How does Haidilao cultivate store managers with an annual salary of one million?

Written by Yang Yafei

Early in the morning on New Year's Day in 2025, Sister Min went to work at the Haidilao store in Darongcheng as usual. But this time, her schedule has changed. Instead of managing one store in the past, she is now in charge of three stores in the mall, learning to become a multi-store manager.

This is a new change after Haidilao launched the "Red Pomegranate Project". In the past six months, a number of sub-brands such as Yanqing, Xiaohai Ai Zha, Xiaohai Hot Pot, Flame Official, Miaotangzhu Spicy Grilled Fish, Feipai · Zhenxian Mini Hot Pot, and Congqian Yinxiang have emerged one after another. According to incomplete statistics from 36Kr Future Consumption, the aforementioned sub-brands have opened nearly 50 stores in total. Among them, the number of Yanqing stores has reached 25, and another 10 are waiting to open.

After the growth of the main brand has slowed down, Haidilao's ambition to develop a second brand is obvious. And store managers like Sister Min are a crucial link in the success or failure of multiple brands - the founder sets the entrepreneurial direction, but the store operation and actual expansion speed depend on how many good store managers can be found.

Compared to external hires, store managers who have worked their way up within the Haidilao system are the most suitable candidates.

Sister Min is a typical "old employee": She joined the company after graduating in 2007 and has 17 years of working experience. Haidilao is her only job experience. With a logistics background, she initially joined Shuhai Supply Chain and worked her way up from Personnel Supervisor to Senior Personnel Manager. Later, she followed the "Seed Project" to the store. In December 2018, she became the reserve store manager of the newly opened Xi'an Darongcheng store and has been working there for more than six years.

As of the first half of 2024, Haidilao has a total of 1,343 stores, and Sister Min is one of the more than one thousand store managers. Before 2024, the majority of people, like Sister Min, only managed one Haidilao store. However, with the emergence of multiple brands, the thoughts and career plans of many store managers have changed forever this year.

Haidilao's Entrepreneurship: The Core is Investing in People

Investment is about investing in people, and the same is true for Haidilao's internal entrepreneurship. The veteran employees were the first to be targeted.

When Haidilao first launched the multi-brand strategy in 2020, it first mobilized all the coordinating coaches. Yang Hua, the founder of Yanqing Barbecue Shop, joined Haidilao in 1999. She worked her way up from the grassroots level of the store to the coordinating coach and started her own business internally in 2022. Yang Hua is also the head coach of the Entrepreneurship Committee.

Everyone knows that starting a business is a risky endeavor with a high failure rate, but Haidilao is willing to take the risk. Yang Hua told 36Kr Future Consumption, "We are prepared to try 100 times and succeed once." If the business fails, the company will bear the majority of the losses, and the founder will bear a small portion, and they can start a business for the second or third time.

"Haidilao's style is to shoot first, not to aim first," said an internal source at Haidilao. "If you shoot 100 times, there will always be a hit."

However, choosing the right person as the No. 1 entrepreneur is the key to improving the hit rate. Wang Qiang, the director of the Haidilao Entrepreneurship Office and the founder of Xiaohai Ai Zha, said that entrepreneurs include three types of people: First, long-time struggling old employees; second, managers with an Internet background; third, external entrepreneurs.

Sister Min's decision to take the step of managing multiple stores is also the appeal of the No. 1 position. "Sister Yang Hua is a store manager who came out of Xi'an, and I am also a store manager in Xi'an," Sister Min told 36Kr Future Consumption. This sounds a bit "blind", but Yang Hua is their role model.

At the group cohesion conference in April last year, Sister Min heard Yang Hua's presentation for the first time. At that time, Yanqing only had one store, and Sister Min said, "At that time, the name of the Red Pomegranate Project had not yet been announced." After that, she went to the first Yanqing store in the same city to learn. After seeing it, she judged that she could also open one.

However, for store managers like Sister Min, there are two hard thresholds to be approved to manage multiple stores. One is that the evaluation of the Haidilao store they are responsible for reaches level B, and the other is to cultivate a reserve team in the old store. The lobby manager, back kitchen manager, and other key personnel of the Yanqing Darongcheng store are the second team that Sister Min selected from the old store.

