Conveyor belt food delivery, no extra value-added services, is Haidilao reinventing the hot pot business with the "Sushiro model"?
Haidilao has launched another new small hot pot sub-brand, which innovatively adopts the rail delivery mode.
Recently, Haidilao has opened its first rail-transmitted small hot pot brand "Fresh Voyage Island" in Nanjing, which is extremely popular. Some netizens posted that on the opening day, long queues had formed in the store just after 10 a.m., and queuing tickets for the evening dining period could only be collected from 4 p.m.
Different from the other two small hot pot focused brands, Ju Gaogao Self-service Small Hot Pot and Haidilao Street Stall Hot Pot, Fresh Voyage Island does not adopt the rotating or self-service mode. Instead, similar to Sushiro and Hama Sushi, after consumers place orders on the screen, the ingredients are delivered through the rail in front of the dining table.
Will the small hot pot operated with the sushi brand model become a new industry trend?
01. Directly from the back kitchen to the table, Haidilao opens a "zero-service" hot pot restaurant
In January this year, Fresh Voyage Island was already under enclosure construction at Nanjing Jiangbei Mixc, with labels of "rail delivery", "fresh food delivered to the table" and other related information.
Seven months later, the store was finally unveiled. Its decoration style is youth-oriented, with silver, orange and green as the main color scheme. Light strips are installed around the dining tables and above the condiment counter, creating a simple, neat and tech-savvy dining scene.
It is understood that Fresh Voyage Island has a total of about 60 dining tables including two-seat tables and four-seat booths, with one pot per person, which can meet the dining needs of solo diners, small friend gatherings, light family dinners and other dining scenarios.
△ Image source: Xiaohongshu account of Nanjing Jiangbei Impression Hui
1. Full-process rail food delivery, no waiters required for order taking and serving
At present, the small hot pot brands on the market are mainly divided into two modes: rotating and self-service. However, Fresh Voyage Island innovatively adopts rail delivery. Each dining table is equipped with two layers of upper and lower rails, the upper layer for delivering hot pot broth bases and the lower layer for ingredients, all delivered directly from the back kitchen to the dining table.
The ordering mode is also unique, which basically does not require communication with waiters. A long screen is set between the two layers of rails, on which consumers can place orders directly. All dishes are delivered to the table through the conveyor belt, no manual food serving is required in the whole process, and there is no need to leave the seat to pick up meals by oneself.
△ Image source: Xiaohongshu screenshot
In this regard, many consumers commented that this mode is very suitable for introverts and lazy people, with zero social pressure in the whole process, which is efficient and reassuring.
2. Per capita consumption of 99 yuan, all dishes are small-sized
In terms of dishes, Fresh Voyage Island divides them into more than 10 categories, including fresh-cut category, live seafood, bean and flour products, vegetables, desserts, etc., with a total of over 100 SKUs. Specifically, in addition to common hot pot ingredients such as raw duck blood, pencil squid, duck intestine and snowflake beef, there are also relatively rare ingredients such as Yunnan ginger pumpkin and Gynura bicolor.
In terms of portion, some consumers feedback that the portion of dishes at Fresh Voyage Island is similar to that of Haidilao Street Stall Hot Pot, focusing on small-sized dishes. Meat dishes are mostly priced at 10-20 yuan, and vegetarian dishes are mostly around 5 yuan. At the same time, it also offers slightly higher-priced options such as Australian grain-fed beef short ribs at nearly 60 yuan per serving and half a deep-sea small lobster.
Nine kinds of broth bases with rich ingredients are provided, all of which are made fresh on the same day, including the premium spicy bean curd duck blood pot, rich tomato slow-cooked beef brisket pot, fig chicken soup pot, wild five-finger peach chicken soup pot, etc., priced at 16-22 yuan. In addition, the condiment counter of Fresh Voyage Island removes free additional items such as fruits, porridge and ice jelly, and the basic dipping sauces are not much different from those of conventional Haidilao stores.
