Is it true that Brother Yong, who guides millions of netizens to make money, completely flopped when he opened his own store?

When a person gets used to sitting on the absolutely safe judge's bench and pointing fingers at everything, he can hardly foresee that once he steps out of the live stream room, the mire he once saw through will trip him up in an unreasonable way.

"Come on, turn 360 degrees in place."

This is the classic line of Brother Yong during co-hosting live sessions, used to test whether the entrepreneur on the other side of the camera is really operating his business with dedication.

No one expected that this line would finally come back to bite him.

The internet catering track in 2026 is definitely full of unexpected twists. Recently, content creators seem to be exceptionally keen on moving their kitchens in front of the camera: earlier, Zhou Xiaonao brought the bustle of the front hall and the mess of the back kitchen to the audience through his series of summer part-time jobs in restaurants; later, Brother Yong, who teaches people to open stores, had a live stream where he woke up confused entrepreneurs by scolding them during co-hosting sessions, but before he knew it, the criticism turned right back on himself.

(Screenshot from the live stream of @Brother Yong's Catering Entrepreneurship Talk)

In the era of short videos, most ordinary people's understanding of business no longer comes from the streets. Countless young people who have never set foot in business operations have completed their entire imagination of entrepreneurship in the live stream rooms, and easily mastered a set of "standard answers" for judging the quality of stores and the right and wrong of business operations as bystanders.

The rise of "Brother Yong Talks About Catering" is precisely attached to this traffic order. Relying on paid co-hosting live sessions, he dissuaded many blind entrepreneurs with a sharp and straightforward style, quickly accumulating millions of fans. For a long time, he always stood from the perspective of a bystander, commenting on the gains and losses of others with a set of extremely rational standards. Over time, he also became the sober "catering godfather" in the eyes of the public.

But the reversal of public opinion came unexpectedly. A few days ago, his fast food restaurant "Three Meals Craftsmanship" opened in a Chengdu community, advertising "affordable and people-friendly", but the actual customer unit price had a clear gap from the promotion.

Soon, someone in the comment section brought up old scores: isn't this exactly the pricing trap he keeps warning others about every day? Before the storm calmed down, he angered the public again by speaking up for a hot pot restaurant owner. The sentence "Look at how much money you have in your own pocket" directly sent him to the top of the hot search list.

(Screenshot from the live stream of @Brother Yong's Catering Entrepreneurship Talk)

Amid continuous controversies, his Bilibili live stream room was repeatedly flooded by angry viewers. On September 15, Brother Yong announced that he would suspend the authorization of Bilibili short clips, leaving only the sentence "See you in the rivers and lakes" as a temporary exit.

Brother Yong, who had been commenting on others in the live stream room all the time, has now entered a live stream room where the whole public is commenting on him.

01

The "Catering Godfather" Who Turned Consulting Into Reality Show

Brother Yong's breakout is rooted in the public's entrepreneurial anxiety and the rigid demand for onlooking in the short video era.

Different from catering content creators who focus on store exploration reviews and brand promotion, the core of his live stream has always been "avoiding pitfalls in entrepreneurship". In the past few years, what he did most often was sit in the live stream room, listen to others talk about their catering entrepreneurship, and then start to interrogate and comment.

The form of interaction is very simple: a person who is preparing to start a business or is in trouble pays for a co-hosting session, tells Brother Yong his business plan, and then has a conversation with him.

(Screenshot from social media)

Store location, rent, customer unit price, gross profit margin, labor cost... When these numbers are laid out, the business seems to have an answer. Entrepreneurs come in with hundreds of thousands or even millions of budgets and full passion, but Brother Yong often finds loopholes from a few numbers, and judges whether a store can survive with the most simple ideas and language.

It is in these Q&A sessions that many "god-like people" stories begin to emerge: some people invest hundreds of thousands or even millions to start a business, but can't even explain their own gross profit margin clearly; some people who are preparing to join a franchise can't tell whether the contract they signed is a franchise agreement or a investment cooperation agreement; even worse, some people are ready to mortgage their house just because they heard from a friend that a certain project makes money.

It can be said that there are a large number of people who have been fooled by fast franchise companies, lost all their franchise fees, and worry every day in front of their empty stores, which you can see by staying up for one night.

After listening, Brother Yong calculates accounts for the other party on the spot, and scolds when necessary. "Your store will definitely die after opening" has become his iconic line.

At this time, catering consulting began to take on the flavor of a reality show: the more unconvinced the co-hosting entrepreneurs are, the more persistent they are in their dreams; the higher the sunk cost, the more interesting the live stream becomes.

Everyone loves to see other people's embarrassing stories, especially those with professional interpretation. In his live stream room, failed entrepreneurship stories are far more attractive than success theories. And watching others invest hundreds of thousands of savings through the screen, and then watching Brother Yong calculate the accounts clearly one by one, brings the audience a "fast, accurate and ruthless" experience similar to investment bank due diligence.

