Woman Restaurant Entrepreneur Embraces Brand-Driven Growth

 

The journey of Zhang Lan is the tale of an entrepreneur who exemplifies the story of globalization. She has gone from working many part-time jobs while studying overseas, to becoming one of China’s most successful food entrepreneurs.

Starting with a very small and humble restaurant specializing in spicy food from China’s Sichuan province, Zhang has cannily used branding innovation to grow her business and build her reputation in the food trade. Today the company she started, South Beauty Group (southbeauty.com), has 71 restaurants, most in major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai.

A series of bold moves focused on raising the profile of her restaurants and the South Beauty Group has paid off: the group was singled out by the China Hotel Association as one of the top 10 Chinese restaurant brands. By riding the country’s breakneck growth and urbanization, her restaurant group has enjoyed double-digit growth in recent years in revenue and profits.

Zhang’s mission is to revitalize the Chinese restaurant scene by introducing a more upscale and consistent dining experience.

China’s restaurant industry is booming and represents a significant opportunity: it is said it will have revenue of 3.7 trillion yuan (US $590 billion) by 2015 (China Daily).

“Most people in China don’t know how to present food. I am happy that I have given some importance to the appearance of food,” Zhang told the China Daily newspaper.

“I strike a balance between popular and high-end brands in my daily life. This also works for South Beauty Group, which aims to attract customers to a modern place to enjoy high-grade and popular Chinese cuisine.”

Her business mission is to take the group outside of China and become a global brand.

“Buoyed by the booming domestic high-end catering market, South Beauty Group is looking to be a major luxury brand in the global catering industry. It is not an easy task considering that there are different cultures and eating habits. But my past experience has taught me that opportunities often come along with challenges,” she told China Daily.

Zhang’s business story started in a journey to Canada to pursue further education. To make ends meet, at one time she took on six part-time jobs, including washing dishes and food preparation.

Anybody who has gone to another country to work and better their life knows how hard this can be: “During that period, I was so tired by the end of the day that I had to lift my legs onto the bed with my hands,” Zhang said.

But working hard in restaurants and beauty shops earned her US $20,000 in savings within two years.

She returned to Beijing in the early 1990s, a time when the country was undergoing significant market reforms. She opened a small restaurant in Beijing in 1991 serving Sichuan cuisine. Dining out was still a new experience in a country that had spent decades under austere communism. She made her restaurant different by emphasizing cleanliness and unique flavours for the food. She even used the design of the restaurant to set it apart: she gathered bamboo from Sichuan and used it to transform the restaurant into a little bamboo house.

This attention to detail paid off. By 2000, Zhang had been successful enough to give her the confidence to open her first South Beauty Restaurant in Beijing’s China World Trade Center, a high-end office building in the Central Business District. It proved to be a great way to boost her business’s profile.

“It was a bold decision, as rents were high, but I knew the returns would also be high,” she said.

By 2006, she was successful enough to make another brave move: open a luxury restaurant called the Lan Club, in Beijing. Having learned about the importance of distinguishing herself in the ever-growing restaurant marketplace in China, she invited world-famous designer Philippe Starck (http://www.starck.com/en/) to design the restaurant.

For Zhang, there was a bigger strategy at work: “I was not disheartened when some people said that I threw money away like dirt and 12 million yuan (US $1.92 million) was too much for a design draft. But I got great publicity and brand recognition with this design, far more than what is received by most companies which spend millions of yuan on television advertisements. Not everyone in China can boast of a Starck design in their restaurant.”

In 2007, the company also started cooking meals for airlines flying between China and France, the Netherlands and South Korea. In 2008, it won the bid to be food and beverage provider for the 2008 Beijing Olympics and was named official caterer to the 2010 Shanghai World Expo.

“These international events have given us great confidence in planning overseas expansion,” Zhang said.

The hallmarks of the dining experience at a South Beauty Restaurant include dramatic food presentation, upscale décor, a pleasant dining atmosphere and critically, waiting staff who are informed about the dishes they are serving.

Dramatic food preparation includes cooking food at the table for the diners and serving stir-fried shrimp on a plate with a goldfish bowl filled with live fish.

