Hai Di Lao, a Chinese hot pot chain, is launching its first retail store in the U.S. and also have started several retail stores in Singapore.
Hai Di Lao positions itself as excellent customer experience through providing an entertainment-filled waiting area with board games and hand massages. It uses extraordinary service as a great competitive advantage. According to my own experience, most of the restaurant chain in China is features with tasty food, leading to the trend that tasty food becomes one of the feature of the whole frame. To stand out, Hai Di Lao differentiate itself through excellent services which most of the restaurants cannot provide.
In terms of business ethics, I believe that they are relative according to different backgrounds and environments. For instance, in China, because of some political challenges, food safety is one of the biggest concerns and the regulations of food safety are not trust-worthy. As a result, Chinese individuals have gotten used to the unsafe food and they don’t have a strong awareness of food safety. In this case, Hai Di Lao can use blended soup to slash its costs by purchasing much cheaper materials as well as simplifying the producing process. Blended soup is not likely to trigger its status in China whereas it won’t be the same in the U.S and Singapore. As people in the U.S and Singapore are more aware of food safety and the governments are more efficient, Hai Di Lao has to review the work they’ve done regarding to business ethics. Blended soup will not be helpful anymore in overseas markets.