How long can the queues outside a brand’s first overseas store last? And how many customers drawn in by the novelty will become regulars? For Chinese restaurant brands expanding internationally, opening a store is only the beginning of the challenge of building a local business and retaining customers.
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On September 4, 2026, the Chinese Restaurant Brands Globalization Salon took place in Shanghai. Organized by EqualOceana think tank focused on Chinese companies’ global expansion, and co-organized by global cloud communications platform Infobip（英富必）, the event brought together speakers from Ningji（柠季）, Gantang Mingshan（甘棠明善）, Zhu Guang Yu Hot Pot（朱光玉火锅馆）, CoCo Fresh Tea & Juice（都可）, and Global Rollout of Chinese Restaurants（中餐全球开店）. Representatives from Majiyong（马记永）, Green Tea Group（绿茶集团）, Tasiting（塔斯汀）, and MIXUE（蜜雪冰城）also joined the discussion. More than 40 restaurant brand representatives, investors, and industry practitioners gathered to explore the next phase of Chinese restaurants’ overseas expansion.
Opening the event, moderator Tongchun Qiu（邱同春）, an analyst at EqualOcean, outlined the central question: “A few years ago, everyone was worried about how to open stores overseas. Today, the real challenge is how to retain local customers—once they have visited for the first time, how do we bring them back for a second and third visit?”
As the emphasis shifts from opening stores to generating repeat business, Chinese restaurant brands must confront a reality that has long been underestimated: Chinese cuisine remains a niche dining category overseas. The salon revisited store-opening strategies, customer acquisition costs, changes in customer composition, and the management of repeat business. There is no standard answer for this next phase, but operators working on the ground have practical approaches to share.
In his opening remarks, Yongping Yang(杨永平）, General Manager of EqualOcean, described China’s current globalization landscape as “one body with two wings.” One wing comprises technology-driven companies in fields such as embodied intelligence and AI agents; the other consists of emerging businesses driven by cultural creativity and consumers’ desire for emotional value. Restaurants sit firmly within the latter.
He cited figures indicating that more than 200 Chinese restaurant companies have expanded overseas, contributing to a market worth more than RMB 400 billion, with a compound annual growth rate of 7–8%. “The significance of taking restaurants overseas extends far beyond the restaurant industry itself,” Yang emphasized. “If done well, it can help many other industries and sectors expand internationally.”
In Yang’s view, an overseas Chinese restaurant offers more than a menu. It provides an accessible, everyday way for consumers to experience Chinese food and culture. Sustaining that connection, however, requires brands to develop the capabilities needed to operate locally over the long term.
Jimmy Dong（董迅）, Vice President and Head of Overseas Markets at Ningji, delivered a presentation titled “Ningji’s Overseas Journey: From Market Entry to the Next Stage.” He shared the brand’s thinking on market selection, business model validation, and the different strategies required for brands and product categories across markets.
He likened global markets to people at different stages of life: Indonesia has an average age of 29, China 38, and Japan approximately 50. Different age profiles correspond to different consumption habits, product preferences, and business opportunities.
Under this framework of “young, middle-aged, and older” markets, Southeast Asia, excluding Singapore, offers mass-market opportunities. Dong described it as a favorable stage in which “products exist, but categories—and even more so, brands—have yet to become established.” China, by contrast, presents opportunities within distinct consumer communities, with fragmented demand and consumers willing to pay for emotional value. Japan’s older consumer market favors highly specialized offerings, illustrated by the provision of different types of bowls and chopsticks within a single restaurant.
Based on this assessment, Ningji has identified Malaysia, Australia, and New Zealand as its core overseas markets. With ethnic Chinese accounting for nearly 30% of its population, and GDP per capita and preferences for communication channels resembling those in China, Malaysia was described as “the safest nearby market for overseas expansion.” Australia and New Zealand, meanwhile, offer fewer alternatives in the category, and local consumers are willing to give new entrants room to experiment.
