Haidilao once again tries new scenes, this time it is a community full of fireworks. On September 9, the editor of Business Events learned that Haidilao's first community store in China has officially opened in Changping District, Beijing. The store is not large in size. There are only 18 dining tables in the store, and it is trying to cover the catering needs of all times through breakfast trucks and cooked food stalls. In recent years, Haidilao has been constantly trying through "hot pot +". In addition to community stores, it has also laid out scenes such as super dessert stations, beef workshops, and mutton workshops. In the view of industry insiders, community catering consumption has great potential, and Haidilao is also trying to reach more consumer groups, but competition in the community track is also fierce, and Haidilao needs to truly combine the consumption demand layout in the scenario.

Full category products + full-time operation

Sauce meat buns, tea eggs, tremella porridge... Recently, a breakfast car near Jiuyaoli has added breakfast options for surrounding residents. When you get closer, you will see that the door of the "Haidilao Hot Pot Community Store" next to the dining car is particularly conspicuous, and there is a window for selling cooked food. This is Haidilao's new store type.

As a brand new store type under the "Different Haidilao" plan, Haidilao Community Store flexibly sets up different dining and dining spaces through 200 square meters of indoor and outdoor spaces. In terms of products, in addition to Haidilao's conventional hot pot products, breakfast products include various buns, steamed dumplings, soy milk and porridge, etc. The window sells cooked food products such as tiger skin chicken feet, beef sauce, pepper and hemp chicken. In terms of price, the breakfast buns and other staple food products are priced at 1.5-4.5 yuan per piece, and the porridge is 3 yuan per bowl, which is relatively affordable.

According to the person in charge of Haidilao's first community store in the country, the store is located in Jiuyaoli community-type commercial district, radiating to more than 10 surrounding communities and many universities, and can meet the full-time dining needs of diverse groups such as community neighbors, students and office workers. Based on the survey of community customer groups and consumption habits, the community store team finally promoted the implementation of the project after months of research and plan polishing. During the operation process, Haidilao will continue to collect feedback from neighbors and continuously improve product structure and services. It is expected that diversified categories such as snack braised food, barbecue, and bibimbap will be launched in the future.

About Haidilao opening its first community store, the relevant person in charge of Haidilao said that because it wants to be closer to neighborhoods, the community store is smaller than the regular store, and there are only 18 dining tables indoors. Although the area has decreased, Haidilao hopes that the store can carry more functions, so it adopts a full-category product portfolio and a full-time operation model.

Try to explore more consumer groups

Sun Gonghe, director of the catering department of the China Chain Business Association, believes that from the phenomenon of "Sui Chao's 10 yuan tickets to leverage 300 yuan per capita cultural and tourism consumption", we can see that service consumption has shifted from functional supply to emotional connection. "When 'emotional value' becomes popular, community catering chain stores are evolving into urban capillary-level emotional supply stations." It is not difficult to see the potential of community catering, and Haidilao is also following the trend.

In fact, Haidilao’s community store is just a microcosm of its attempt, such as “hot pot + dessert station”, “hot pot + beef workshop”, “hot pot + lamb workshop”, etc. In recent years, Haidilao has done its homework on scenes and has launched various forms around “hot pot +”. Now that Haidilao has launched a community store again, it is not difficult to see its intention to seek growth points.

Not only the main brand Haidilao is trying different scenarios, but Haidilao has more and more sub-brands entering the market. Not long ago, Haidilao revealed the progress of the "Red Pomegranate Plan". According to reports, Haidilao announced the implementation of the "Red Pomegranate Plan" in August 2024. As of June 30, 2025, in addition to Haidilao Hotpot, Haidilao operated a total of 126 restaurants including "Yan Guaranteed Barbecue Shop", "Congqian Yinxiang", and "Xiao Hi Love Fried". Among them, "Yan Guaranteed Barbecue Shop" opened 46 new stores during the period, with a total of 70 stores.

Wang Peng, an associate researcher at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, said that the community has a huge and stable consumer group, and residents' willingness and ability to consume with the development of the community economy is enough to see the potential of the community scenario. At the same time, consumers are pursuing convenient catering. Haidilao's full-time business model of community stores meets this demand. This move expands the market boundaries and moves from traditional business districts to residents' living circles. It can explore new consumer groups, narrow the distance with consumers, and enhance brand affinity and sense of identity.

Amplify brand synergy advantages

From initially providing manicure, live face swing, Sichuan opera face change, and later launching concert pick-up buses, hair washing, egg puffing, etc., Haidilao's considerate service has always been its competitiveness. Faced with fierce competition in the hot pot market and certain pressure brought by the capital market, Haidilao is now constantly trying to make stores, sub-brands and services. In this process, Haidilao's core characteristics seem to be changing.

When conducting this experiment in community stores, Haidilao undoubtedly faces certain difficulties. The relevant person in charge of Haidilao also bluntly stated that how to meet the diverse needs of consumers through this 80-square-meter small store is indeed a challenge facing this community store.

Gao Zhengyang, a special researcher at Sushang Bank, believes that Haidilao has brand influence and reputation, can gain consumer trust, thereby quickly attracting community family customers, significantly reducing the store’s customer acquisition costs, and helping it quickly gain a foothold in the community scenario. Not only that, Haidilao's mature supply chain system can provide community stores with dual guarantees of stable food supply and strict quality control, which can not only reduce the quality control risks of small-scale stores, but also provide support for the efficient operation of community stores through centralized procurement and efficient delivery.

However, Gao Zhengyang mentioned that the consumption scenarios of hot pot and breakfast and cooked food are significantly different. At present, it seems that Haidilao's diverse scenarios are difficult to integrate, and the store layout needs to accurately balance the functional positioning of different categories. Secondly, there are many mature brands in the community catering track, and consumers have diverse choices. Haidilao needs to find a differentiated balance between price and quality in order to effectively attract and retain customer groups.

Therefore, in terms of community stores, Haidilao needs to focus on the "cookie economy". Gao Zhengyang believes that from the perspective of customer group structure, community stores are highly dependent on regular customers, and can accurately match the dietary preferences of community residents through research or consumption analysis and optimize core products. At the same time, Haidilao needs to promote localized customization of services, and can use data analysis to capture community consumption habits, dynamically adjust product portfolios, and improve residents' consumption experience. Judging from the development plan of the entire brand, Haidilao has incubated multiple brands in recent years. In the process of multi-brand incubation and diversified development, how to achieve coordinated development of multiple brands while maintaining the core competitiveness of the hot pot business is a key issue that Haidilao needs to make breakthroughs in the future.

Zhang Tianyuan/text

Photo source: Beijing Business Daily provided by enterprises