The audience can get a sense of substitution without really paying tuition fees, and obtain emotional comfort and entrepreneurial experience from the trial and error experiences of others.

(From the movie *The Bold, the Corrupt, and the Beautiful*)

Among the thousands of people pouring into the live stream room, very few people care about catering or need to start a business. Most of them just want to know how "god-like" the next "god-like person" is. So what Brother Yong really built is not just catering knowledge, but character-focused content.

For Brother Yong, the more he exposes others, the more he looks like someone who understands business; the more people who come to consult him, the easier it is to strengthen the illusion that "he knows everything".

This also makes his "dissuasion-style entrepreneurship consulting" particularly eye-catching. In the current online environment, too many entrepreneurship content creators are keen on selling myths of getting rich overnight, while Brother Yong calmly pours cold water, forming a strong contrast. With these "god-like person" cases being spread through short clips continuously, he has built a very distinct industry godfather persona of "daring to tell the truth, professional and reliable" in the past few years.

(Screenshot from Bilibili)

This persona officially broke out at the end of 2025 after he commented on the loss case of "Ne Zha Fairy Drink" franchisees in his live stream, and the momentum continued to rise afterwards. A media quoted New Rank data saying that from the second half of 2025 to the beginning of 2026, he held about 239 live streams, with a total cumulative sales of about 7.5 million yuan, and gained more than 1.5 million fans in half a year.

By 2026, Brother Yong has entered a very obvious breakout period: before the Spring Festival, he specially edited the 2025 live stream cases into a "full-year pitfall collection", and the nearly 28-minute video once reached millions of views on Bilibili, and was even joked by netizens as "This is too greedy, we should have saved it for the Spring Festival Gala."

Until Brother Yong opened his own restaurant.

02

Two Controversies, One Fatal Flaw

Brother Yong's business path has actually been moving towards the practical school.

In the early days, Brother Yong's homepage was built with a practical persona. (Screenshot from social media)

From the supply chain account selling topping ingredients, to the training base recruiting students, to the launch of 499-yuan online courses, he has built a complete content business chain.

Several years ago, he claimed that he owned more than a dozen snack shops on Jianshe Road in Chengdu, and publicly said "Welcome to crack down on counterfeits".

Under this background, it is almost logical for him to open a restaurant in person. After all, he has talked about "how to run a good store" hundreds of episodes in the live stream room, how could he not run his own store well? The audience will naturally bring these experiences to his offline business.

Brother Yong's "Three Meals Craftsmanship" put up the sign of self-selected weighing, same price for meat and vegetables, shouted the slogan of "10 yuan to get full, 20 yuan to eat well", and priced it at 2.88 yuan per 50 grams. But when diners step into the store and choose a slightly richer meal, the per capita consumption easily exceeds 30 yuan.

Labels such as "fast food assassin" and "the military advisor overturns as soon as he takes the field" came overwhelmingly, just like Brother Yong's sharp comments to others.

In fact, self-selected weighing fast food is not cheap. (From the movie *The Million Pound Note*)

The controversy quickly spread from the price. Netizens began to discuss whether 2.88 yuan per 50 grams is expensive. Weighing fast food has different price ranges, and the actual consumption is also related to the dishes and portions. If we only talk about the price, some stores of Mr. Rice sell for 4.6 yuan per 50 grams, and Country Style Cooking, Laoxiangji are also around 2.98 yuan per 50 grams. The pricing of Three Meals Craftsmanship is not so expensive that it is incomprehensible.

What really made this incident ferment rapidly is that before consumers walked into "Three Meals Craftsmanship", they already had a Brother Yong who is extremely professional in the catering industry in their minds.

For ordinary self-selected fast food with a per capita price of 20 to 30 yuan, customers may just complain that it is a little expensive; but in their eyes, Brother Yong is far more than an ordinary store owner.

(Screenshot from Meituan)

What's more special is that Brother Yong is not an ordinary internet celebrity in the eyes of the audience.

The difference between different internet celebrities is no smaller than the difference between humans and dogs. When ordinary entertainment internet celebrities run catering businesses, the public will subconsciously define it as "harvesting traffic", and they will be scolded for being greedy for money and then it's over. But the public walked into this store with extremely high expectation filters such as "Brother Yong knows best about catering costs" and "Brother Yong is a pit-avoidance expert who helps us save money", so even if he gets 80 points, it is probably difficult to get more than a passing grade in the eyes of these fanatical "public judges".

Netizens dug up his early clips where he advised people to make semi-self-service vegetables and control losses, compared it with the practice of same price for meat and vegetables in his store, and asked "What did you say before, and what are you doing now?" The more traffic Brother Yong gets, the stricter this comparison will be. He soon found that the words he used to say most smoothly in the live stream room have now all become problems he needs to deal with every day.

(Screenshot from social media)

Facing the pricing doubts, Brother Yong explained that he hopes to control costs through better ingredients and quality, and he doesn't want to drive all the small surrounding catering businesses out of the market. This may conform to the current situation of the catering industry, but the audience