“I want to change the cheap price and bad atmosphere tag that most Westerners have about Chinese food,” Zhang told China Daily.

She has attracted investors to take a stake in the business and become the second richest female entrepreneur in China, according to the 2011 China Restaurant Rich List.

While the international economic crisis is still damaging growth in the United States and Europe, Zhang still plans to go global. She is looking to initially expand into Asia before moving into Europe and North America.

“Our mission is to promote authentic Chinese cuisine across the world. With (the) Chinese economy growing steadily and its cultural influence gaining, it will not be long before we see some big global Chinese catering companies, much like McDonald’s,” Zhang concluded. And it looks like South Beauty Group wants to lead the way.

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Published: November 2012

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP's South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South's innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.  

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Havana’s Restaurant Boom Augers in New Age of Entrepreneurs

Cuba, the Caribbean island nation known for its 1959 revolution and its tourism industry, is undergoing a shift in its economic strategy. The country has had heavy state control of its industries and business activities since the country adopted the official policy of state socialism and joined the Communist economic sphere headed by the Soviet Union.

When the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, Cuba was pitched into an economic crisis as it lost access to preferential trade subsidies. This period is known as the ‘Special Period’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Period) and was marked by a severe reduction in access to fuel as supplies and subsidies from the Soviet Union disappeared. Some of the iconic images of the time include people abandoning their cars and turning to bicycles to get around, or using make-shift truck-buses packed with workers. Exports collapsed and slashed the size of the economy by a third.

Fast-forward to today, and tourism is booming. A record 2.7 million tourists went to Cuba in 2011, earning the country US $2.3 billion. And it is catering to this tourism market that probably offers the best near-term opportunities. With wages still just 50 per cent of what they were in 1989 many are taking up this new opportunity to become entrepreneurs.

To become an entrepreneur, Cubans need to apply for a pink identification card with their name and photo and the words “Autorizacion Para Ejercer el Trabajo por Cuenta Propria.” This gives authority “to work for your own account.” With the card, a person can start a business, hire staff and pay them what they like.

Cuba’s economy has been through many phases since the revolution, swinging between loosening up the ability of people to establish private businesses – and pulling back, restricting private enterprise. But since 2008, there has been a significant shift to encouraging greater private enterprise, entrepreneurship and the ownership of private property – once banned – to stimulate the economy.

“This is the most important thing to happen in Cuba since the revolution in 1959,” Juan Triana, senior fellow at the Centre for the Study of the Cuban Economy at Havana University, told The Sunday Times Magazine.

One visible sign of this change is the flourishing of what is called locally ‘paladar’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paladar), or privately run restaurants.

Paladares are usually located in a person’s home and staffed by family members. Their customers are a mix of tourists, expatriates living in Cuba, and Cubans with a high enough income to be able to afford restaurant meals.

The cost of a meal in these restaurants can run from US $40 to US $60 for two people.

Stocking the kitchen is not easy. Cuba experiences food shortages and there is still rationing for many. Basics like eggs can be hard to find. As for exotic, imported ingredients, many chefs rely on visitors to stock their larders.

Cuba will have to re-build its food sector to make this a lasting improvement.

The agriculture sector has declined and, where Cuba once provided a third of the world’s sugar harvest, the country now has to import half of its food supply. Measures are in the works to change this, with smallholder farmers now able to own 165 acres of land and sell their produce to private customers and hotels.

One restaurant owner, Héctor Higuera Martinez, told The New York Times:“You dream up a recipe that you’d like to make but then you can’t find the ingredients.

“One day you go out to get salt and there’s no salt. And I mean no salt,Anywhere.”

Martinez trained with a well-known Cuban chef and did a stint in Paris before returning to Havana. He has turned a 19th-century mansion into the restaurant Le Chansonnier (http://www.cubajunky. com/havana/restaurant_le_chansonnier.html) and decorated the walls with the work of local artists.

Martinez sees the paladares as a turning point in changing Cuba’s reputation for having boring food. “I believe we can play an important role in revolutionizing Cuban cuisine.”

Cuba is making the difficult shift from having an economy where 80 per cent of activity is in the state sector, to a mixed model balanced between private and public ownership.

