, Zhang Hongfu "dui"-ed him again and told him he had better leave. He said he could straighten out both front end and back end and let the team unleash greater value with no problem.

Then Zhang Hongchao left, reportedly to Hainan.

Who Is 1DianDian?

It was not merely a queue. People were already surrounding it in three layers inside and three layers outside.

In the second half of 2015, Mixue's direct operations had fully spread across Wuhan and Suzhou, taking dozens of stores in each place. With their noisy promotional offensive, openings were grand events with queues dozens of meters long. Coco's Henan head, Mr. Mu, even sent Zhang Hongfu a message saying Coco headquarters had specially discussed Mixue's situation in Suzhou at an operations meeting, and the Suzhou regional manager was quite nervous. Hearing this, Zhang Hongfu felt smug.

When the Wuhan Optics Valley store and Jianghan Road pedestrian-street store opened, partners posted on WeChat Moments: "Mixue Bingcheng, professionally blocking roads for 18 years." Seeing these things, his heart surged, with a feeling that the country had just been settled.

Another direct-operation team entered Hangzhou. Its formation was equally invincible and unstoppable. In two or three months, it had opened fourteen stores.

But soon after, feedback from different places showed the situation turning sharply downward. Business declined. After ice cream's fresh novelty period passed, they had no decent tea-drink products, so customer stickiness was not high. Southern markets often had rain, and ice-cream sales were especially affected by weather. Many stores' low-day revenue was less than one-tenth of peak.

Partners reported that Hangzhou was especially serious. Local Hangzhou brands such as Coco and Heilongtang were strong, and there was an emerging brand called 1DianDian with good business and fast store-opening speed.

Zhang Hongfu knew Coco and Heilongtang before, but had not heard of 1DianDian at the time. He wondered what kind of holy being this 1DianDian was, with such a stingy-sounding name.

Inside, he also understood Mixue's weakness in tea drinks. Suzhou and Hangzhou customers liked drinking tea. He began feeling uneasy and decided to go see.

When he arrived in Hangzhou, beside Mixue's store at the entrance of a clothing wholesale market, he saw a 1DianDian store for the first time.

It looked plain and ordinary. Not only was the decoration plain and ordinary, the logo's graphic design also could not be called good-looking; his first impression was that it was extremely ugly. A colleague bought him one of its milk teas. It did not taste stunning, but he held it and drank it down gulp by gulp. It was quite durable to drink.

At the time he encouraged colleagues and the team, saying it was fine, they should strengthen confidence and continue opening stores. This brand probably did not have much ability.

Not long afterward, facts began slapping his face. Colleagues reported that the brand's business was getting better and better, while Mixue stores next to it were getting worse and worse. Some stores' revenue might be only one-tenth of 1DianDian's.

He panicked and went to Hangzhou again. This time Mixue's stores were already deserted, and partners' faces were full of dejection, while 1DianDian next door still had lines.

This time, careful observation found that not only was its business good, its service was especially considerate: all trained smiles plus Taiwanese-accented greetings asking after warmth and cold. Its products could even choose sugar level and ice level.

Looking again carefully at its store decoration, it seemed plain and ordinary but was actually especially thoughtful and well-built. The bar counter and equipment were all thick stainless steel. The walls were all baked glass. The ceiling lights were brighter than other brands. Although the store design had no decoration, the flow was reasonable, partners operated in orderly fashion, and even the stacking of ingredients on shelves looked distinctive.

Alas. When the heart is high and proud, one looks at everything with disdain, and all advantages are automatically filtered out. Only after being slapped in the face by a strong brand does one learn to carefully examine the strengths on others' bodies.

Reexamining Mixue itself, QSC — quality, service, cleanliness — lagged by several levels. These gaps had clearly always existed, but in the past he had selectively ignored them because development had covered all problems.

