Increasing revenue without increasing profit is just a temporary pain? Haidilao's 2026 strategy is clear, and a comeback is imminent.

How did Haidilao’s takeout business double its growth against the trend?

Produced by | Zhongfang Network

Reviewed by | Li Xiaoyan

On March 24, Haidilao officially released its 2025 annual performance report, which has attracted widespread attention in the industry. Despite facing multiple challenges such as intensifying competition, differentiated consumer demand, and high operating costs in the restaurant industry, Haidilao, as a benchmark enterprise in the hot pot sector and the entire restaurant industry, has experienced a decline in customer flow and short-term profit pressure. Nevertheless, it achieved a slight increase in revenue and maintained overall profitability, while its new business segments experienced explosive growth, and strategic transformation progressed steadily, showcasing the strong risk resistance and self-renewal capability of a leading restaurant brand. For Haidilao, 2025 is a year of maintaining its position in the face of industry pressures, as well as a year of proactive adjustment and preparation for the future. The brief operational fluctuations are precisely a necessary path for breaking through bottlenecks and moving toward high-quality development.

In 2025, the restaurant industry as a whole entered a period of deep adjustment, with the pace of recovery in the consumer market slowing down and competition in the hot pot sector entering a fierce stage. Most brands in the industry are facing the dilemma of declining customer flow and shrinking profits. Against this backdrop, Haidilao still delivered a resilient performance report: annual revenue reached 43.225 billion yuan, a slight increase of 1.1% year-on-year. In a challenging environment for the industry as a whole, it successfully achieved positive revenue growth, firmly maintaining a revenue scale of over 43 billion yuan, fully demonstrating its brand influence and the stability of its market foundation.

From a profitability perspective, although affected by rising rigid costs in food ingredients, rent, and labor, as well as increased investment in store optimization and business innovation, Haidilao reported a net profit attributable to the parent company of 4.05 billion yuan and a core operating profit of 5.403 billion yuan, representing year-on-year declines of 14% and 13.3%, respectively, showing a phase of increasing revenue without increasing profit. However, it still maintained a net profit scale of over 4 billion yuan for the year, remaining at a leading level in the restaurant industry, which proves that its core profitability has not been lost, but has merely entered a short-term profit adjustment cycle.

Regarding customer flow and table turnover rate, the total number of customers served throughout the year was 384 million, a year-on-year decline of 7.5%. The main brand’s table turnover rate was 3.9 times per day, slightly below the breakeven line of 4 times per day. This data fluctuation indeed reflects the stage pressure faced by the main brand’s operations. However, the reasons are both external influences such as the overall differentiation of consumer demand in the industry and the diversion of customers by specialty hot pot brands, as well as internal adjustments resulting from Haidilao’s proactive optimization of store structure and the closure of inefficient stores, focusing on improving the quality of individual outlets. Meanwhile, the average customer spending of the main brand slightly increased to 97.7 yuan, indicating that consumers still recognize Haidilao’s products and services. The decline in customer flow is not a direct reflection of weakened brand value, but rather a normal phenomenon under the dual adjustments of the industry and the company.

It is noteworthy that Haidilao proactively adjusted its expansion strategy in 2025, shifting from blind scaling to refined operations. Throughout the year, it opened 79 self-operated stores and closed 85, resulting in a net decrease of 6 stores, ending the period with 1,304 self-operated stores and 79 franchised stores. This conservative expansion strategy of “opening and closing” is not a sign of operational weakness, but rather a rational choice made by the company based on market conditions. By eliminating underperforming stores and optimizing the layout of its store network, Haidilao aims to enhance overall store operational efficiency, laying a solid foundation for the subsequent recovery of its main business. This approach precisely reflects the operational wisdom and risk management capabilities of a leading enterprise.

If the short-term adjustments of the main brand are a small regret in Haidilao’s 2025 financial report, then the explosive growth of its takeout and sub-brand businesses has become the most dazzling highlight of this report, opening up a new growth track for the company, effectively offsetting the performance pressure on the main brand, and demonstrating the strong potential for its diversified development.

