The wave of second-generation succession in the catering sector: two paths, one common proposition
In 2026, the wave of intergenerational handover in the catering industry officially comes to the forefront.
Zhang Hanzhi, the 28-year-old son of Zhang Yong, founder of Haidilao, finished his overseas studies and officially joined Haidilao, becoming the focus of the industry.
Although he has not taken up a specific management position at present, he has been deeply involved in the decision-making of multiple core business lines. A number of store strategic adjustments in the first half of 2026 were all led by him.
Coincidentally, Han Shuai, son-in-law of Chen Zhenghui, Chairman of Wowprime Group, was promoted again in March 2026 after serving as Chief Operating Officer of the Mainland Business Group in 2025, taking full charge of the overall operation of the group's China market.
These two seemingly independent executive personnel changes actually outline the era changes of China's catering industry : a large-scale and normalized wave of family intergenerational inheritance has arrived.
According to the data forecast of China Food Industry Association, in the next five years starting from 2025 , more than 60% of domestic food and beverage enterprises will complete or promote intergenerational handover, involving a market size of over 4.3 trillion yuan, and the industry pattern will usher in a new round of reshaping.
Facing this unavoidable major industry test, the new generation of catering inheritors have developed two completely different growth paths: establishing their own independent businesses and creating new brands, jumping out of the inherent territory of their parents to achieve self-growth;
Digging deep into old stores and taking over family enterprises, iterating and innovating on the mature foundation to write new chapters. The two paths are very different, but they point to the same core proposition that all second-generation catering inheritors must answer.
01
Create new brands:
Break free from the aura of the older generation, make independent attempts to break through
Building a brand new brand is the preferred starting path for most young second-generation catering inheritors. This is not only an active choice for the new generation to get rid of the "parent label" and independently prove their business capabilities, but also a practical strategy to avoid the constraints of the solidified system of traditional enterprises and have independent trial and error space.
Outside the mature tracks that their parents have deeply cultivated, they look for new business forms and new opportunities to build their own business samples.
Jia Yukun, son of Jia Guolong from Xibei, is a benchmark figure on this innovation path.
In 2019, he jumped out of the mature track of Xibei's Northwest home-cooked dishes, founded the exquisite Chinese bistro brand Zhuangzhuang Tavern, focusing on high-end and exquisite Inner Mongolia cuisine, and reconstructed the consumption scene and product quality of Northwest catering with the new bistro business form.
Differentiated positioning and refined operations allowed Zhuangzhuang Tavern to break through quickly. It was shortlisted for the Beijing Michelin Guide for the first time in 2023, and has won the Michelin Plate recommendation for many consecutive years since then. It is also the only Chinese bistro in China recognized by this honor.
With the benchmark brand he built independently, Jia Yukun completely broke the single external label of "the young master of Xibei", and confirmed his own business operation ability with the industry's authoritative recognition.
Compared with Jia Yukun's smooth breakthrough, Du Hang, son of Du Zhongbing from Banu, has experienced many twists and turns in his entrepreneurial trial and error path. In 2019, Du Hang, who was still studying overseas, was recalled to China to independently found Chaodao Self-service Hot Pot and start his independent entrepreneurial journey.
However, in September 2023, Chaodao Hot Pot fell into a major public opinion crisis due to a product sampling inspection incident, and it was exposed that lamb rolls were mixed with duck meat. Banu Group immediately compensated consumers 8.354 million yuan first to fully calm the public opinion. After this crisis, the Chaodao brand completely withdrew from the market, and Du Hang's first independent entrepreneurship came to an end.
After that, he chose to return to the Banu system, starting as a grassroots product manager, taking root in the core business, and officially embarking on the formal succession path.
Talking about getting along and growing up with his parents, Du Hang once confessed that he and his father had a "love-hate" relationship, and gradually understood the business logic of the family enterprise in the collision and running-in of ideas.
Gao Lin, daughter of Gao Defu from Xijiade, has taken a differentiated path of industrial extension.
She did not directly participate in the daily operation of Xijiade, but realized cross-border linkage of the catering industry through marriage. Her husband Le Zhuo is deeply involved in the high-end Western food track in Dalian, and is in charge of a well-known local Western restaurant brand.
Relying on industrial marriage, Gao Lin has achieved in-depth integration with the Xijiade family industry. This flexible extension and cross-border linkage model has also become a typical way for catering family enterprises to achieve diversified layout and intergenerational expansion.
The core advantage of self-created brands is that they provide second-generation catering inheritors with a low-binding and high-independent trial and error space, without facing the hierarchical constraints and inherent thinking of traditional enterprises, and can fully practice younger and more modern business concepts.
However, the shortcomings of this path are also prominent : Although the new generation brand seems independent, it is actually deeply bound to the parent brand, sharing weal and woe.
