中国最大鸡排店要IPO了

This article outlines the full trajectory of iconic Chinese street food brand Zhengxin Chicken Steak: from its founding, rise to peak, decline, and current preparations for an IPO in Hong Kong, offering practical insights into China's food and beverage consumption industry.

1. Development timeline: Founder Chen Chuanwu entered business in the 1990s, opened the first Zhengxin snack shop in 2000, cut 90% of its SKUs to focus on chicken steak in 2012, began franchising after the 2013 avian flu outbreak, exceeded 10,000 stores in 2017 – becoming China's first fast-food snack brand to reach 10,000 locations three years earlier than Mixue Ice City – and peaked at 25,000 stores nationwide.

2. Core reasons for decline: Zhengxin closed more than 10,000 stores in less than five years, leaving just over 9,500 locations today. Key factors include over-saturation from aggressive expansion that squeezed per-store profits, declining product quality that eroded its value proposition, chaotic franchise management that triggered food safety trust crises, and intense competition from a flood of similar fried chicken brands.

3. Broader industry context: Zhengxin is not an isolated case. Former leading food and beverage brands including Juewei, Tai Er, and Xiabu Xiabu have all seen significant store closures. Industry trends shift rapidly, making sustainable long-term operation extremely challenging.

This article maps the rise and fall of Zhengxin Chicken Steak, from 10,000-store leader to massive store closures, offering valuable operational lessons for food and beverage brands.

1. Early success factors: Zhengxin accurately tapped into consumer demand in lower-tier markets, positioned its core chicken steak product at around 10 yuan ($1.40), simplified supply chain management by focusing on a small core SKU set, achieved low-cost rapid expansion via franchising, and built brand recognition quickly through high-profile marketing – including signing actor Huang Bo as spokesperson and large-scale ad campaigns – reaching 10,000 stores in just four years.

2. Key missteps: The brand prioritized expansion over profitability, opening multiple locations within hundreds of meters of each other that directly hurt individual store performance. Price hikes erased its value advantage, product innovation stalled, and post-franchising quality control lapsed. Frequent food safety incidents gradually eroded consumer trust, eventually leading the brand to fall out of favor with the market.

3. Current consumer trends: Modern consumers increasingly prioritize product quality and brand reputation. Long-standing single-category brands that fail to adapt to shifting demand easily lose market share to competitors. Sustainable brand growth requires balancing expansion speed with operational capacity, plus continuous product updates and reputation management.

Using Zhengxin Chicken Steak's rise and fall as a case study, this article summarizes key lessons for food and snack sellers, and outlines current industry opportunities and risks.

1. Actionable takeaways: The affordable snack segment has large untapped demand in lower-tier markets. The small-store, low-labor, simple-operation model has low barriers to entry, and franchising enables extremely rapid growth. With the right positioning to address mass consumer pain points, brands can scale quickly, as Zhengxin demonstrated when it became the industry leader in just a few years.

2. Critical risks to avoid: High-density store placement in the same region directly drags down per-store profitability. Declining product quality quickly erodes accumulated consumer trust. Single-core-category brands that stagnate on product innovation easily lose market share to new competitors. For franchising models, rigorous quality control is non-negotiable: a single food safety scandal can trigger a brand-wide trust collapse.

3. Current industry landscape: More than 70% of Chinese chain restaurant brands have seen zero per-store sales growth, and nearly half have recorded sales drops of over 5%. Viral dining concepts lose popularity extremely quickly. New entrants cannot rely on short-term hype alone, and must build capabilities for sustainable long-term operation.

The rise and fall of Zhengxin Chicken Steak offers multiple insights and new business opportunities for upstream manufacturing suppliers that serve food and beverage brands.

1. Shifts in product design and production requirements: Early consumers favored large, affordable street fried snacks, so factories needed to produce standardized large-format chicken steaks to support the brand's 10,000-store expansion. Today, consumers prioritize higher quality, and criticize Zhengxin for thick batter and too little chicken. Factories need to adjust product formulas to match new consumer demand for higher-quality snacks.

2. Untapped business opportunities: The fried snack segment has low barriers to entry, so new brands keep entering the market. Large numbers of small and medium-sized food brands have stable demand for standardized semi-finished fried products. Factories can develop customized offerings for different brands to expand their order base.

3. Insights for digital transformation: After chain brands scale, reducing SKU counts simplifies supply chain complexity. Factories can launch streamlined standardized product lines to match chain brands' management needs, while accelerating the construction of their own digital supply systems to meet the fine-grained nationwide distribution requirements of chain brands.

This article maps the current development status and core pain points of China's chain restaurant industry, outlining industry trends and service priorities for food and beverage-focused service providers.

1. Overall industry trends: China's restaurant industry has evolved from fragmented family-owned operations to standardized large-scale chain expansion, and has now entered an era of stock competition. A large number of leading brands have implemented massive store closures, and industry-wide per-store growth is under significant pressure, leading to surging demand for refined operational services.

2. Core pain points for food and beverage clients: Franchised chain brands struggle with irrational site selection and high quality control difficulty, which often leads to food safety incidents. Most established long-standing chains face brand aging and slow product iteration, while new brands struggle with expansion barriers and unstable supply chains.

3. Direction for solution development: Service providers can build intelligent site planning systems and standardized quality control management frameworks for franchised brands, offer product innovation consulting and brand refresh services for established brands, and help food and beverage enterprises improve long-term operational capabilities to better adapt to industry shifts and capture growth opportunities in the stock market.

This article outlines the current status and core pain points of China's chain restaurant industry, offering high-value reference for platforms that partner with food and beverage brands.

1. Core demands from food and beverage brands: Mature leading chain brands need financing for IPOs and brand upgrading, while small and medium-sized franchised brands need support for recruitment and expansion and supply chain connections. All require platforms to provide support in capital, traffic, and operations.

2. Key considerations for platform operation and management: After rapid expansion, a large number of franchised food brands have closed massive numbers of stores. When recruiting and onboarding new brands, platforms need to pre-assess brands' product competitiveness and management capabilities to avoid unqualified brands damaging user trust in the platform.

3. Industry risks to avoid: The overall restaurant industry is currently facing stagnant per-store growth, and viral food brands lose popularity extremely quickly. Platforms should not overhype short-term trend-driven concepts; instead, they should guide brands to prioritize long-term operation, while optimizing brand review and supervision systems on their platforms to support the growth of high-quality brands.

Taking Zhengxin Chicken Steak – which is now preparing for an IPO after declining from "king of 10,000 stores" to massive closures – as a representative case, this article sorts out the development history of China's affordable chain restaurant sector, offering high sample value for industrial research.

1. New industry developments: China's chain restaurant industry has gone through three stages: fragmented family-owned operations, standardized land-grab expansion, and 10,000-store scaling. It is now in the stock competition phase. The early high-speed 10,000-store expansion model has revealed systemic flaws: multiple leading brands including Juewei, Tai Er, and Xiabu Xiabu have carried out large-scale store closures, and overall industry growth has slowed and entered a correction period.

2. Newly exposed industry problems: The franchised 10,000-store expansion model has inherent flaws. A focus on expansion over operation easily leads to out-of-control quality control, intra-brand competition in the same region, brand aging and lagging product iteration. Single-category affordable chain brands are particularly vulnerable to hitting growth ceilings.

3. Insights for business model research: The franchised下沉 expansion model helped Zhengxin become an industry leader quickly, but it is unsustainable over the long term. Chain restaurant brands must balance expansion speed with operational quality, and continuously adapt to shifting consumer demand to achieve long-term survival. This case provides a representative sample for research on business models of Chinese chain restaurants.