The takeout business achieved a leapfrog breakthrough, becoming the core support of Haidilao’s second growth curve. In 2025, Haidilao’s takeout revenue reached 2.658 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 111.9%, achieving a doubling growth. In the context of rising demand for home consumption, single-person dining, and convenient dining options, Haidilao accurately grasped market trends, comprehensively leveraging four dimensions: expanding product categories, increasing store count, extending service hours, and enhancing distribution channels, completing the layout of over 1,200 takeout points nationwide. It deeply collaborated with mainstream takeout platforms and developed products tailored for takeout scenarios, significantly enhancing the supply capacity and consumer experience of its takeout business. The rapid growth of the takeout business not only breaks the traditional model of hot pot restaurants relying on dine-in service but also allows Haidilao to successfully enter the convenient dining market, covering a broader range of consumer scenarios and becoming an important supplement to its performance growth.

The sub-brand matrix has entered an explosive growth period, with the multi-brand strategy yielding significant results. In 2025, Haidilao’s 20 sub-brands achieved revenue of 1.521 billion yuan, soaring 214.6% year-on-year, with a very rapid growth momentum. In the face of the industry’s trend of diversified consumer demand and the rise of segmented markets, Haidilao deepened its multi-brand layout through the “Pomegranate Plan,” creating differentiated sub-brands for different consumer groups and dining scenarios, covering several niche areas such as snacks, fast food, and specialty hot pots, meeting the diverse needs of young consumers and niche dining enthusiasts. Although the combined revenue of sub-brands and takeout business currently accounts for about 9.7% of total revenue, a relatively low base that has not yet fully reversed the main brand’s 7.1% revenue decline, the high growth potential demonstrated by these two business segments has already become a key lever for Haidilao to break through the bottleneck of a single business structure and achieve balanced development, with vast growth space in the future.

The operational fluctuations in 2025 reflect Haidilao’s proactive transformation pains during the industry’s reform period, rather than passive decline. Faced with issues such as profit pressure on the main brand, weakened service barriers, and imbalanced business structure, Haidilao did not cling to traditional models but rapidly made strategic adjustments, directly addressing operational pain points to prepare adequately for a comprehensive recovery and high-quality development in 2026.

In addressing the restoration of core competitiveness, Haidilao has clearly proposed the core philosophy of “grasping customers with one hand and employees with the other,” focusing on optimizing dining experiences and refining products and services as core tasks. Over the past year, due to cost control, the service experience in stores showed slight fluctuations. However, Haidilao understands that exceptional service is its core barrier to standing firm in the industry. In 2026, it will optimize human resource management, enhance employee welfare and professional skills, and reshape service advantages while increasing investments in product innovation and scene upgrades to regain consumer goodwill and solidify the core position of the main brand.

In terms of improving operational efficiency, Haidilao will increase investments in smart middle-platform research and development, relying on digital operations to empower store management and optimize the collaborative efficiency of self-operated and franchised models. By accurately controlling store operations, cost management, customer flow analysis, and other aspects through digital means, it aims to enhance the operational efficiency of individual stores, assist in returning table turnover rates above the breakeven line, while promoting a light asset transformation to reduce expansion risks and improve overall operational efficiency.

Additionally, Haidilao will strategically seek high-quality asset acquisitions to further enrich its restaurant formats and complete its entire industry chain layout. Leveraging its strong brand influence, supply chain system, and operational experience, it will expand business boundaries through external growth, diversify the operational risks of the main brand, and enhance the group’s risk resistance and comprehensive competitiveness.

From an industry perspective, Haidilao, as a leader in the hot pot industry, has seen its 2025 performance and strategic adjustments as a phase-based choice in its own development while providing a reference for transformation in the entire restaurant industry. In the current normalized state of industry competition, restaurant enterprises must abandon traditional thinking of large-scale expansion, transitioning to refined operations, diversified layouts, and digital empowerment to break through development bottlenecks.

Short-term performance fluctuations have never been the sole standard for measuring a company’s strength. In 2025, Haidilao has maintained its revenue base, cultivated new growth engines, and promoted strategic transformation and upgrading amid industry adversity, demonstrating the resilience and vision of a leading restaurant brand. As strategic plans gradually materialize, service reputation is restored, and new businesses continue to grow, Haidilao is expected to completely emerge from transformation pains in 2026, achieving a recovery of its core main business and synergistic development of emerging businesses, continuing to lead the hot pot industry into a healthier and more vibrant new stage of development.