When one looks at problems with problems in mind, one can actively discover more problems. On the way back, he went to Suzhou. The noisy, crowded grand openings from earlier were no longer grand. Many stores were similarly empty. When customers were few, partners became idle and bored, and many lowered their heads to play with phones. Occasionally, when he entered a store and ordered several drinks, he discovered product-making was unfamiliar and service was rough. Even more serious, products from many stores tasted inconsistent, and some were made wrong.

Yes, thinking carefully, this was not surprising. In just half a year, they had opened nearly 100 direct-operated stores, while the previous year's direct-operated base had only been several dozen. With such singing and marching forward and no accumulation, how could QSC possibly be done well?

Driving back to Henan, his mood was down all the way. Passing Wuhan to inspect stores, the direct-operated situation was not much better. Looking at several Wuhan franchise stores, it was again severely rough. His mood fell to the extreme.

He told Hangzhou partners to pause store expansion and prepare to do foundational work properly to improve. Meanwhile, 1DianDian was accelerating. Several months later, it opened another forty or fifty stores.

Not long after that, one day Zhang Hongchao called him from another city. They briefly exchanged store conditions. Zhang Hongchao only said calmly: rent a car and take our executives out to look at stores. Run both south and north.

The First Great Store Patrol

Face-slapped again and again. Pull radishes too fast and the mud is not washed off.

When Zhang Hongchao calmly suggested he inspect stores, Zhang Hongfu realized there might be some store problems, but did not yet know their severity.

Very soon, he asked colleague Shao Nan to arrange a Toyota Coaster minibus. Executives from various departments, around a dozen people total, set out. Their route began by heading north. When they crossed the Yellow River Bridge, they were especially excited. Zhang Hongfu told partners he would take everyone to a franchisee's store that had been open for many years. That franchisee was especially serious; she was a girl, very pretty, and the store was operating well. It should be a benchmark for the Anyang area.

Soon the vehicle arrived in Anyang. Her store was in a market near a school, the kind of traditional campus-side market selling various snacks, fruit, and student supplies. At the store entrance, the situation was comforting. There were quite a few students inside, and business looked good. The owner was busy and cheerful. Zhang Hongfu boasted to colleagues: look, this is our store. These past years, the change has been quite big. When it first opened, it was at a roadside in Anyang, and at that time selling several hundred yuan a day was already good.

But once they reached the back kitchen, he was stunned. It formed a huge contrast with the store's clean and bright front. First, walking on the ground made one's shoes stick; it could almost pull shoes off. This was the result of milk slurry and syrup contaminating the floor and not being cleaned for a long time. Not only was it sticky, the ground also looked dark and black, absolutely not like a floor that had only gone one or two days without cleaning. Various mops, brooms, and cleaning tools were piled randomly, with no food-safety concept or order at all.

What impressed and shocked him most in that store was a large red plastic bucket placed on the ground near the sink, probably able to hold one or two hundred kilograms of water. How large was it? About the same size as the garbage bins one sees in residential compounds.

It was probably the largest plastic bucket available on the market. Inside was a full bucket of diluted syrup for lemonade. After being mixed, this diluted syrup had an especially short shelf life. It was impossible that such a large bucket, once mixed, would not spoil. He found a cup and tasted it. Sure enough, there was a sour, rancid flavor, but he still felt something else was wrong. He asked the owner and learned that the ratio was one they had adjusted themselves. They said they felt this ratio was more convenient.

The second deeply impressive and even more angering thing was that their lemons were not sliced according to Mixue's standard and muddled in the cup. Instead, they directly used a large rolling pin inside a bucket that could hold about 20 kilograms of water. After muddling, they uniformly filtered the lemon juice into a five-liter measuring bucket. The remaining lemon pieces were dehydrated and placed in another bucket for backup. When front counter staff made the product, they added dehydrated lemon slices, lemon juice, and their own diluted syrup separately according to their own ratio. Zhang Hongfu could neither understand nor think through the ratio or usage.