Havana’s historic district offers tourists renovated colonial architecture mixed with shops, restaurants and bars. As a tourist strolls from the renovated district, they quickly come across the rest of Havana, which has beautiful buildings from the colonial period, 1950s American-influenced architecture with its fading retro signage, and more utilitarian Soviet-era architecture.

While charming and home to most of the city’s residents, much of it is rundown and crowded and in need of investment and renovation.

But things are changing fast. Oyaki Curbelo and Cedric Fernando use spices brought in by visitors for Bollywood, their restaurant in the Nuevo Vedado area (http://cubantripadvisor.com/destinations/havana-cityoutskirts/bollywood-paladar/). It has a small menu of Indian and Sri Lankan dishes, including shrimp curry with ginger and tamarind. The restaurant sources its curry leaves from a tree located in the Sri Lankan Embassy.

Another restaurant, Atelier (http://www.cubaabsolutely.com/articles/travel/article_travel.php?landa=70),located in a mansion in the Vedado neighbourhood, serves European Continental food and has a roof terrace letting diners enjoy the a view of the Havana skyline.

The restaurant Doña Eutimia (https://www.facebook.com/paladardona.eutimia) serves up Cuban favourites off the Cathedral Square. Specialties include a dish made of shredded beef with garlic, tomato, oregano and bay leaves.

At Vistamer (http://www.stay.com/havana/restaurant/4249/paladar-vistamar/),diners can enjoy garlic-laden lobster tails and lemon meringue pie. At the paladar Café Laurent (http://www.cubaabsolutely.com/articles/travel/article_travel.php?landa=71), the menu includes meatballs with sesame seeds and mustard in red-wine and tarragon sauce, according to The New York Times.

Habana Chef in the Vedado district (http://cubantripadvisor.com/destinations/havana-city-outskirts/habana-chefpaladar/) was started by Joel Begue and chef Ivan Rodriguez. Begue gained his experience in the state restaurant sector and took the opportunity to get a licence when the government offered them in 2011. He borrowed US $25,000 to start the restaurant and has been able to pay back half so far. His current success is prompting him to look into opening a second restaurant in the capital.

An enthusiastic Andrew Macdonald, who is looking for investment opportunities for a half a billion dollar fund held by the Escencia Anglo-Cuban firm, told The Sunday Times magazine, “Cuba is the top emerging tourism market in the Caribbean by a mile, and it’s in the top five emerging markets globally.”

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Published: May 2012

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP's South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South's innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.  

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Brazilian Restaurant Serves Amazonian Treats

The vast Amazon rainforest has inspired a cuisine pioneer in Brazil. Combining the sensual pleasures of fine dining and the joy of tasting new flavours with a pursuit of sustainable and profitable local farming, a chef is inventing a new Brazilian cuisine and showing the way to create sustainable incomes.

The kitchens of chef Alex Atala are as much a laboratory of food experimentation as a place to cook meals. He applies French and Italian cooking styles to traditional Brazilian dishes and ingredients. Since opening his restaurant D.O.M in 1999 in Sao Paulo, Atala has relentlessly pursued – through adventurous journeys around Brazil and into the Amazon rainforest – new flavours, foods and cuisines native to the country. When he started out, he was surprised to discover the lack of knowledge about native Brazilian ingredients, both within the country and outside. He has turned himself into a champion for local communities, helping them turn local foods into sources of income.

Brazil, home to the largest portion of the Amazon rainforest, is hoping to become the world’s biggest food producer – it is currently second after the United States – addressing a major global problem and providing income for Brazil’s farmers.

The challenge is to increase food production – providing income for Brazil’s farmers and helping address a major global problem – without destroying the Amazon’s complex ecosystem.

Amazonia, the region that takes in the mighty Amazon River and the vast Amazon rainforest, is home to the most diverse range of plant and animal species in the world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Rainforest).
Brazil is currently debating legislation to ease restrictions on how small farmers can use land in the Amazon rainforest. It would loosen regulations on farming near river banks and hilltops. Many working in Brazil’s agricultural industry believe the country is not living up to its potential. They say Brazil could surpass the United States as an agricultural producer if allowed to use all its arable land.

