Original China Cooking Magazine China Cooking Magazine was included in the topic # 57 high-end interviews of China catering.
Text/Yan Hongwei
Photography/Zhang Yang
"2022 makes us calm and meet our own times." On the occasion of the new year, Cui Baohua wrote this message in a circle of friends. In 2021, like many catering enterprises, Four Seasons Minfu Roast Duck Restaurant is not easy to walk, but it is also constantly breaking through. As the head brand of Beijing cuisine, Four Seasons Minfu went out of Beijing for the first time and came to Shanghai. The opening of the store was hot and the customers were full. The extension store in Shanghai has brought them a lot of inspiration.
Cui Baohua was born in Shaanxi after 1980s. Senior national cooking technician and famous chef of Beijing cuisine. In 2000, he became a chef and studied under Cui Yufen, a national treasure chef. Came to Beijing in 2002; Four Seasons Minfu was founded in 2008. As a member of the founding team, he has been focusing on the brand for 14 years and is currently the production director of Four Seasons Minfu.
As a typical representative of the upgrading of Beijing cuisine, Four Seasons Minfu is a popular punch-in restaurant in Beijing, which is full of flavor, quality, reliable products and considerate to the people. Especially in Qianmen Store and Forbidden City Store, there are always people waiting in line outside the store, and it usually takes more than one or two hours to eat this mouth.
On the other hand, the team, the store fire people low-key. From the founder Ji Hongsheng, the general manager Zhang Guanghui to the production director Cui Baohua, all of them were chefs, who transformed into managers in the process of opening stores and polished stores, teams and dishes. I have known Cui Baohua for many years, and after several contacts, I feel that he is no longer a chef in the traditional sense, but more like a product manager of a restaurant enterprise.
From an ordinary migrant worker in Beipiao to the co-founder and top producer of Beijing Cuisine Head Brand, let’s listen to Cui Baohua how to complete his own transformation and value realization, and how to achieve mutual success with the brand.
From Shaanxi to Beijing, the target chef
I grew up in Xianyang, Shaanxi, and it was a coincidence that I chose to be a chef. Because there are many people in our family who are engaged in this line, some are cooks and some are restaurateurs. At that time in 2000, I either studied computer or chef. Anyway, I must learn a trade. Later, I studied cooking in my hometown for a year and a half. I felt that there were only a few things I could learn in a small city, and I wanted to earn more money. A relative at home in Beijing said that he could earn thousands of dollars a month in Beijing, which was considered a high salary at that time. I decided to come here, with a clear goal. If I go out, I will succeed.
I remember that it was April 28th, 2002. My relatives introduced me to work in Minfuju, the predecessor of Four Seasons Minfu, but I left after five or six months. Because I just came to Beijing at that time and wanted to learn more skills, I ran around and worked in Cantonese, Hunan, Sichuan and Huaiyang cuisine. Although I also want to make money, I also know that my skills are not enough and I can’t make money in the future. I will go where anyone can teach me craft and learn something. The goal at that time was to become a chef.
Working in a restaurant in Pinggu for more than two years had a great influence on me, which was a turning point in Beijing. Why can I sink in that shop? Because the owner of that restaurant is very willing to innovate, he invites the chef who is good at cooking to come over and change the menu. He has invited famous chefs from Guangdong, Sichuan, Hunan and hubei cuisine. I met famous teachers from different cuisines there and learned different knowledge. I was only about 20 years old when I became a chef. That experience is very helpful for me to do research and development now. When developing dishes, I can learn from other cuisines immediately. I didn’t feel much at that time, but now I feel that I have benefited a lot.
The Product Thinking of Four Seasons Minfu
From 2002 to 2007, Cui Baohua absorbed the nutrition of various trendy cuisines. In those years, it was you who sang me out, and the cuisines merged and surged. Home cooking has also undergone a revolution, and personalized and exquisite home cooking has opened a new era.