In short, aside from good business, every product-making standard in that store had been invented by itself. Almost none matched the company's standards. At that time, he was shocked. All of them were shocked. This was their old franchise store that he was proud of, an Anyang benchmark with improving business, operated by a young and beautiful post-1980s woman. If the benchmark he was proud of inside was like this, what would the next stores look like?

After Anyang, the next stop was Xingtai, Hebei. They visited several Xingtai stores and some county stores, and also met some owners. Business was still acceptable. After all, north of the Yellow River there were no especially good brands. When there is no tiger in the mountain, the monkey becomes king. This indeed counts as an iron law.

But almost every store had its own product-making standard. Except for the same signboard, one could hardly see traces of a chain brand.

In conversation with franchisees, they discovered that many stores were barely continuing. When facing competition from local brands, they were weak and powerless. They generally had no effective methods, and the company could not provide good support. So quite a few stores were also obeying fate, near closure.

These reasons could be imagined. That year they had only wanted speed. Where would there be partners with the mind to help them manage stores well? More serious was Zhang Hongfu himself and the executives. If they did not go to stores for a long time and did not see these conditions, it was difficult to rationally imagine how their work should be carried out and what their stores were actually like. Everyone understands the phrase "when radishes are pulled too fast, the mud is not washed off." But if you do not eat the mud-covered radish that makes your teeth gritty, you will not truly condemn pulling radishes too fast without washing off the mud.

The new company and new partners were already not very capable, and they had put their minds on a Great Leap Forward. Feedback about ordinary people's suffering had been submerged layer by layer outside the big courtyard — or perhaps nobody would give feedback, because they were all enjoying the joy of a great harvest.

In product-making standards, there were even more things that made one want to cry. At the time, Mixue's lemonade standard was 28 grams of lemon slices per cup. They saw many stores with about 20 grams, some even with a dozen grams. And not only one cup with a dozen grams — many prepared cups were all a dozen grams. Shortchanging weight was common at the time. If it were only short weight, at least customers could drink fresh lemon, and a little less might still be acceptable.

But many stores clearly did not have such good business, yet prepared stacks and stacks of lemon in advance, hundreds of cups piled up and placed in freezers. Worse still, some stored them at room temperature. When a lemon slice was lifted from a cup and smelled at the nose, nobody knew how long it had already been spoiled. Later, after talking with store staff, they confirmed that many sold slices were overnight cut lemons.

With a depressed mood, they continued forward to Beijing and Tianjin. The situation was not much better. The comforting point was Hebei's Huanghua County, where the boss's store business was still decent. The owner had previously been a freight-truck driver delivering goods for Mixue. Feeling that Mixue's business was okay, he franchised a store and returned to his hometown to start a business. To start that business, he even sold his freight truck.

Chatting with him, Zhang Hongfu felt a heavy sense of responsibility. These people had entrusted their savings, future, and fate to Mixue. Yet Mixue was now managing stores so badly while thinking everything was flourishing. Inside, Zhang Hongfu felt especially guilty. It was not only Huanghua. None of Mixue's franchisees nationwide were rich second-generation people. All had brought several generations of savings into this undertaking. Yet at that time Mixue had been so unworthy.

After Huanghua, they did not continue north according to the planned route, because north of the Yellow River was basically like this. They planned to go south, south of the Yellow River, south of the Yangtze River. Passing through Jining, Shandong, they got off to look at stores and talk with owners. It was almost the same situation, even worse. Because Shandong had more brands, elsewhere business was okay but hygiene poor; in Shandong many stores already had poor business and poor hygiene.

The whole car of people felt incomparably heavy. At his lowest mood, one colleague called him "Boss Zhang." Zhang Hongfu suddenly raised his head as if mad and said: do not call me Boss Zhang. I do not deserve it.

Alibaba, Alibaba Is a Happy Young Man

They had to change.

Next, they traveled southeast, crossing Shandong, passing Jiangsu, and reaching Zhejiang. The same problems were everywhere. What differed was that the farther south they went, the worse business became, even worse than the north. But no matter how depressed and regretful they were, they had at least discovered the problems. Only by going to the frontline can one discover more problems. Their schedule was full all the way, working on site. After blow after blow, their goal became firmer: they had to make changes.

