48,022 tables need refunds. What's going on with this internet-famous restaurant?

"Since what you ate was only 'roasted lamb skewers' rather than 'lamb skewers in their best state', we feel ashamed. So, we will 'refund the money for the half - roasted lamb skewers from the first round' as compensation."

Recently, many netizens posted on social platforms saying that they received partial refunds and an apology message from "Long Ago Lamb Skewers".

Image source: Long Ago official account

According to data from Zhaimen Canyanjing, "Long Ago Lamb Skewers" has 142 stores, and nine - tenths of them are in shopping malls. Lamb skewers are its core product. The feature of the stores is that they uniformly use automatic rotating electric grills, and consumers can turn the skewers over and complete the roasting by themselves.

However, the problem in this refund event lies precisely in the electric grills.

According to the report from "Interesting Report", "Long Ago Lamb Skewers" previously used manual visual inspection to judge the temperature of the grills. When the heating plate turned red, the skewers could be roasted. But since March 2025, in order to standardize the process, the stores introduced electronic temperature guns. The grills were considered to have reached the standard temperature when the pre - heating temperature reached 530°.

But according to the statement released by "Long Ago Lamb Skewers" on its official account, in the actual use process, the stores overly relied on the values of the temperature guns and ignored that the unstable power caused by voltage fluctuations in the stores would affect the stability of the actual temperature inside the grills.

As a result, the lamb skewers, which should have been quickly roasted at high temperature to be crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside, became just roasted due to the extended roasting time and the inability to lock in the moisture, and the quality of the meat was affected.

A clerk from "Long Ago Lamb Skewers" told "Interesting Report" that there was also a problem with the measurement method of the electronic temperature gun. "It may only measure the surface temperature of the grill. Although the measured temperature meets the standard, the air temperature inside the grill is not high enough, so the pre - heating of the grill is also insufficient."

"Long Ago Lamb Skewers" found through statistics that a total of 24 stores were involved, and a total of 48,022 tables of customers were affected. The estimated refund is more than 1.1 million yuan.

It is worth noting that this refund was actually initiated by "Long Ago Lamb Skewers" on its own initiative, and there were no large - scale negative complaints and feedback from consumers before.

On social platforms, netizens have different opinions on this refund event. Some regular customers said, "Long Ago is finding ways to give refunds again", and some netizens thought, "This is just a gimmicky marketing campaign."

In this regard, senior public relations expert Yao Suxin believes that highlighting the refund event can play a warning role internally, strengthening internal management; externally, it can also build an image of a brand that attaches importance to quality and gain a certain amount of exposure.

"Even when the negative public opinion is not very serious, but the brand still judges that there is a risk, it will take the action of 'preventive recall'. Since the lamb skewers cannot be recalled, it can only be done through partial refunds," said Yao Suxin.

However, the refund event also exposes the quality control problems of "Long Ago Lamb Skewers" in its scale expansion.

Food industry analyst Lin Yue analyzed: "Due to problems such as voltage and measurement methods, there will be errors in the standardization of stores relying on tools. Variables need to be grasped by employees based on their experience. This refund involves 24 stores over a period of half a year, which shows that there is a systematic quality control flaw, exposing that the brand overly relies on tools and has management chaos in the rapid expansion."

The above - mentioned clerk said that currently, the stores no longer use electronic temperature guns. The headquarters has conducted unified training for the stores, requiring the pre - heating time of the grills for the first wave of customers to be extended from the original 7 - 8 minutes to 10 - 12 minutes, and the clerks need to measure the temperature manually. They should test the temperature above the grill surface by hand. Only when they feel very hot and cannot stay is the temperature up to the standard.

But this means that "Long Ago Lamb Skewers" has returned to the original manual temperature - measuring method, relying on the judgment of employees for the standardized process.

The gap between scale and taste exposed in "Long Ago Lamb Skewers" is actually a common pain point in the barbecue industry.

Image source: Hongcan Big Data

According to Hongcan Big Data, the national barbecue market scale reached 268 billion yuan in 2025, a year - on - year increase of 4.3%, accounting for about 5% of the catering market. As of February this year, the number of barbecue stores nationwide was 409,000, but the chain rate was only over 22%. Chain barbecue brands with more than 100 stores only accounted for 1% in the industry.

The barbecue industry may seem to have a low threshold, but in fact, it has been facing the problem of how to achieve taste standardization after opening a large number of stores.

Chen Ming, who runs two small barbecue shops, told "Interesting Report" that after running the shops for more than 20 years, he has a stable customer flow thanks to the unchanging taste. He believes that the soul of barbecue is the heat. The heat intensity and time need to be adjusted according to the ingredients, and the seasonings need to be properly matched according to the feel. All these rely on his own experience.

For this reason, he has not opened more stores over the years, and all the skewers are roasted by him and his family.

Lin Yue also added that the core difficulty in the large - scale development of the barbecue category lies in the weak standardization foundation. From skewering, marinating to roasting, each link of the skewers highly depends on manual labor, resulting in weak stability of product taste and quality.

Barbecue brands often rely on equipment to achieve standardization. Hou Lei, the founder of Dasheng Barbecue, once mentioned that Dasheng Barbecue has invested a lot in AI intelligent barbecue machines, aiming to achieve automatic temperature control, automatic turning, and automatic seasoning spraying through them, ensuring that the entire roasting process can be completed by only one person.

However, the refund event of "Long Ago Lamb Skewers" is undoubtedly a warning. Before forming a standardized model, catering brands need to continuously review and optimize their management capabilities and operation links to avoid going astray and overly relying on tools, which may lead to new quality control problems.

It remains to be seen whether "Long Ago Lamb Skewers" can let consumers always enjoy lamb skewers with stable taste after paying more than 1 million yuan in tuition fees.

Author: Gao Yue

Editor: Andy

Duty Editor: Tiandou

This article is from the WeChat official account "Interesting Report", author: Gao Yue, published by 36Kr with authorization.