Dong’s account of Ningji’s first-store strategy challenged a common industry approach. The brand chose Johor Bahru for its first Malaysian store instead of entering a prime retail district in Kuala Lumpur. According to Dong, Johor Bahru provides access to both the Singaporean and Malaysian markets, while offering relatively lower rental and labor costs.
“We spent six months quietly refining the model,” he said. “We believed it first needed to survive on the strength of the product and repeat business, without relying on foot traffic from prime shopping districts or major malls. Only then could we move into major cities such as Kuala Lumpur and their key retail districts and shopping centers.”
This sequence—validating a lower-cost model before entering prime locations—distinguishes Ningji’s approach from brands that begin overseas expansion with high-profile, heavily funded launches.
Dong explained that Ningji did not invent the framework. It essentially combines consumer market segmentation with the different stages of development in the restaurant industry. When a market is in a favorable growth phase, competition is less intense and consumers are more willing to try new entrants, creating a window in which to establish awareness of a category and a brand. Once a market matures and growth slows, competition intensifies, and new brands must carve out space through differentiation.
His planned sequence is to “first validate the model and build recognition in regional markets where products exist but categories and brands are not yet established; then raise the brand’s profile in mature markets to strengthen consumer trust; and finally, choose store expansion and profit-generation strategies according to changes in the model and the market.”
Once a store model has been initially validated, how can a brand continue reaching customers and turn first visits into repeat purchases? Dorothy Cheng, Head of APAC Growth Market at Infobip, and William Zhang, Customer Success Manager, addressed this question in their presentation, “Global Customer Connections and Growth for Restaurant Brands in the AI Era.”
The two speakers summarized four challenges facing Chinese restaurant brands overseas: opening a store, acquiring customers, retaining customers, and replicating success across locations.
Discussing these four hurdles, Cheng highlighted a reality that many brands underestimate: beyond the first challenge, the second, third, and fourth become increasingly intertwined. As the store network grows, the number of tasks requiring coordination from headquarters can increase exponentially.
She described a recurring turning point: when brands approach approximately 50 overseas stores, repeat purchase rates often rise initially and then decline. The issue, she argued, is not deteriorating store quality, but a weakening connection between headquarters and loyalty program members.
“An overseas member will not like your brand more simply because you have opened 50 stores,” she said. “Whether they choose you again next month depends on their immediate experience of being reached and remembered.”
Zhang then discussed how omnichannel communications and AI applications can support customer engagement. Brands can connect with consumers through locally popular platforms such as WhatsApp, LINE, Viber, and Zalo, consolidate fragmented customer information into unified profiles, and set up automated communications around occasions such as members’ birthdays, new store openings, holidays, and coupon expiration dates.
These scenarios share a common principle: communicating when a customer is likely to have a relevant need. Birthday benefits, store updates, and promotional reminders serve different purposes. Brands therefore need to consider customer characteristics and their stage in the purchasing journey when deciding what to communicate, through which channel, and at what time. Zhang stressed that the value of AI and automation lies not in replacing store managers’ staff, but in rebuilding a closer connection between headquarters and loyalty program members.
The results of this approach were measurable in the case of Haidilao（海底捞）. In supporting the brand across 14 national markets, the Infobip team worked with Haidilao to establish three customer segments: local customers reached through WhatsApp and email, ethnic Chinese customers through WeChat and SMS, and international tourists through SMS and email.
Haidilao’s existing messaging channels had achieved a delivery rate of 95%, but an open rate of less than 0.3%. Following Infobip’s involvement, the open rate improved 2.4-fold. The change extended beyond the channels themselves. By replacing campaign-list-based messaging with event-triggered member journeys, Haidilao could, for the first time, see from headquarters whether individual overseas customers had opened a message, rather than simply whether it had been sent.
In closing, Cheng took the idea of event-triggered engagement a step further: treating consumers as individuals rather than as entries on a list.
“From the perspective of headquarters in China, members are a statistical group. From the perspective of an overseas store, they are individual faces, individual visits, and repeat purchases made day after day.”