It was during that period that they decided to brake. If they were farming, and only knew how to open wasteland, but after opening wasteland did not tend it and let weeds grow until it was wasteland again, then what use was opening more wasteland? The many chaotic store phenomena came from their weak management. There was no shortcut.

Except to strictly require themselves.

Colleagues responsible for the market began planning stricter five unifications: unified image, uniforms, price, raw materials, and product-making standards. Colleagues responsible for franchise recruitment decided to slow down and no longer strongly require quantity-driven expansion.

They lowered that year's subsequent task targets and decided to slow down, cultivating intensively and carefully.

When things are good, do not forget the existence of the bad side. When bad things are discovered, short-term depression is acceptable, but one cannot sink into it.

There will be problems at any time. It is better for them to appear early than late. This, he says, is the only way to comfort oneself.

At the Hangzhou stop, they visited Alibaba's Xixi campus, which had been scheduled before. Facing the gate was a naked Mongolian warrior statue at least six or seven meters tall. Alibaba people called it "very fierce and very lasting." This was Alibaba people's striving spirit (奋斗): doing a business requires being very fierce and very lasting. The statue was quite shocking.

Inside Alibaba's campus plaza, there was a fountain pool, and inside the fountain there was another statue: a naked boy and a naked girl embracing. Alibaba people called it "very stupid and very innocent," or very loving, interpreting it as: being a person requires being very stupid and very innocent.

Visually, those two left the deepest impression. Sometimes things related to sex indeed leave deeper memory.

Later they toured Alibaba's office. The whole office was hung with banners and slogans of all kinds: "The east wind blows, the war drums beat; on the road of performance, who fears whom?" and "Team so-and-so is very fierce and very lasting." Crucially, they did not only hang banners with battle feeling. In the actual office area there were several big war drums. Once a team opened performance or an important event happened, they must beat the drums to celebrate.

It was completely a revolutionary spirit, not literary at all, although they also had literary things: a cafe, a study, a kindergarten, and a nursery room.

But what was truly useful in the campus were the camp beds placed in office areas. During Double 11, or other holiday sales peaks, Alibaba people stayed awake all night. If they were truly sleepy and exhausted and could not continue, they lay on camp beds to rest briefly. Alibaba was already so large, yet still felt like a struggling entrepreneurial enterprise. Many companies, by contrast, were clearly still small but had already lost the original hardship-fighting entrepreneurial spirit. Mixue was one of them.

At the beginning of entrepreneurship, all companies are the same: force comes out of one hole, and everyone shares hatred of the enemy. The difference is that after a few victories and gradual growth, some can continue to keep force coming out of one hole, share hatred, and maintain fighting spirit. Others, before they are truly large, already contract big-company disease: each seeks private interest, each acts separately, lost in floating splendor, passively grinding away.

When they visited Alibaba's culture wall, it strongly stirred their chivalric hearts. Most people of their generation grew up reading Jin Yong novels; even those who did not read the books watched the TV dramas. The great knight serves the country and the world. Alibaba was a practitioner: let there be no difficult business in the world. What about Mixue? Were they firmly practicing their values, mission, and vision? What did they want to bring to this society, this country, this world? This triggered deep thought in Zhang Hongfu.

A teacher who had taught at Taobao University shared with them for another two or three hours. In those hours, they understood a more delicate Alibaba, an Alibaba firmly practicing a 102-year vision, and also an Alibaba that was grassroots, grounded, hard-working, and even vulgar and cheeky. Perhaps their feeling toward Alibaba was stronger also because of Mixue's own implicit corporate culture: the same vulgar, cheeky playfulness.

Someone said that on the entrepreneurial road, the scenery is so bad one only wants to curse. Then one has to find some fun for oneself; otherwise being rigidly serious is truly tiring. When tired and distressed, left hand warming right hand, left brain warming right brain, making jokes that are out of bounds but not obscene can really bring a moment of happiness.