"We will not make a plan to open 100 or 200 stores," Yang Hua said. The number of stores of multiple brands depends on how many good cadres and shops are available.

In the catering industry, there is a saying, "A good shop is waiting for." Sister Min's idea finally came to fruition when she waited for an opportunity. In the middle of last year, Sister Min noticed that the neighboring merchant closed the store due to poor management, and the shop suddenly became vacant.

The Haidilao store is a supporting merchant of Xi'an Darongcheng. Because of this relationship, the actual preparation progress of the Yanqing store is much faster. The contract was signed in June, and the contract process was completed in more than one month, while in the past, it usually took 3 to 6 months, and the store officially opened for business on August 16.

Because it is only separated by a wall, it is much easier for Sister Min to manage two stores at the same time. She built up her mindset, "Imagine adding 30 more tables," In addition, the difference between barbecue and hot pot mainly lies in the dishes. The former has more meat dishes. She said, "It's just adding a new functional room in the back kitchen."

The core of Haidilao's store assessment is process management. They believe in the philosophy that if the process is done well, the result will not be bad. The Four-Color Card is the most important assessment indicator, and this assessment method has also been followed by peers such as Bawang Tea Ji.

The multi-brand also uses the Four-Color Card assessment, and the general direction still focuses on balanced indicators such as service, hygiene, dish production, and food safety. The store service is the familiar "Haidilao style", with services such as hair washing, hair braiding, manicures, and Sichuan Opera face-changing.

"The core ability of our team is to grasp both employees and customers with one hand," Yang Hua said. They have many ways to take good care of employees and give them sufficient incentives. And the founder only needs to train the store manager to be qualified in their respective category business levels. "This is the lowest-cost training."

Can Store Managers Earn a Million Annual Salary Through "Disciples and Granddisciples"?

Employees in Sister Min's team are also looking forward to opening new stores. When a new store is opened, a new lobby manager, back kitchen manager, and some special positions will be added. Anyway, the promotion opportunities for the people below have increased.

Selecting personnel is also the most energy-consuming task for Sister Min to manage multiple stores. She needs to lead the reserve team to handle construction, customer complaints, dish updates, and other tasks, and the running-in period varies from half a year to one year.

Entrepreneurial risks correspond to returns. Wang Qiang said that founders have equity incentives, and founders and management teams also have basic salaries and dividend rights. In addition, for the collaboration of multiple departments, there are bonus packages for phased incentives.

For multi-store managers like Sister Min, they enjoy immunity from rights and responsibilities for the first three months. If they achieve profitability during this period, they can directly share profits from the store. Profit sharing is also the main source of income for multi-store managers. In addition, their management ability can also be "realized" by managing disciples and granddisciples.

In order to "connect interests", Haidilao has designed a special store manager profit-sharing system. Store managers can not only share profits directly from their own managed restaurants but also take a lower profit-sharing ratio from their own managed restaurants while at the same time sharing profits from the managed restaurants of their direct disciples and granddisciples.

"Disciples and granddisciples are their permanent property rights," Yang Hua said. This is Haidilao's value. "If you teach your disciples well, the master will live a better life."

Because they can draw commissions from the stores of their disciples and granddisciples, Haidilao store managers have always been known for their high salaries. Old store managers with many disciples and granddisciples can earn more than 100,000 yuan per month, but this only belongs to a few level A store managers, and it is more common during the period of rapid expansion. However, when the main brand slows down, the upper limit of the salary will be greatly discounted.

Connecting the store manager system with multiple brands is to create a group of high-paid store managers.

Yang Hua said that an ordinary store manager of a hot pot restaurant or barbecue restaurant may only earn 10,000 to 20,000 yuan, but at Haidilao, if a store manager can cultivate four reserve teams, they can open four stores in one mall and earn four times the money.

However, there were differences within Haidilao about whether to allow store managers to manage multiple stores. The final implementation is to "change fate with both hands". Haidilao's founder Zhang Yong once said frankly within the company that he wants outstanding store managers to be able to earn a million annual salary.

