SHAXIAN: Hailing from Shaxian, a county in east China’s Fujian Province, popular restaurant chain Shaxian Snacks is renowned for its pork wontons, peanut sauce noodles, and over 100 other local-flavor delicacies. Starting with a single booth in a street market, the chain now has more than 88,000 chain stores in China and 62 other countries and regions, pulling in a hefty revenue exceeding 50 billion yuan ($7.6 billion).
In 1992, the first Shaxian Delicacies opened in a market, targeting the area’s low- income labor force. Its owner, Yu Guangqing, had been the secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) branch of a small rural village in Shaxian City. He decided to lead the villagers to a more promising future than farming on the poor mountainous fields. “In 1992, I discussed with my brother-in-law on developing our local delicacies and he answered, ‘yes, let’s do.’ Our selling points were ‘one yuan for a meal, two yuan for a full stomach, and five yuan to eat well’. Our target customers were satisfied at cheap, large meal we provided back at that time,” Yu said.
Although the meals were cheap, Yu could make over 800 yuan a month after running the booth a few months, which was quite a large sum at that time, almost four times the average income in big cities. Tens of thousands of Shaxian delicacy shops opened in the first few years, encouraged by his success. But soon the company faced such troubles as others illegally used their brand name and their lack of standard food safety control. –PNP