So no matter what, one should still be a happy young person. One may be depressed and regretful, but must be able to firmly see hope. On the way back, Zhang Hongfu kept thinking: they must give partners a beautiful campus, give franchisees a good entrepreneurial platform, give partners an opportunity to change fate with both hands, bring more sweet good products to society, and establish a model and guide for more future young people like themselves, just as Alibaba had established a model for him.

The Taihang Mountain Meeting

Failure is the mother of success, and success is also the mother of failure.

Returning from Hangzhou to Zhengzhou, Zhang Hongfu kept thinking along the road: what exactly had caused their chaos then? Failure is the mother of success, but success is also the mother of failure. Several years of smooth sailing had easily made people unconsciously become complacent, begin looking down on everything, become extravagant. Extravagance produced arrogance; arrogance made people seek grand achievements; seeking grand achievements made people ignore shortcomings; then, based on a one-sided favorable angle, they set unrealistic Great Leap Forward targets.

He felt they needed to touch the ground again. They needed to understand where they came from and carefully think about where they were going. Continuous growth had trapped them all in daily business, and they had not gathered seriously for a long time. They needed to choose a quiet place, seriously reflect, discuss, correct disorder, and recover the original heart.

In the first two years of entrepreneurship, they also did outdoor expansion training for team-building. But later high-speed growth and busyness meant they had not done it for a long time. Discipline, goals, teamwork, struggle, remembering bitterness and thinking of sweetness — they had to pick all of these back up.

A colleague contacted an expansion route north of Zhengzhou at Xinxiang's Baligou: outward-bound training plus wild marching, climbing high mountains, and staying in old rural houses. Zhang Hongfu felt the idea was good. The first weekend after returning, they got up early and took a bus together to Baligou. Looking back now, he was actually not very satisfied with the overall training process. He had imagined it would be very strict, but the instructors' execution was very loose and did not achieve the desired effect. Even so, it was still a highly rewarding comprehensive expansion meeting.

After training at the foot of the mountain, they put tents on their backs and began climbing. The target was the top of the Taihang Mountains, about thirty kilometers of mountain road. It was said there was a thousand-year-old village, and they were going there. The mountain road became more and more dangerous. By the time they reached the cliff locals called Shangbali, everyone was tired nearly to collapse. But inside they were happy, because bodily fatigue had temporarily made them forget the anxiety accumulated inside. Supporting each other, cheering each other on, they finally reached the mountaintop successfully after dark.

The ancient village at the mountaintop had especially difficult conditions. Guoliang Village, famous online for its cliffside road, was not far from there, but conditions on this side were worse because there was not even a cliffside road. In the village, they saw the transport tool villagers had used decades earlier to drag tractors up the mountain: a rusty steel cable. The cable was not enough to bear the weight of a tractor. Villagers had to completely disassemble the tractor at the mountain foot, tie parts to the cable, and pull them up with rope. Hardship endurance is in Chinese people's genes. Overcoming unfavorable conditions, mountain villagers had done even better than them.

That night, they stayed in mountaintop rural houses, in a small courtyard built from stone, quiet and peaceful, with stars covering the sky and summer insects singing all around. They ate handmade noodles made by the farm auntie. Everyone ate them cleanly, soup and all. The sinful part at the end was that they also slaughtered a sheep, but the mutton soup was truly delicious; he had never drunk such good mutton soup.

At night, in that old house pasted full of newspapers but still letting wind through, they held their discussion meeting: criticism and self-criticism. He remembers that they probably talked until the roosters began crowing. They decided to stop signing new stores, properly stop and tie their shoelaces, no longer grow for growth's sake, and truly do operations well so growth could happen naturally. At the time, a phrase was popular: do not forget the purpose of departure because you are walking too fast, and do not go so fast that your soul cannot keep up with your footsteps. At that meeting, he and the chairman also had a small disagreement: should their own employees be allowed to open stores?

