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South Beauty, from splendor to despair in only 15 years, Zhang Lan, who started from nothing, did what wrong?

In the catering industry, Haidilao can not be considered the most delicious, the service may not be the most top-notch, but it is definitely one of the best companies in the capital market. Haidilao 277.5 billion Hong Kong dollars in market value, can be said to be enviable, but also other catering enterprises are competing for imitation of the object, and in the country, there is such a company was also expected to become another Haidilao.

This enterprise is South Beauty, its founder Zhang Lan can be said to be a legendary figure, in more than ten years time from a dishwasher girl to a successful entrepreneur worth 2.5 billion, but also the first to open the restaurant to the Beijing International Trade Center. And because of Zhang Lan's relationship, his son Wang Xiaofei is known as the "Beijing four young" first.

According to Zhang Lan's thinking, South Beauty should be like Haidilao, with high-quality service to occupy the high-end catering market, and then go public. But obviously Zhang Lan's ability to operate in the capital market is not as good as that of Zhang Yong of Haidilao, and in the end, South Beauty not only did not go public as it wished, but as the founder, Zhang Lan was swept out of the door, and now she has actually embarked on the road of Netflix.

Working abroad, washing dishes and earning $20,000

Zhang Lan was called a "legendary woman", and it was not a brainless pursuit of her. 1987 Zhang Lan graduated from the Beijing University of Technology and Business, and in the two years after her graduation, she had almost the same life trajectory as her contemporaries. Two years after her graduation, Zhang Lan and her contemporaries lived almost the same life trajectory, from working to getting married and having children, which was not different from others. Although her life was not troubled by money, Zhang Lan still longed for wealth. So she chose to go abroad to Canada.

While she had a university degree, it was not easy to work abroad. Zhang Lan's first job was washing dishes in a restaurant, and she worked in more than one place. According to Zhang Lan herself, although she was not doing a decent job at that time, she was able to earn a month's salary at home in one day, which is exactly why she was able to support herself in the difficult environment.

After two years in Canada, Zhang Lan finally realized her original dream and saved enough money to go home and do business. Zhang Lan was 34 years old at the time, and her savings amounted to 20,000 U.S. dollars. Because she often dealt with restaurants in Canada, she used almost all of her savings to start "Alan's Restaurant," which was the predecessor of South Beauty.

Returning to China to start her own business, she opened her restaurant in Beijing's China World Trade Center

It has to be said that Zhang Lan's operation of the restaurant is a good hand, through the renovation and publicity, only after more than two years, the Alain Restaurant's one-day turnover reached 500,000 yuan at the highest, at that time, Zhang Yong's Haidilao had not yet been opened, and Zhang Lan had the idea of making her restaurant a brand to be pushed to the whole country. Zhang Lan already had the idea of making her restaurant a brand and pushing it to the whole country.

While the restaurant is a Sichuan restaurant, Zhang Lan prefers the scenery of Jiangnan with its small bridges and streams, and in June 2000, Alain's Restaurant was transformed into South Beauty. Zhang Lan's most distinctive point is that she dares to think and do, after the "name change", the first thing she did was to open South Beauty to the Beijing International Trade Center, where she was the first person to do food and beverage in a place where every inch of land is gold.

By 2009, South Beauty had taken shape, and Zhang Lan made her debut on the Hurun Restaurant Rich List, topping the list of Chinese restaurant entrepreneurs with 2.5 billion yuan, and declaring that she wanted to open more than 500 outlets nationwide. At the same time as South Beauty's development, Zhang Lan is also seeking the road to listing, but it is her ambition that has torched her years of hard work.

Shock listing, but was swept away

In order to shock the listing, Zhang Lan introduced CDH Capital to invest 200 million yuan, and promised to complete the listing within four years, but whether in the A-share market or in the Hong Kong stock market, South Beauty's listing plan are both hit a brick wall, just as Luo Yonghao, Zhang Lan and CDH Capital is a betting agreement. Zhang Lan and DingHui Capital have a betting agreement, the listing can not, can only come up with 400 million yuan for the share repurchase, and finally in order to get enough money for the repurchase, Zhang Lan had to sell 72% of her own shares.

Since then, due to changes in the pattern of the catering market, South Beauty's shares have changed hands many times, and Zhang Lan has been sidelined. In July 2015, South Beauty Group released a statement to the public that Zhang Lan no longer holds any position in South Beauty. Since then, she has even taken people to court over debt issues, and also faced a prison sentence for contempt of court at one point. Unexpectedly, with the development of the short-video industry, Zhang Lan, like many others, chose to go down the road of Netflix while continuing her business.

Just recently Zhang Lan showed a video of herself collecting a table with her own hands, but she was spat on for collecting half a day's worth of plates without collecting a few, and instead used a lot of clean paper towels, which is a video of posing for the camera. And now Zhang Lan's short video account fans are only 400,000, compared to the same platform under Luo Yonghao fans of zero. In this era of traffic is king, short video platform does let many people earn a lot of money, but Zhang Lan want to rely on this again to realize the previous glory, perhaps there is still a long way to go.