The beginning of 2026 has brought a long-awaited warmth to China's catering market. According to data from the Ministry of Commerce, the average daily sales of key retail and catering enterprises during the Spring Festival holiday increased by 5.7% compared to the same period in 2025, with dining consumption becoming a core growth driver for the holiday economy. Amid this wave of consumption recovery, one figure stands out: Banu International Holdings, which is sprinting towards an IPO in Hong Kong, achieved an overall table turnover rate of 5.3 times per day during the 2026 Spring Festival holiday, representing a growth rate of over 10% compared to the 2025 Spring Festival. This number not only far exceeds the industry average but also sets a new efficiency benchmark in the hot pot sector.
Table turnover rate, as the most critical profitability leverage indicator in the catering industry, directly reflects a store's customer flow capacity, consumer appeal, and operational efficiency, serving as a touchstone for measuring a company's operational resilience. For the hot pot sector, every 0.1 increase in table turnover rate signifies multiple optimizations in operational efficiency, sales per square meter, and labor efficiency, while also effectively spreading fixed costs such as rent and labor, thereby widening profit margins.
As a leading player in the hot pot industry, HAIDILAO's table turnover rate has long been a benchmark for comparison. According to the latest research report from Citigroup, HAIDILAO's table turnover rate during the 2026 Spring Festival holiday increased by over 5% year-on-year. For reference, HAIDILAO's table turnover rate during the 2025 Spring Festival holiday exceeded 5 times per day, achieving a V-shaped recovery. However, over a longer period, HAIDILAO's table turnover performance has shown fluctuations: in the first half of 2025, the overall table turnover rate of its self-operated restaurants dropped to 3.8 times per day, falling below the internal "passing line" of 4 times per day, reflecting pressures from post-holiday consumption decline and intensified market competition.
In contrast, Banu has not only achieved double-digit growth in table turnover rate but also demonstrated a stable trend of "no off-season slump and even busier peak seasons." In the first three quarters of 2025, its table turnover rate stabilized at 3.6 times per day, an increase of 0.5 times per day year-on-year, significantly exceeding the industry average. For the four new cities entered in 2024, the average table turnover rate for the first month of new store openings reached 4.8 times per day, showcasing strong brand appeal and market adaptability.
The logic behind this difference lies in the divergence in customer targeting and value propositions. HAIDILAO is renowned for its service, covering a wide range of mass social dining scenarios. Banu, however, precisely targets the "premium hot pot" segment. With "tripe + mushroom soup" as its super symbol, and through core product strengths such as papain-marinated tripe and freshly brewed soup bases using wild mushrooms from the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, it has attracted a large number of middle-class and young customers seeking health and taste. The number of Banu members surged from 3.7 million in 2022 to 14.8 million in 2025, proving that "repurchase" is the core driving force for navigating cycles.
Behind this core product strength is the result of Banu's more than two decades of adherence to "productism," which has accumulated steadily and erupted powerfully. It is also the key to its counter-trend growth since 2026. Unlike the industry's common reliance on marketing-driven models, Banu deeply embeds its core competitiveness in the systematic integration and digital empowerment of its supply chain. Prospectus data shows that Banu has built a third-generation supply chain system based on the principles of "fresh over frozen, natural over added, same-day over overnight." Relying on five comprehensive central kitchens and one seasoning processing plant nationwide, Banu has achieved the logistics miracle of "daily delivery," ensuring fresh ingredients reach each store within a 600-kilometer radius within 24 hours.
This heavy-asset strategy of "supply chain before stores," while requiring significant initial investment, has brought structural efficiency improvements at the operational level. The data speaks for itself: benefiting from supply chain optimization that reduces back-of-house space and labor requirements, Banu's average monthly sales per square meter soared from 1,600 RMB/square meter to 2,600 RMB/square meter within three years, while its store operating profit margin climbed from 15.2% to 24.3%. It is this extreme efficiency that supported Banu's impressive performance in the first three quarters of 2025, achieving revenue of 2.08 billion RMB (a 24.5% year-on-year increase) and an adjusted profit of 240 million RMB (a significant 80.8% year-on-year increase).
According to a Frost & Sullivan report, Banu is the largest hot pot brand by revenue in China's premium hot pot market. Based on 2024 revenue, Banu ranks third in the Chinese hot pot market with a 0.4% market share, following HAIDILAO and Xiabuxiabu in first and second place, respectively.
In fact, Banu's leading position reflects the structural changes in China's consumer market. Despite macroeconomic downward pressure and consumers tightening their purse strings—national per capita consumption has decreased by 23.6% compared to two years ago—Banu's case strongly proves that the demand for quality in the entire consumer market has not shrunk but has instead become stronger. Today's consumers no longer blindly pursue low prices or pay solely for excessive service; instead, they are shifting towards seeking "quality-to-price ratio"—that is, obtaining an ultimate product experience within a reasonable price range. When consumers want a meal they can "truly feel"—be it the wokhei from fierce-fire stir-frying, the human touch in a neighborhood setting, or small warm details—Banu's "productism"恰好 responds to this shift in demand.
Brands still competing on décor and price wars will eventually be eliminated in the存量 market. Those that truly survive will inevitably be the catering enterprises that have engraved "product power," "experience," and "differentiation" into their DNA. Banu's story is about finding a blue ocean in a red ocean, establishing differentiation amidst homogeneity, and finding a balance between efficiency and quality. This is not just Banu's growth narrative but also the value exploration of China's catering industry in the new cycle.