20.3 Billion In Annual Revenue! What Makes Panda Express The Number One Chinese Food In The United States?

Domestic KFC and McDonald’s are Chinese young people’s favorite foreign fast food. In foreign countries, a Chinese fast food – Panda Express, is also firing out of the circle. Only the United States has 802 chain stores. The global chain has long exceeded 2,000 stores, with annual revenue as high as 20.3 billion yuan! Today we will look at how this Panda Express is step by step to become the first overseas Chinese fast food.

Panda Express founder named Cheng Zhengchang, ancestral home in Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province, followed his parents to Taiwan in 1953. Then he went to the United States.

Cheng Zhengchang excelled in his studies, earning a bachelor’s degree in mathematics in 1970 and then a master’s degree in 1972. At the same time, he also met his wife, Peggy Chiang, the love of his life, in school. Mrs. Chiang also received her Ph.D. in electrical engineering in the same year.

In 1973, Zhenchang Cheng opened a Chinese restaurant called Jufeng Yuan in California after graduation. Although Jufeng Yuan rubbed off on the Panda hotspot, the business had been lukewarm, and Cheng Zhengchang began to think about what was wrong.

When it comes to cooking, Cheng Zhengchang can be said to have a family history. His father worked as a chef for Jiang, a craft that can not be displayed.

And from North America, rather than the original, rather than the blood of the Western food culture, Chinese food is profound. Do not know how many levels are higher!

To this day, Panda Express still has a line of advertising in the Middle Ages, the European chaos, and the United States was still dominated by stone tools while the Chinese were studying how to fry delicious dishes.

So why did Cheng Zhengchang open a restaurant selling dishes he could not popularize?

At that time in the United States, Chinese immigrants in the past were very many, and Chinese restaurants were many.

At that time, similar to Jufeng Yuan, they liked Cantonese cuisine of Chinese restaurants in the United States as the quality of carp in the river, quality varies.

Cheng Zhengchang’s Jufeng Yuan was on a similar path, with no distinctive features in the crowd of Cantonese Chinese restaurants. Faced with this problem, Cheng Zhengchang racked his brain and devised a data model to analyze the U.S. market.

He found that in the United States, people prefer to eat things that are on the sweet and sour side and love fast food more than many people can imagine.

So, Chen Zhenchang’s traditional Chinese food was transformed into a Western style. He went about the transformation in two main ways!

The first aspect was to adjust the way of seasoning to make the dishes more in line with foreigners’ taste, which is on the sweet and sour side. But at the same time, in the promotion, the emphasis is on Chinese flavor, using the mystery of Oriental culture to attract Americans.

The restaurant also abandoned the time-consuming cooking methods of traditional Chinese food, such as steaming, stewing, etc., and introduced the fast-frying and frying methods of Western-style fast food.

The second aspect is to upgrade the image of the store while changing the name to Panda Express, abandoning the traditional Chinese restaurant traditional Chinese decoration style. The panda theme in the decoration characteristics, using Xing Xing and Ling Ling’s high popularity in the U.S. to rubbish the popularity.

Through these efforts, the business of Panda Express took off, and four or five branches were opened.

In October 1983, under Chen Zhenchang’s persuasion, his wife, Peggy Jiang, quit her previously well-paid career as an engineer and joined the Panda Express team. Ms. Jiang was not here to be a hands-off boss.

She creatively applied her expertise to the restaurant industry in tracking inventory, ordering ingredients, cashiering, and other aspects while analyzing data on customer consumption. So does this sound familiar to anyone?

Yes, this is the routine that businesses often use in our current era of big data, analyzing the hobbies of their customer groups through big data to pinpoint their target customer groups. More than 30 years ago, Ms. Jiang started playing with this set.

This advanced management system soon allowed Panda Express to save a lot of capital costs in the initial expansion phase. This advanced management system to the other Chinese fast food at that time, in a way, can be said to be a descending blow.

And ah, this Jiang Peiqi in the Panda Express issued the first instruction: that all dishes must be standardized dishes cards. What do you mean by “menu card”? It is a refined recipe, and she asked the chef the amount of each ingredient to the exact gram.

To promote this dish card system. Peggy Jiang and Panda Express chefs quarrel, the chefs, think you do things this way is too much effort. Cooking is a craft; all rely on the chef to grasp it. You do this is not let us all be laid off?

That’s right, Ms. Jiang aims to lay off the chefs. His position is that the back kitchen of Panda House will not need chefs in the future. Everyone can be like workers, doing their own thing step by step. They can serve a dish that tastes good. Isn’t this concept the central kitchen and crew method we often talk about now?

Under her insistence, Panda Express’ product complaints became fewer, the follow-up workload was reduced, and the labor cost was lowered. It can be said that Ms. Jiang was really ahead of her time. With the addition of such a superb scientific management system, Panda Express was able to kill the fierce competition in the North American Chinese food market.

Panda Express has more than 2,000 stores worldwide, with a turnover of more than 4 billion RMB, making it the leading Chinese fast food company.

One more thing, Panda Express still adheres to the strategy of not franchising, only direct management stores. Cheng Zhengchang’s statement on this issue is to say: Only in this way can we ensure that each Panda Express brings customers the same amount of experience. Customers will not be treated differently feeling. It will give customers a rare sense of familiarity.

As a Chinese fast food brand, Panda Express has always insisted on not entering the Chinese market. In my opinion, this is actually brilliant development thinking and is also a reflection of Cheng Zhengchang’s unique vision.

Let’s look at how competitive the domestic fast-food market is. Let’s say: Sha Xian snack, Chongqing chicken pot, Lanzhou Ramen, Zhang Liang hot and spicy hot, and so on and so forth countless brands.

Domestic fast-food competition is quite fierce, and there is no so-called blue ocean market waiting for Panda Express to enter, not to mention that Panda Express, to stand firm in the United States, the taste of their products will be fully westernized.

Now, if you go back to enter the Chinese market, the product taste is not to make another adjustment.

30 years of entrepreneurship, Cheng Zhengchang, out of an inspirational American gold rush, a small restaurant with dismal business into the world’s largest Chinese fast food brand, which reflects the ability to seize the moment and highlights the perseverance and determination required of entrepreneurs!

This is the best of times but also the worst of times. With capital thinking and innovation model integration, the world is your stage!

There are no eliminated industries in the new business world, only destroyed products and obsolete business models. All future business competition will focus on product innovation and model innovation.