△ Image source: Xiaohongshu screenshot
According to Dianping, the current per capita consumption of Fresh Voyage Island is about 99 yuan, slightly lower than that of conventional Haidilao stores. During the opening period, except for broth bases, drinks, condiments and staple food, all dishes in the store enjoy a 32% discount. Haidilao Street Stall Hot Pot has also adopted the same discount strategy since its opening last year, and it is expected that Fresh Voyage Island will continue the regular 32% discount activity for members later.
02. Low price is no longer the mainstream, small hot pot has entered the 2.0 era
In the past two years, the small hot pot track has become popular again, with endless new brands. According to the data from Red Restaurant Big Data, the market size of small hot pot across the country reached 39.5 billion yuan in 2025, with a year-on-year growth rate of 12.5%. In terms of the number of stores, as of April 2026, the number of small hot pot stores across the country is about 54,000, accounting for about 10% of the total number of hot pot stores.
In the past, low price was one of the main competitive strategies in the small hot pot track. In order to attract more consumers to the store, many brands lowered the price by reducing the quality of ingredients, which eventually led to frequent hygiene problems, and instead caused a consumer trust crisis, which was not worth the loss. According to the 2025 Small Hot Pot Consumption Survey released by Red Restaurant Industry Research Institute, most of the main complaints from consumers about small hot pot are focused on ingredients and hygiene.
Nowadays, a number of brands that only rely on low prices to attract customers and lack product competitiveness are being cleared out by the market, the head effect of the small hot pot track is becoming more and more obvious. For example, Weila Small Hot Pot, Shengxiangting Rotating Small Hot Pot, YIwei Fatty Beef Small Hot Pot and other brands have been widely deployed in many places across the country, with hundreds or even thousands of stores.
These brands reduce the cost of ingredient procurement by virtue of the scale effect, and then have the ability to invest resources in quality upgrading, and successively launch products such as fresh-cut fat beef, shrimp paste, and abalone, so as to maintain a relatively reasonable pricing while improving quality. At the same time, cross-border entry of head brands from other tracks can directly reuse the mature supply chain into the small hot pot business, achieving a more lightweight entry.
Taking Haidilao as an example, the ingredients, broth bases and condiments of its small hot pot sub-brands can rely on its own Shuhai supply chain, and it only needs to focus on the innovation of store mode to achieve rapid implementation. In addition, no matter it is Ju Gaogao Self-service Small Hot Pot, Haidilao Street Stall Hot Pot or Fresh Voyage Island, the manual order taking and food serving links of conventional stores have been eliminated, the labor cost is greatly reduced, the per-store square meter efficiency is effectively improved, and the single-store model is further strengthened.
△ Image source: photographed by Red Restaurant Network
It can be seen that the current small hot pot track has been upgraded from the 1.0 era of low-price competition to the 2.0 era of pursuing quality and efficiency. The core of competition has shifted to high-quality ingredients, rich dishes and a more lightweight and efficient store model, and the competition barrier has been raised.
However, as major brands accelerate their expansion, the number of small hot pot stores in some business districts has tended to be saturated.
According to the observation of Red Restaurant Network, small hot pot brands are clustered in some shopping malls in Guangzhou. For example, 3 stores including Longge Self-service Small Hot Pot, Little Sheep · Beef and Mutton Hot Pot and Panda Cave Fatty Beef Small Hot Pot have been opened in Merrill Lynch M·LIVE World, and there are at least 3 small hot pot brands in Wanmin Starlight City, Tianhe Xintiandi and other shopping malls.
Multiple small hot pot stores are concentrated in the same business district, the passenger flow will inevitably be diverted, thus affecting the revenue of a single store. The oligopoly era is coming. In addition to competing for the supply chain of small hot pot, the competition for advantageous locations, the balance of store density, brand marketing capabilities and other aspects will also become the focus of competition for head brands.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Red Restaurant Network", written by the Editorial Department of Red Restaurant, authorized to release by 36Kr.