Du Hang's Chaodao incident fully proves that the risks of new brands will eventually be transmitted to the parent enterprise. The cost of trial and error often needs to be borne by the entire family industry, and the linkage risk of "one loss for all" always exists. It is worth noting that some second-generation catering inheritors have taken an integrated path of "starting an external business first, then taking over the business", which combines the innovation of independent entrepreneurship and the stability of inheriting the family business. The second-generation inheritance of Tai Hing Group and Wangshunge is a typical model. Chen Jiaqiang, son of Chen Yongan from Tai Hing Group, did not directly join the core management of the family enterprise after returning from studying abroad. Instead, he chose to explore independently outside the group system, deeply cultivated the new catering track, and successfully incubated and created more than 10 differentiated new brands such as Chamu and Yacan, fully verifying his brand operation and market operation capabilities, and accumulating mature market-oriented business experience.
After years of external entrepreneurial experience, Chen Jiaqiang officially took full charge of the Tai Hing Group's business in 2025 and served as the Chairman of the Group's Board of Directors, coordinating the group's overall strategy and full-domain operations , completing the smooth transition from "external entrepreneur" to "family helmsman". Dai Jiaheng, son of Dai Zhen, founder of Wangshunge, has a highly similar growth path.
After returning from studying overseas, he jumped out of the inherent track of Wangshunge's traditional fish head with pancake, independently founded the high-end creative Beijing cuisine brand TIDU, deeply cultivated the new high-end catering track, focused on creative dishes that integrate Chinese and Western elements and younger scenario experience, and successfully built a benchmark new catering brand. At the same time, he successively incubated multiple featured sub-brands, building a differentiated new brand matrix.
With the successful breakthrough of the new brand and mature operation capabilities , Dai Jiaheng finally took full charge of the overall business of Wangshunge Group, empowering the upgrading of the traditional main business with the vision of the new generation, and realizing two-way empowerment of new and old businesses. This kind of integrated succession breaks the dual opposition between "self-created brand" and "taking over the old store", and has become a new mainstream model of intergenerational inheritance for leading catering family enterprises at present.
02
Take over the parents' enterprise:
Take root in the mature foundation, seek new changes on the basis of adhering to the core advantages
Different from the innovative path of starting a new business from scratch, more second-generation catering inheritors choose to deeply cultivate the family's inherent industry, directly join the mature enterprise system, and complete the smooth intergenerational handover from the inside.
This seemingly stable succession path actually hides many challenges:
They not only need to take over the huge organizational system and mature business chain, but also need to break through the management model, corporate culture and inherent thinking accumulated by their parents for many years, and find a balance between maintaining traditions and pursuing innovation.
Shu Xiaolong, son of Shu Congxuan, founder of Laoxiangji, is a typical sample of in-depth cultivation and iterative innovation.
As early as 2012, Shu Xiaolong joined Laoxiangji, took root in the grassroots to get familiar with the full-link business, and after more than ten years of precipitation, he served as Vice Chairman in 2023. In 2024, as founder Shu Congxuan officially retired, he fully took over as Chairman and CEO, completing the smooth intergenerational handover.
Before officially taking the helm, Shu Xiaolong led the all-round upgrading of the enterprise, focusing on digital, transparent and intelligent transformation, and implementing core measures such as store digital transformation and open kitchen upgrading.
The digital system he led fully covers the whole links of breeding traceability, central kitchen intelligent production, and store terminal cash register management, realizing digital management and control of the whole industrial chain.
In 2025, Laoxiangji reached an in-depth strategic cooperation with DingTalk, and made every effort to lay out the new model of "AI + catering", empowering the transformation and upgrading of traditional Chinese fast food with intelligence, and injecting younger and digital vitality into the traditional foundation that has been cultivated for many years.
The succession path of Zhang Hanzhi from Haidilao has just started a gradual exploration. In 2022, Zhang Yong stepped down as CEO of Haidilao and temporarily withdrew from front-line management;
At the beginning of 2026, in order to help the enterprise complete a smooth handover, Zhang Yong returned to the front line to control the strategy. In the same year, Zhang Hanzhi, who had completed his overseas studies, officially joined Haidilao.
Adhering to the idea of steady training, Zhang Yong did not directly give his son core decision-making power, and confessed that the enterprise is huge with hundreds of thousands of employees, so it is not stable to transfer powers and responsibilities rashly.
At present, Zhang Hanzhi takes the grassroots business as the entry point, low-key participates in store management and team operation, and has successively launched a number of refined adjustments:
Stop the layout of homogeneous pet-themed stores, optimize the employee management system, and relax the strict restrictions on hairstyles, fine-tune the details of the enterprise with younger and more humanized management thinking, and start a gradual succession experience.
Wowprime Group has adopted an innovative model of "family joint succession", in which Chen Yourou, daughter of founder Chen Zhenghui, and son-in-law Han Shuai jointly take charge of the overall situation.