For Cheng, this is the starting point for rebuilding an overseas loyalty program. When a brand can assign an individual profile to a local diner and recommend a menu that differs from the one offered to its ethnic Chinese customers, it has established a foundation for actively cultivating repeat business overseas.
The roundtable, titled “From the First Try to the Decision to Return,” was moderated by Yiwen Ma（马一文）, a partner at EqualOcean’s GoGlobal Committee of 100. Five panelists discussed acquiring a brand’s first customers, connecting online and offline experiences, encouraging repeat visits among loyalty program members, and managing growth at scale. Their experiences as brand operators and customer engagement service providers brought different perspectives to the discussion.
Chenyu Xiong（熊晨宇）, Head of Overseas Business at Gantang Mingshan: Reaching Local Customers and Building Repeat Business Beyond Discounts
“There are three things to look at when judging whether a brand has broken beyond its original customer base,” Xiong said. “First, is revenue stable? Second, has the customer base expanded from ethnic Chinese consumers to other Asian communities and a broader Asian audience? Third, are customers returning naturally—for the food and the experience—or because you are offering them a 50% discount?”
Using TANYU（探鱼）’s entry into Singapore through a franchise partnership in 2017 as an example, he unpacked each indicator. Revenue stability means assessing whether year-on-year growth outperforms the surrounding retail district. Changes in customer composition provide particularly strong evidence of broader market acceptance: if new customers are still predominantly ethnic Chinese after three years, the brand has yet to establish itself fully in the local market. Repeat visits without promotional incentives, meanwhile, are a test of the customer experience.
“If repeat business depends on coupons, the day you stop issuing them is the day the brand begins to run into trouble.”
In his view, the evolution of TANYU’s customer base is among the most valuable achievements the brand has accumulated over its years in Singapore.
Yang Li（李扬）, Founding Partner of Zhu Guang Yu Hot Pot: Master the Fundamentals Before Expanding Overseas
Li brought the discussion back to a team’s operational fundamentals.
“To judge whether a team is ready to go overseas, ask one question: can you successfully run a restaurant in Yining, Xinjiang, close to Kazakhstan? If you cannot, do not go overseas.”
In his view, there are no shortcuts abroad. Teams that can meet this test succeed through solid operating capabilities, rather than by choosing whichever market is currently attracting the most attention.
In Malaysia, Zhu Guang Yu Hot Pot’s first Kuala Lumpur restaurant covered 2,500 square meters, with a karaoke venue upstairs and private rooms where guests could sing and dance. Li used a large landmark location to establish the brand’s presence, before expanding to 10 stores across Kuala Lumpur and gradually moving from tourist areas into neighborhoods serving local residents.
He also emphasized that overseas expansion requires clarity about which elements of the product and experience must be preserved and which can be adapted to local consumption habits. Using Sichuan hot pot as an example, he said: “The red color of the broth in the pot at the center of the table stays the same. Everything else can change.”
Behind this approach—building visibility first, then moving deeper into the local market—is the brand’s choice of operating model. All overseas stores are directly operated rather than franchised.
“Franchisees always focus on short-term returns. They will not stay with you through the time it takes to build recognition in a city.”
Warren Chen, General Manager of International Business at CoCo: Maintaining Product Standards While Meeting Local Needs
Drawing on CoCo’s 15 years of overseas expansion, Warren Chen used the four dimensions of international distance—cultural, administrative, geographic, and economic—to explain how the brand balances standardization and localization across more than 30 countries.
He emphasized that localization ultimately means making the brand and its products part of consumers’ everyday lives. To maintain consistent brand recognition and customer experience, 75% of products are standardized globally, while adjustments are made to reflect cultural preferences and local tastes.
“Selling cold drinks is not realistic in places where temperatures remain below freezing for extended periods,” Chen said. But adaptation does not mean diluting the brand’s identity. Wherever consumers are, “when they see CoCo, they know they will get the CoCo taste.”
This balance depends on clear internal management mechanisms. Elements that cannot change are written into standard operating procedures as firm requirements; areas where adaptation is encouraged are delegated according to market tiers.