The prerequisite for store managers to receive dividends is that the store model can be successful, which tests the vision of the Entrepreneurship Committee. When a new entrepreneurial project is submitted, it must first be evaluated by the Entrepreneurship Committee. When the project is launched, the Entrepreneurship Committee will evaluate the project regularly at 3 months / 6 months / one year.

In case of poor management, there are two store closure processes. One is that the Entrepreneurship Committee solicits the opinions of the founder. If the latter judges that the store cannot be revived, it is initiated by the founder. The other is that if the data of the project continues to deteriorate in the pairwise PK, the Entrepreneurship Committee will make a comprehensive evaluation and handle the store closure.

There is also an "Entrepreneurship Memorandum" within Haidilao. They realize that many of the underlying logics, challenges, and problem-solving methods of entrepreneurship are similar. According to 36Kr Future Consumption, an internal entrepreneur conference is held every month. Based on the feedback from the founders' problems, the memorandum is continuously updated, and reference answers can be found for product research and development, engineering cost control, and financial model calculations.

More than two months after the opening, the Yanqing store managed by Sister Min's team received an A-level rating. With the addition of more and more store managers, the application threshold for store managers of Yanqing has now been raised from level B to level A. Sister Min's own energy has been freed up again and is now focused on the newly opened private room store.

Rebuilding Haidilao

The catering business is about people and also about using people. There are only two ways to retain talents: transparent promotion or direct incentives. The former corresponds to a sense of honor, and the latter is real money.

Starbucks is known as the "Whampoa Military Academy" of the catering industry, largely because they have the most mature store manager training system in the industry. KFC China's 10,000 stores were once considered "unprecedented", which relies on a highly standardized store operation system. They have now become the targets of local new forces for poaching.

The catering franchise fever has given rise to super franchisees, while Haidilao's multi-store management aims to cultivate a group of "super store managers" to amplify the ability of grassroots managers in a regional market. There cannot be two Haidilao stores in one mall, but there can be four multi-brand stores, and they only need one store manager.

"The store manager is equivalent to the head of the family. In a mall, each disciple manages a brand for him," Yang Hua said. Within a 500-meter management radius, no management efficiency can reach this level.

Starbucks has made a similar adjustment. Not long ago, according to media reports, Starbucks plans to form multi-store communities (MSC) for some stores, with one store manager managing two stores at the same time, breaking the past single-store management method.

Obviously, it is easy for a leading brand to open one store, but it is not easy to cultivate a good store manager. The former is about quantity, while the latter can widen the operational gap. According to 36Kr Future Consumption, Mixiancunbibimbap has voluntarily slowed down the store opening speed recently. One of the important factors is that it is impossible to quickly cultivate so many store managers.

Compared to the current multi-brand blooming, Haidilao's franchise business is progressing slowly. The difficulty is obvious. Haidilao is known for its service, but service is the most difficult to replicate through franchising. Compared to opening up new territories in unfamiliar places, the combination of the same mall and multiple brands makes it more possible for store managers and their teams to manage multiple stores.

Haidilao has been making multi-brand attempts for a long time, but like most catering peers, it has been lukewarm, and the fast-food brands it incubated closed a large number of stores in 2021. In the past 2024, their multi-brand efforts have been more obviously "avoiding weaknesses and leveraging strengths", exploring based on their own supply chain system.

The fastest-growing Yanqing currently has overlaps and complements with the hot pot supply chain. There is a saying in the industry that "hot pot and barbecue are not separated". "The parts of beef that can be used for hot pot in Haidilao are completely different from the parts used for grilling," Yang Hua said. "We used to talk about a certain part, but now we are talking about the price of the whole cow."

Yang Hua is a "serial entrepreneur" at Haidilao. Switching from Wugu Sancan to barbecue, for her, this change also means realizing that she is more good at making high-unit-price categories that have space to provide emotional value. The store managers under her have also been switched to the group of people she is most familiar with.

At the end of December 2024, Haidilao held the first offline reserve conference of the "Red Pomegranate Project" in Wuxi. There were many Haidilao store managers who signed up on the spot, and Yang Hua received a full 200 applications. After evaluation, she finally issued certificates to more than 160 store managers, becoming reserve multi-store managers.

"Talent is the only problem that cannot be solved with money. This is the core problem," Yang Hua said.