In 2023, Chen Yourou joined the board of directors as a legal representative, entered the core decision-making level of the enterprise, and controlled the strategic direction;
In 2025, Han Shuai served as Chief Operating Officer of the Mainland Business Group, deeply engaged in front-line business operations, and was promoted to General Manager again in 2026 to fully coordinate the business of the China market. Chen Zhenghui highly recognized this succession team, saying that after Han Shuai joined, the operating conditions of the Mainland Business Group continued to improve, and successfully went through the industry trough. The family succession model where one controls the strategy and the other deeply engages in operation has become a high-quality model for the smooth inheritance of large catering groups.
The core test of the succession path of deeply cultivating the family foundation is "upholding fundamentals while pursuing innovation". Shu Xiaolong reconstructed the traditional catering operation system with digitalization, breaking the efficiency bottleneck of traditional enterprises;
Zhang Hanzhi started from store details and employee management to fine-tune corporate culture and operation logic;
Relying on overseas vision and business experience, Han Shuai injected new business ideas into the mainland market. All second-generation catering inheritors who join the old stores face the same core exam question: how to stick to the core advantages of the enterprise, inherit the background of the brand, and at the same time break through the inherent model to adapt to the industry competition in the new era.
03
Two paths, same destination:
Solve the era proposition of inheritance
From the surface point of view, creating new brands independently and taking over the old foundation are two completely opposite succession tracks: one breaks outwards and starts a business from scratch, the other digs inwards and iterates inheritance. But looking through the appearance, it is not difficult to find that the core dilemmas and ultimate goals of the two paths are highly unified. All second-generation catering inheritors must face the same proposition: how to break free from the aura of the older generation, avoid the thinking shadow of their parents, and find their own positioning and value in the family foundation.
Second-generation catering inheritors who start businesses independently have always been difficult to get rid of the shackles of identity labels.
Even if Jia Yukun's Zhuangzhuang Tavern has won industry authoritative honors, the outside world will still bind his achievements to the "Xibei family"; Du Hang's entrepreneurial failure ultimately needs to rely on the Banu parent to stop losses, the independent exploration of the new generation has always been deeply bound to the family foundation.
While the second-generation catering inheritors who take over the old stores also face heavy scrutiny: every reform of Shu Xiaolong needs to balance the inherent label of "founder's son" and the professional identity of "new generation helmsman";
Every decision made by Zhang Hanzhi will be compared with that of his parents by the industry and internal teams. Innovation moves are easily questioned as "subverting traditions", while conservative moves will be criticized as "lack of breakthrough".
The difference in growth background and industry environment between the two generations further amplifies the difficulty of inheritance.
The older generation of entrepreneurs rose in the incremental era of the catering industry, with blank tracks and sufficient opportunities. They could quickly gain a foothold and grow bigger and stronger by relying on courage and deep cultivation.
However, the current second-generation catering inheritors are in a highly involuted stock competition market, with peaking traffic, fierce competition and continuously iterating consumer demand, making operation far more difficult than before.
Data shows that more than 80% of the second-generation catering inheritors are unwilling to take over passively, and there are very few family catering enterprises that can successfully complete smooth intergenerational handover and continue to achieve enterprise growth.
Because the road to inheritance is full of challenges, the second-generation catering inheritors who dare to take the initiative to take over and participate in the business have already become the core force of industry innovation.
Professor Xin Rong, an organizational behavior expert from China Europe International Business School, once pointed out that the intergenerational inheritance of domestic family enterprises generally has three core contradictions: the conflict between modern enterprise governance concepts and traditional humanized management, the imbalance between the urgency of reform and innovation and the inherent tolerance of the organization, and the cultural cognition dislocation between the new generation and the older generation.
Looking at the exploration path of the second-generation catering inheritors, it exactly corresponds to and solves the core contradictions of industry inheritance: Shu Xiaolong's digital reform uses modern management systems to replace traditional humanized management, resolving the conflict of governance modes;
Jia Yukun's new Michelin bistro bridges the cultural cognitive gap between the two generations with younger aesthetics and new business forms; Du Hang's experience from entrepreneurial trial and error to returning to deep cultivation intuitively shows the game process between enterprise reform and organizational adaptation, and interprets the cruelty and inevitability of inheritance iteration.
From Shu Xiaolong and Jia Yukun to Du Hang, from Zhang Hanzhi and Han Shuai to Gao Lin, the new generation of second-generation catering inheritors are moving to the forefront of the industry in batches.
The tracks are different and the methods are varied, but they are always answering the same ultimate question: how to take over the foundation laid by their parents, and how to make traditional catering brands continue to grow and develop steadily in the new era.
There is no standard answer to inheritance, and there is no fixed path for innovation.
This intergenerational handover of the catering