The challenges

As Haidilao expanded its business globally, its teams recognized the necessity of a deeper digital transformation in their work methods in order to operate their business on a larger scale. This was crucial not only to consistently deliver exemplary service amidst competition, but also to innovate as a brand for long-term success.

• Too late to save issues from turning into catastrophes: When the store teams identified food defects, it took a long time to communicate with the suppliers, locate the root causes, and resolve the issues, incurring additional costs and risking customers' safety.

• Inconsistent quality due to multiple versions: Recipes and production standards were stored in Excel or Word documents and printed out for training. This led to inconsistencies in the dining experience due to delayed updates in different stores.

• Unable to generate revenue insights: There were multiple systems serving different purposes, making it difficult to gain a holistic view of the business without the laborious tasks of data cleaning, combining, and programming.

• Distributed teams and unheard voices: As store teams spanned across locations, they often felt distant from the headquarters without a way to relay on-ground observations. The management teams were also worried about missing opportunities to improve.

  
  

Landing Lark

Haidilao started its digitization as early as 2011. While most restaurants still used pen and paper, Haidilao stores began using tablets for order placement, waitlists, membership management, and more.

"The hurdles that restaurant businesses are now faced with can no longer be solved by adding a few more people." says Xibei. "For example, adding more store staff to check food defects won't help us eliminate them. Only by knowing and understanding food defect data can we choose the right suppliers and find the optimal pace to restock, ensuring that our food is always fresh and of high quality."

100,000 employees, 1 source of truth

To begin unifying the quality of service, the first task is to ensure that every staff member is referring to the same set of requirements. At Haidilao, store teams can use Lark Workplace to access the same, up-to-date guidelines, standards, company policies, and other necessary materials from a single location on their mobile devices.

In daily conversations with other staff members and managers on Lark, store employees are also able to click on keywords in text messages to access store information, recipe standards, and operational protocols. By using Lark Lingo, the frontline team can easily locate the operational knowledge they need.

To ensure that every staff member sees and acknowledges important updates, Haidilao shares them through Lark Announcement to accurately pushes the updates to relevant employees. Additionally, the company improves employee service responsiveness by automating more than 70% of Q&A via Lark Help Desk, which helps the admin team save over 60,000 hours every year.

Leaving no defects behind

After establishing unified standards, the next challenge is to ensure consistent execution by store staff. Haidilao addresses this issue by digitizing processes in Lark Base. This enables teams to execute efficiently based on established standards, without worrying about laborious communication across departments.

For example, store teams can quickly address issues that might compromise the quality of their dishes by submitting a form. Whenever the team identifies a problem with the food, they can immediately submit a report on their mobile device using the form view of Lark Base. The issues will then be automatically routed to the relevant teams for processing and resolution. By using this workflow, Haidilao has reduced the processing time for food defects from at least 2-3 days to as short as 2 hours, ensuring seamless execution and maintaining the desired food quality.

Make informed decisions easily

Lark empowers teams at Haidilao to identify insights from daily numbers without being hindered by technology. For example, the finance department used to spend a lot of time following up on missing revenue reports and waiting for engineers to centralize data. With Lark Base, the team can now automate the entire process on one table by themselves.

Store managers can easily submit revenue reports and receive automated reminders as deadlines approach. Dashboards will be refreshed automatically based on the numbers. Additionally, the finance department provides varying permissions in Lark Base for store and regional managers to view dedicated sales calibrations and forecasts without the need to create multiple charts.

A sense of belonging starts with open conversations

Stores are where Haidilao's day-to-day business takes place, and the teams recognize that only by listening to and addressing on-site suggestions can the company make the right moves. Using Lark Moments, Haidilao creates topic boards where all employees, whether in a store or in an office, can post their ideas, suggestions, or feedback about their experience.

A dedicated operations team is in place to follow up on feedback and implement suggested changes. Moments also serve as virtual offices for frontline teams, enabling them to share memorable highlights and stories about life at Haidilao, even if they do not work in the same store.

Haidilao's digital transformation has improved its ability to provide high-quality service across all locations. By using Lark, Haidilao can unify service standards and ensure efficient execution through automated processes. On Lark, the hot pot chain is able to greatly reduce costs and risks associated with food quality, gain better insights into the business, and improve communication across distributed teams in order to continue its exemplary service across the world.