Chapter 1862 Panda Restaurant

Today's angel investments are not angels at all, and are strictly restricted by various conditions.

Why don’t you invest in first-time entrepreneurs? Don’t invest in mom-and-pop shops; Don’t invest in founders with insufficient education. In short, few of today’s so-called angel investors invest with the mentality of supporting small and medium-sized enterprises. Most of them want to invest. If you pick up a unicorn, everyone can become Buffett.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with thinking this way. After all, everyone wants to make money, which is understandable.

From a certain perspective, these rules and regulations all make sense. For example, first-time entrepreneurs are mostly young people with dreams. They are motivated but have no experience, let alone the desire to grasp huge wealth.

Therefore, most first-time entrepreneurs end up in failure. Angel investors established such a QGZ after learning many lessons.

This is also true. For example, Cheng Zhengchang, before the success of pandas, he also experienced a lot of hardships.

Back then, walking around in front of his family's newly opened restaurant and soliciting customers was a required course for him.

It was a difficult experience, and in order to break the situation of no one coming, his mother would even engage in the feudal superstition of spreading salt on the sidewalk to pray for good luck.

At first, Cheng Zhengchang did not plan to open his own restaurant. At most, he helped in his family's restaurant to earn some pocket money. It is worth mentioning that Cheng Zhengchang's father is a chef with superb cooking skills.

There is a legend that he was Chiang Kai-shek's imperial chef. Regardless of whether the news is true or false, at least he has his backing. After all, if you let a person who doesn't know anything about restaurant operations open a restaurant, failure is normal, and you will lose all your money without compensation. Even that’s good.

Cheng Zhengchang's initial start-up capital was only US$60,000, which was raised with his family's savings and small loans.

Cheng's parents and siblings all worked for free at the store, and the family squeezed into their two-bedroom apartment in San Gabriel. They named the restaurant Jufengyuan, a name that would be adopted by Panda Express a decade later. replaced.

Like most Chinese immigrants at that time, life for the Cheng Zhengchang family was not easy, although before them, there had already been a certain number of Chinese residents in the United States.

However, due to the Chinese Exclusion Act, the status of the Chinese in the United States of that era could be said to be worse than that of dogs.

But what can be done? You have to walk the path you choose even on your knees.

Even if the status of black people was improved later because of Martin Luther King, along with the rights of other racial minorities,

They have received some protection, but Chinese are still a minority in the United States.

This prompted Cheng Zhengchang to firmly believe that their restaurant has established a different positioning from other Chinese restaurants from the beginning, that is, it is for Americans.

In his opinion, the number of Chinese people in the United States is small after all, and only by doing American business can we make our business bigger, so we must take the appetite of Americans as the starting point.

After the positioning was established, the popularity of Jufengyuan gradually increased. However, due to the small space, it always filled up quickly. Even if the table turnover rate was high, it still affected the passenger flow to some extent. After all, in the thinking of the old Americans at that time, there was no When it comes to the concept of queuing up to eat, most people leave as soon as they see that there are so many people and there is no place to sit.

Just because the store was too small, a large number of customers were lost, and Cheng Zhengchang was extremely frustrated when he saw that money could not be picked up at the door.

As time went by, he felt that he could not let it go and had to find a way.

Not wanting to lose any customers, he found a little trick. Whenever the restaurant was full, he would quickly pass through the back door of the restaurant, catch up with the departing guests in the parking lot, and then tell the guests: Thank you for coming, I'm very sorry. , our store is very crowded, this is our mistake, but we kindly ask you to stay and have a try, the food in the store will not disappoint you, and if you wait, we will provide you with a free drink.

It turns out that people all over the world like free things. Of course, even if they are not successful every time, most customers will be pleasantly surprised and return to the restaurant again, queuing up at the door.

But it wasn't the hospitality and free drinks that really saved the restaurant's fortunes, but a revamped dish called orange chicken, also known as tangerine peel chicken.

Today, every year, Panda Express can produce more than 80 million pounds of orange chicken, and one-third of its profits come from this dish. It can be said that this is Panda's signature dish, which not only made it famous, but also Brought a lot of profits.

Since its creation, this sweet, sour and slightly spicy delicacy has captured the hearts of many Americans.

Sheldon, who is now an Internet celebrity in Country Z, went to learn Chinese in "The Big Bang Theory" because he suspected that there was something wrong with the ingredients in his favorite orange chicken, and he confronted the restaurant owner.

This dish is the epitome of Cheng Zhengchang's localization of the restaurant to cater to local tastes. Later, Cheng Zhengchang followed the local customs and added fortune cookies from American culture to the menu. In addition, in order to facilitate Americans who cannot use chopsticks, For dining, he even designed new chopsticks that combine forks and chopsticks into one.

In fact, it is to split the fork in the middle, so that it can be used as chopsticks without making clumsy Americans feel the embarrassment of using chopsticks.

Speaking of which, Yang Cheng felt that the only dish in Panda Restaurant that was acceptable was the orange-flavored chicken. Other main dishes, such as Beijing beef, honey walnut shrimp, etc., have had varying degrees of taste improvement, and are generally sweet and sour. Yang Cheng couldn't get used to the greasy taste anyway, let alone those tourists from country Z who came here for it.

However, regardless of whether the Chinese agree with it or not, the main source of customers of Panda Restaurant has never been Chinese, so their evaluation is not important. As long as the Americans recognize it, Cheng Zhengchang's concept and marketing strategy are successful. There is no doubt about this.

For example, in the Chinese restaurant that Yang Cheng just invested in, his requirement is to keep the original taste as much as possible, and he pursues authentic Chinese food, so he doesn't care about the evaluation of ordinary people, who can't afford it anyway.

Anyone who can afford it will always be more interested in ‘authentic’ food!

Not only the food, Cheng Zhengchang also worked hard on the restaurant’s hardware facilities.

In the past, dark storefronts, tired proprietresses, and food that looked strangely colored and unhygienic combined to form the impression of Chinese restaurants in foreigners’ eyes, so much so that many foreigners believed that Chinese food was only reserved for black people who could not afford to eat.

However, Panda Express's store is clean and bright, and its service is very standardized. Each dish is served on a one-foot-square plate, and has a clear shelf life like McDonald's, KFC and other fast food. Just be thrown away.

The transparent operation allows customers to rest assured about the ingredients, coupled with the taste that meets the old American standards, this is the reason for today's success.

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