20.3 Billion In Annual Revenue! What Makes Panda Express The Number One Chinese Food In The United States?

How Panda Express Became the No. 1 Chinese Food Chain in the US

What are the keys of Panda Express's amazing success?

How did a Chinese eatery in California grow to become a global sensation with more than 2,000 locations and billions of dollars in sales each year?

We'll explore Panda Express's amazing history in this blog article, learning about its creative tactics and unwavering determination that have helped it become the most popular Chinese fast food company in the world.

Panda Express: The Rise of a Chinese Fast Food Giant in the US

Domestic KFC and McDonald’s are Chinese young people’s favorite foreign fast food. In foreign countries, a Chinese fast food chain, Panda Express, is also firing out of the circle.

Only the United States has 802 chain stores. The global chain has long exceeded 2,000 stores, with annual revenue as high as 20.3 billion! Today we will look at how this Panda Express is, step by step, becoming the first overseas Chinese fast food.

20.3 billion in annual revenue! What Makes Panda Express the Number One Chinese Food in the United States?

Panda Express founder Cheng Zhengchang, whose ancestral home was in Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province, followed his parents to Taiwan in 1953. Then he went to the United States.

Cheng Zhengchang excelled in his studies, earning a bachelor’s degree in mathematics in 1970 and then a master’s degree in 1972. At the same time, he also met his wife, Peggy Chiang, the love of his life, in school. Mrs. Chiang also received her Ph.D. in electrical engineering in the same year.

In 1973, Zhenchang Cheng opened a Chinese restaurant called Jufeng Yuan in California after graduation. Although Jufeng Yuan rubbed off on the Panda hotspot, the business had been lukewarm, and Cheng Zhengchang began to think about what was wrong.

When it comes to cooking, Cheng Zhengchang can be said to have a family history. His father worked as a chef for Jiang, a craft that cannot be displayed.

And from North America, rather than the original, rather than the blood of the Western food culture, Chinese food is profound. I do not know how many levels are higher!

How Panda Express Transformed Chinese Cuisine into a Western Craze

To this day, Panda Express still has a line of advertising from the Middle Ages, when European chaos and the United States were still dominated by stone tools while the Chinese were studying how to fry delicious dishes.

So why did Cheng Zhengchang open a restaurant selling dishes he could not popularize?

At that time in the United States, Chinese immigrants in the past were very many, and Chinese restaurants were many.

At that time, similar to Jufeng Yuan, they liked the Cantonese cuisine of Chinese restaurants in the United States, as the quality of carp in the river varies.

Cheng Zhengchang’s Jufeng Yuan was on a similar path, with no distinctive features in the crowd of Cantonese Chinese restaurants. Faced with this problem, Cheng Zhengchang racked his brain and devised a data model to analyze the U.S. market.

He found that in the United States, people prefer to eat things that are on the sweet and sour side and love fast food more than many people can imagine.

So, Chen Zhenchang’s traditional Chinese food was transformed into a Western style. He went about the transformation in two main ways!

The first aspect was to adjust the way of seasoning to make the dishes more in line with foreigners’ tastes, which are on the sweet and sour side. But at the same time, in the promotion, the emphasis is on Chinese flavor, using the mystery of Oriental culture to attract Americans.

The restaurant also abandoned the time-consuming cooking methods of traditional Chinese food, such as steaming, stewing, etc., and introduced the fast-frying and frying methods of Western-style fast food.

How Panda Express Revolutionized the Chinese Fast Food Industry

The second aspect is to upgrade the image of the store while changing the name to Panda Express, abandoning the traditional Chinese restaurant decoration style. The panda theme in the decoration characteristics uses Xing Xing and Ling Ling’s high popularity in the U.S. to rubbish the popularity.

Through these efforts, the business of Panda Express took off, and four or five branches were opened.

In October 1983, under Chen Zhenchang’s persuasion, his wife, Peggy Jiang, quit her previously well-paid career as an engineer and joined the Panda Express team. Ms. Jiang was not here to be a hands-off boss.

She creatively applied her expertise to the restaurant industry in tracking inventory, ordering ingredients, cashiering, and other aspects while analyzing data on customer consumption. So, does this sound familiar to anyone?

Yes, this is the routine that businesses often use in our current era of big data, analyzing the hobbies of their customer groups through big data to pinpoint their target customer groups. More than 30 years ago, Ms. Jiang started playing with this set.

This advanced management system soon allowed Panda Express to save a lot of capital costs in the initial expansion phase. This advanced management system for the other Chinese fast food chains at that time, in a way, can be said to be a descending blow.

This Jiang Peiqi in the Panda Express issued the first instruction: that all dishes must be standardized dishes cards. What do you mean by “menu card”? It is a refined recipe, and she asked the chef the amount of each ingredient to the exact gram.

To promote this dish card system. Peggy Jiang and Panda Express chefs quarrel; the chefs think doing things this way is too much effort. Cooking is a craft; we all rely on the chef to grasp it. You do this; will you not let us all be laid off?

That’s right, Ms. Jiang aims to lay off the chefs. His position is that the back kitchen of Panda House will not need chefs in the future. Everyone can be like workers, doing their own thing step by step. They can serve a dish that tastes good. Isn’t this concept the central kitchen and crew method we often talk about now?

Under her insistence, Panda Express’ product complaints became fewer, the follow-up workload was reduced, and the labor cost was lowered. It can be said that Ms. Jiang was really ahead of her time. With the addition of such a superb scientific management system, Panda Express was able to kill the fierce competition in the North American Chinese food market.

Panda Express: Navigating the Global and Chinese Fast Food Landscapes

One more thing: Panda Express still adheres to the strategy of not franchising, only direct management stores. Cheng Zhengchang’s statement on this issue is to say: Only in this way can we ensure that each Panda Express brings customers the same amount of experience. Customers will not be treated differently. It will give customers a rare sense of familiarity.

As a Chinese fast food brand, Panda Express has always insisted on not entering the Chinese market. In my opinion, this is actually brilliant development thinking and is also a reflection of Cheng Zhengchang’s unique vision.

Let’s look at how competitive the domestic fast-food market is. Let’s say: Sha Xian snack, Chongqing chicken pot, Lanzhou ramen, Zhang Liang hot and spicy hot, and so on and so forth, countless brands.

Domestic fast-food competition is quite fierce, and there is no so-called blue ocean market waiting for Panda Express to enter, not to mention that for Panda Express to stand firm in the United States, the taste of their products will be fully westernized.

Embracing Innovation and Adaptability for Business Triumph

Now, if you go back to enter the Chinese market, the product taste will not require another adjustment.

After 30 years of entrepreneurship, Cheng Zhengchang, out of an inspirational American gold rush, transformed a small restaurant with dismal business into the world’s largest Chinese fast food brand, which reflects the ability to seize the moment and highlights the perseverance and determination required of entrepreneurs!

This is the best of times, but also the worst of times. With capital thinking and innovation model integration, the world is your stage!

There are no eliminated industries in the new business world, only destroyed products and obsolete business models. All future business competition will focus on product innovation and model innovation.

Conclusion

Panda Express's unmatched success can be attributed to its unwavering pursuit of innovation and adaptability.

The brand made Chinese food popular in the U.S. by embracing the Western palate and modifying its spice and cooking techniques.

Panda Express also transformed the market by standardizing recipes and utilizing data-driven analytics to cut labor expenses and guarantee consistency throughout all of its outlets.

Panda Express is a monument to the enormous potential of companies that dare to innovate and adapt to the constantly changing terrain, even though it has chosen not to enter the fiercely competitive Chinese market and is still dedicated to direct management.