Chen concluded that internationalization is a cumulative process. The key is to keep developing market insight, take strong products and successful experience overseas, and use local operations to give customers reasons to return.
Darko Liang（梁大宽）, Head of Customer Growth, APAC, at Infobip: The Wrong Channel Can Be Worse Than No Channel
“Understand the market before choosing the channel,” Liang advised. “WhatsApp has the highest penetration in Malaysia, while LINE is stronger in Thailand and Taiwan. Choosing the wrong channel can be worse than having no channel at all.”
He recommended that brands map every touchpoint in the customer journey before expanding overseas—from the emergence of a need, searching, and comparing prices to visiting the restaurant, dining, sharing the experience, and returning. The aim is to identify which touchpoints actually contribute to conversion.
The same brand may require very different channel strategies abroad. Southeast Asian consumers may discover products on TikTok but rely on private WhatsApp conversations to place orders. In Japan, LINE is the primary channel, supported by Instagram. In Europe and North America, SMS and email are more commonly used together.
“The same brand, with the same menu, needs three different channel strategies. That is a hidden cost of opening restaurants overseas.”
Tina Wang（王慧）, Founder of Global Rollout of Chinese Restaurants and Consumer Investor at Charisma Partners（弘章投资）: Repeat Business Is a By-product of Opening a Store—Get the First Experience Right
Wang’s assessment was direct: “For the vast majority of brands, it is still too early to talk about repeat business.” Their first priorities should be validating the first-store model and delivering a complete first-visit experience.
“Chinese cuisine is fundamentally a niche dining category overseas,” she emphasized. “Do not apply China’s mindset of thousands of stores across hundreds of cities to international markets. A few dozen overseas stores may be more valuable than hundreds of stores at home.”
She has seen too many brands treat opening stores as a performance target and repeat business as an expected outcome.
“Repeat business is actually a by-product of opening a store. Get the sequence wrong, and you reverse cause and effect.”
The quality of the first visit determines the upper limit of repeat business. Until the economics and operations of an individual store have been validated, discussing scale has little meaning.
Wang’s advice not to rush into discussions of repeat business does not contradict Xiong’s emphasis on repeat visits that do not depend on coupons. The former cautions brands still validating their first-store model against skipping essential steps; the latter reminds brands that have already achieved scale not to mistake discount-driven return visits for lasting customer loyalty.
From Ningji’s approach of validating its model before entering additional retail districts, to restaurant operators’ work on customer composition, products, and the in-store experience, and Infobip’s customer journey-based engagement practices, the salon highlighted a set of interconnected operational priorities for restaurant brands expanding overseas.
Products and experiences give customers a reason to return. Localization helps brands reach a broader audience. Ongoing communication sustains the connection. The order and manner in which brands invest in these areas need to reflect both the markets they enter and their stage of development.
For Chinese restaurant brands, progress after the first overseas opening ultimately depends on each store, each experience, and each customer. Moving from being noticed to being chosen, and eventually becoming part of local consumers’ everyday lives, requires sustained work in day-to-day operations.
EqualOcean will continue to follow the globalization of Chinese restaurant brands, connecting brand operators, service providers, and investment institutions to support dialogue and collaboration around practical business challenges.
About EqualOcean
Founded in 2018, EqualOcean is an international think tank and industry intelligence platform focused on the globalization of Chinese companies. It publishes industry research, reports, and rankings in both Chinese and English for global audiences, producing more than 100 research reports annually. Through industry summits and thematic salons, it connects the businesses and organizations supporting Chinese brands’ international expansion.
Website: www.equalocean.com
Partnership and media inquiries: xingyiran@iyiou.com
About Infobip
Founded in 2006, Infobip is a leading global cloud communications platform providing communications platform as a service (CPaaS). It offers omnichannel customer engagement services across major channels, including WhatsApp, LINE, Viber, RCS, and email, helping more than 10,000 brands worldwide build measurable connections with consumers across markets.
Website: www.infobip.com
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