Everyone expressed his own view. In the end they did not form a conclusion. But no matter what, the meeting made the team understand itself more. Although the external conditions were poor, their hearts became clearer and brighter. That night, on crowded beds, they slept especially sweetly. The next morning they got up early, played some formation games in the grass, then went to the Taihang cliff outside the village. Under the coach's guidance, each person folded a paper airplane, wrote down a wish, and released it from the cliff.

Zhang Hongfu wrote:

Let the world become better because of us. Protect employees, the company, and society. Continue struggling for 100 years.

—— FoodBud English Translation of the Source · Part 11 Ends ——

3. FoodBud Notes

1. This is the ego-to-operations reversal. Zhang Hongfu's self-critique is unusually direct: applause, training forums, huge goals, and office expansion made him less willing to hear critique.

2. 1DianDian exposes Mixue's tea-drink weakness. The competitor is not visually flashy; its advantage is product durability, trained service, customization, materials, flow, and consistency.

3. The first great patrol converts abstraction into disgust. Everyone knows "fast radishes carry mud." The patrol makes leadership eat the mud: sticky floors, spoiled syrup, improvised lemon standards, overnight lemon slices, and weak franchisee support.

4. Five unifications are a response to chaos. Unified image, uniforms, price, raw materials, and product-making standards become the operating frame for slowing down and repairing the chain.

5. Alibaba and Taihang are two forms of re-grounding. Alibaba shows a large company that still fights; Taihang shows hardship, reflection, and the decision to pause new signings.

4. Timeline (this installment)

  • 2015 — Zhang Hongfu's public boasting and internal arrogance intensify; he pushes Zhang Hongchao out of active involvement again.
  • 2015 second half — Direct-operated expansion in Wuhan, Suzhou, and Hangzhou initially creates spectacular openings.
  • 2015 — Hangzhou 1DianDian stores outperform adjacent Mixue stores, exposing Mixue's tea-drink and QSC gaps.
  • 2015 — Zhang Hongchao advises a management store patrol; executives inspect Anyang, Xingtai, Huanghua, Shandong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and other markets.
  • 2015 — Store patrol reveals severe inconsistency, hygiene, and product-standard failures.
  • 2015 — Mixue decides to slow expansion and strengthen five unifications.
  • 2015 — Team visits Alibaba's Xixi campus and reflects on fighting spirit and values.
  • 2015 — Taihang Mountain meeting decides to stop signing new stores temporarily and focus on operations.

5. Pull Quotes (web-ready)

1. *"Failure is the mother of success, and success is also the mother of failure."* — Zhang Hongfu (translated from the source text) 2. *"When the heart is high and proud, one looks at everything with disdain."* — Zhang Hongfu (translated from the source text) 3. *"Do not call me Boss Zhang. I do not deserve it."* — Zhang Hongfu during the store patrol (translated from the source text) 4. *"If you do not eat the mud-covered radish, you will not truly condemn pulling radishes too fast without washing off the mud."* — Zhang Hongfu (translated from the source text) 5. *"Let the world become better because of us."* — Zhang Hongfu's Taihang paper-airplane wish (translated from the source text)

Series navigation

*Before the Castle: How Mixue Was Really Built, 1997-2017 · Part 11 of 12 · FoodBud /insights*

*This is a translated and annotated edition, not an original FoodBud interview. Authorized translation: translated with permission from Zhang Hongfu's memoir (经授权翻译自张红甫回忆录). Original author/source: Zhang Hongfu (张红甫). The translated source is kept separate from FoodBud's Editor's Note, FoodBud Notes, timeline, and pull quotes.*

*Publication note: corporate data is primary-source-locked to HKEX filings where stated. Market capitalization and any FY2025 GMV / systemwide-sales figure are intentionally not stated. “Scale” means systemwide sales / GMV and store count, never company revenue. FoodBud is information only, not investment advice.*