At the end of 2007, Minfuju dengshikou Store was in urgent need of manpower for the Chinese New Year, and Cui Baohua was recruited to the store to help. The next year, the store was renamed "Four Seasons People’s Happiness", and the brand was founded. Cui Baohua was highly valued, from wok to chef, to store manager in 2010, to executive chef of the company in 2012, until today’s production director. In these 14 years, he changed from chef’s thinking to operator’s thinking, and from chef to product manager of restaurant enterprises.
The chef’s thinking is to stand in the kitchen position, and the food should be delicious. And the operator’s thinking is: who do you want to sell your products to? Does the customer recognize it? Is standardization and reproducibility high? Whether the waiter can operate well in the whole process … is a whole thinking framework.
In terms of the research and development concept of Four Seasons Minfu, the first thing is whether the research and development dishes can be standardized. This standardization does not mean central kitchen distribution, but after I write the standard list, the kitchen chef can also make this dish according to this list and reach the production standard, so that it can be a good dish.
Second, does the research and development of dishes meet the efficiency requirements of chain restaurant enterprises? The process of dishes should not be too complicated. If a dish needs thirty or forty or even fifty or sixty processes, it will inevitably affect the efficiency of kitchen dishes and not adapt to the turnover rate of chain restaurants.
Third, do R&D dishes have brand symbols? The positioning of Four Seasons Minfu is roast duck and Beijing cuisine, and the dishes are limited to a certain extent. For example, dishes with obvious labels such as Cantonese cuisine and Huaiyang cuisine must not be cooked. We need to develop our own dishes, which make people look like the dishes of the four seasons.
Traditional shredded chicken skin
How to develop dishes with the symbol of four seasons’ people’s happiness? We start from four aspects: reference, integration, innovation and improvement. First of all, improve on the basis of traditional dishes, because old dishes have roots and culture, and we should combine them with modern people’s eating habits. For example, most people nowadays don’t like food that is too greasy and salty, which is novel in collocation and beautiful in plate. Take shredded chicken vermicelli as an example. It is a traditional dish in old Beijing, but because it is time-consuming and expensive, ordinary restaurants are reluctant to sell it. We change the sample into small portions one by one, and the dishes are exquisite and beautiful, and the technology and taste are traditional. However, due to its complicated procedures, the pricing will be higher, so that on the one hand, it can match the cost, on the other hand, it can also control the order quantity. If the order quantity is too much, it will affect the kitchen efficiency.
Let’s talk about reference. We will learn from other cuisines, such as duck intestines with saliva, duck intestines with the symbol of four seasons’ happiness, and the taste of Sichuan cuisine with saliva juice, but we will reduce the oil content, use only its spicy and hemp, and choose pepper and green pepper to adjust the spicy taste. The sales volume of this dish is good. The Shanghai store just opened one day and sold 50 or 60 copies. Usually, a store sells 20 or 30 copies, and the customer satisfaction is also very high. This is a dish of reference and integration.
Duck Intestines with Chili Sauce
Be cautious under the epidemic.
The operating state of a restaurant can be seen from the mental outlook of its employees. I once visited the kitchen of Four Seasons People’s Happiness, and the chef who met me greeted me or smiled back. When the aunt in the kitchen saw a stain, she wiped it with a semi-dry mop. This will not happen overnight. At the end of each month, Cui Baohua will go to each store for inventory assessment, grade the stores, conduct KPI assessment on employees, and set the salary and bonus for that month. This is also an opportunity for managers to directly contact the front line, so as to understand the operation of each store, find problems and make timely adjustments. Repeated outbreaks have had a great impact on the operation of Four Seasons Minfu. One month, the turnover dropped by 50%, thanks to the potential energy accumulated by the brand for a long time, and it can withstand the pressure.
However, Cui Baohua admits that if the epidemic situation continues this year, it will not be ruled out that some stores in poor operating conditions will be closed, which is based on a rational business strategy. At the same time, the plan to open a store will continue, but it will be slower and more cautious, choosing a good business district in Beijing and expanding the Shanghai market with greater development potential.
The epidemic is certainly short-lived, so we should have long-term thinking and be optimistic about the future. In the past two years, we have faced the same problem as everyone else: how to solve the employee’s salary when the gross profit margin drops or even there is no income? Do you want to make takeout? In fact, everyone’s ideas are right. At any time, every enterprise has its reasons for making decisions.