This is a crucial debate not only for the future of the environment, but also for humanity. World demand for food keeps rising as populations increase and living standards rise in many countries, such as China. Another trend at work is increasing global urbanization, where more people are leaving agriculture as a business to live in cities and peri-urban areas to pursue a better quality of life. These growing megacities will need vast amounts of food to feed their populations.

Brazil has, in recent years, increased the amount of territory designated as a protected area in the Amazon forest.

The National Institute for Space Research in Brazil (http://www.inpe.br/ingles/index.php) has satellite photographs showing deforestation in the Amazon at its slowest pace for two decades. But more recent reports show deforestation accelerating again in 2011.

Sao Paulo’s D.O.M. Restaurante (http://www.domrestaurante.com.br) – the name is an acronym for the Latin phrase “God, the best and greatest” – has used the rainforest’s rich harvest of foods to create an award-winning destination restaurant that prioritises sustainable sources. It was ranked seventh in this year’s S. Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurants list.

Atala says on his website he “is bringing a new sustainable Brazilian cuisine to the world’s attention.” His motto is “It is necessary to cook and eat as a citizen.”

The restaurant celebrates small-scale producers when sourcing food products (http://www.domrestaurante.com.br/#/en-us/menu/ingredientes).  One pioneering food producer Atala works with is DRO Ervas e Flores (herbs and flowers) (http://www.droervaseflores.com). Located in the city of Cequilho, it grows edible herbs and flowers for restaurants. The flowers cultivated by DRO serve mainly to decorate plates, but can also be eaten. At the company farm, the flowers produced include violas, begonias, borago, monks cress, chrysanthemums, pumpkin flowers, coriander flowers, sweet alyssum, mini roses, basil flowers, roses, rockets and violets.

One notable success has been the Amazonian root priprioca. Once it was used only for cosmetics, but Atala has turned it into an essence for cooking. He has conducted original research into uses for the root, which is produced by small communities in the Amazon.

Other Brazilian foods he champions include black rice, an unusual variety sought after for its health benefits. It has 30 percent more fibre and 20 percent more protein than white rice, and less fat and calories than brown rice. The black rice used at D.O.M is produced in the Paraiba Valley in Sao Paulo state by Chicao Ruzene (http://www.arrozpreto.com.br), who researches new varieties on the rice farm.

Jambu, a herb from the Amazon, gives an electrical sensation when it is chewed. Tucupi, a yellowish liquid from pressed wild manioc tuber, is used to season typical Amazonian dishes made with fish, fowl and ducks.

Already well known in his native Brazil, Atala has become the country’s first internationally known celebrity chef and standard-bearer for the “New Brazilian Gastronomy.”

His origins are inspiring: a former DJ and punk, he sold his records and went on a trip backpacking in Europe when he was 18. He made a living as a painter and dishwasher until a friend convinced him to go to catering school. Upon graduation, he worked in some of the top restaurants in Italy and France. This apprenticeship left Atala skilled in the techniques of French cuisine – considered one of the most disciplined and methodical in the world – and he returned in 1994 to Brazil.

The restaurant has ultra-modern design and the sleek kitchen is home to a collection of Amazonian art. Atala acts as an ambassador for the country’s cuisine and flavours to the world. He opened a second restaurant in 2009, Dalva e Dito (http://www.dalvaedito.com.br), which celebrates home cooking by mothers and grandmothers and features only local produce.

Atala’s inclusion of ‘wild’ ingredients has inspired other chefs. His expeditions into the Amazon continue to discover and study the biodiversity of the rainforest and the culinary culture of its inhabitants.

His long-term agenda is to boost local farmers and food production and to increase the availability of ‘wild’ foods in the nation’s supermarkets. If he gets his way, people around the world will be eating the Brazilian way.

“French, Italian, Spanish and Japanese chefs, for example, have their own cuisine and give value to their terroir (local) produce,” Atala explained his passion to The World’s 50 Best Restaurants. “We have to do the same in Brazil! Our ingredients are exotic now, but can become popular in the near future.”

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Published: June 2011

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP's South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South's innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.  

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