Our thoughts are: first, you can’t change the big environment. When the store is busy, because of the large passenger flow in the restaurant, the service and products will make customers dissatisfied. When the epidemic rebounds, we are not so busy. What we can do is to ensure the satisfaction of the customers in the store. When you produce a set of products, you must ensure that the customer experience is good.
Second, you can’t decide the market. What we have to do is to train the people in the team. In the past, you might have been busy, so you didn’t have time to practice. Now is an opportunity, so you can practice your basic skills and further optimize your service process. We have arranged a lot of study for our employees.
Although corporate profits have declined, we will not make big moves, such as layoffs, price increases, take-away food, etc., as long as the company can’t bear it, at least not yet.
Rational development of supply chain based on stores
The development of Four Seasons Minfu supply chain is centered on the demand of stores. At first, it was just a small kitchen, producing standardized sauces and cold dishes, and then with the expansion of enterprise scale, a central kitchen and a roast duck distribution base were established. Cui Baohua said that they are still in the stage of groping and learning about the supply chain, and have produced the first fried sauce product. In the future, new retail may become the development focus of the supply chain sector.
Four Seasons Minfu was founded 14 years ago. At present, there are 20 stores. As a chain restaurant, it is slow to go. Chinese dinner track is not suitable for rapid replication and expansion. In the past two years, we have been making internal adjustments in management system, personnel training, equity mode adjustment and supply chain. Because our Chinese food chain model has developed to more than seven or eight stores, the biggest difficulty is the unstable quality. Chinese food is particularly difficult and cannot be solved by simple standardization. We have been standardizing Chinese food since we started our business in 2008. Every product is prepared in a standardized way before the meal. Even so, there are still many unstable points.
Supply chain and central kitchen are the keys to the stability of chain restaurants, but they also bring a contradiction: how to balance the relationship between standardization and personalized taste? After standardization, guests feel that your food is not delicious and has no past flavor. In this process, we should consider the trade-off between standardization and personalization. If it is not handled well, it is likely to be standardized and fast, but the passenger flow is lost and even eliminated by the market. Therefore, in the end, it will fall to products, and management should serve your business.
Golden garlic sweet and sour large yellow croaker
The cold dishes of Four Seasons Minfu are basically distributed by the central factory, and mixing and loading in the store will not affect the taste. However, most of the hot dishes are cooked in stores, and only standard sauces are prepared. The chef takes the materials, cuts and cooks them according to the SOP. For example, in kung pao chicken, all the shops cut, marinate and stir-fry now, which is better than the central kitchen cutting and salting.
We may also subtract the standardized products of the central kitchen in the future and try to restore them to the store. Otherwise, once the taste becomes "staple goods" and it tastes obviously industrialized, the happiness of the four seasons may come to an end.
When everyone is on the way to chef and standardization, we just can’t follow the crowd. We should pay attention to and follow up the trend, but we can’t follow it without thinking. Finally, if you lose your core competitiveness and your personality, you will easily be eliminated by the market.
Now I’m talking to Cui Baohua about the goals, all of which are related to the well-being of the people in the four seasons. They insist on deepening the store, slowly and steadily, and do their best to ensure the quality of products and customer satisfaction. With the growth of the enterprise, Cui Baohua has also become a generalist, and everything should be handled in R&D, production, safety and operation. At work, he is a down-to-earth doer; In life, he is a man who loves literature and art. He likes to watch exhibitions, travel and shoot and record the little things in his life. After more than 20 years as a cook, Cui Baohua can be said to have "accomplished something" in Beijing. The times make heroes, and heroes make times.
Proofreading | Yujin
Editor | Chu Hongke
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This article is selected from the January 2022 issue of China Cooking Magazine, welcome to forward it to your circle of friends. All the contents of this micro-signal are unauthorized, and it is refused to be reproduced. Infringement will be investigated. If you need to reprint, please contact the backstage and get authorization before reprinting. Please indicate the source and author’s signature in a prominent position when reprinting.
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