From Haidilao to Wulao: Franchise Lessons From Vietnam's Hotpot and Grill Wave

From Haidilao to Wulao: Franchise Lessons From Vietnam's Hotpot and Grill Wave

What makes the hotpot table and the grill plate the strongest franchise formula in Vietnam's F&B industry?

Picture a typical Friday evening at any shopping mall in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City. Long queues snake in front of hotpot restaurants. Laughter fills the air. The scent of simmering broth drifts down from the third floor. Smoke rises from charcoal grills at the center of every table.

This is not just dinner. This is a Vietnamese social ritual.

And that ritual — eating together, sharing a pot, passing grilled meat across the table — has become the foundation of one of the fastest-growing franchise sectors in Vietnam's F&B industry.

But there is a question the industry has not answered clearly enough: why do some hotpot and BBQ brands become franchise empires, while others — equally delicious — quietly disappear?

That is the question I want to explore here.

Part 1: The Market Picture — Bigger Than You Think

Before we talk franchising, let us look at the scale.

Vietnam's hotpot and grill market is one of fierce and dynamic competition between local and international brands. In the mass-market segment, Kichi Kichi dominates with over 100 outlets through its fixed-price conveyor belt model, drawing in large numbers of young diners. Gogi House, also with over 100 locations, scores with Korean-style BBQ using imported meats — a favorite for friend groups and families.

Golden Gate Group — the operator behind Kichi Kichi, Gogi House, and Manwah — owns over 40 brands and nearly 500 restaurants across 42 provinces and cities as of end-2024, serving 18 million customers every year.

18 million customers a year. Let that number sink in.

And that is just one group. Add King BBQ, Hotpot Story, Sumo BBQ, Haidilao, and dozens of smaller players — and Vietnam's hotpot and grill market is one of the most competitive and compelling F&B segments in all of Asia.

So what creates that pull?

Part 2: Why Hotpot and BBQ Are the Franchise "Gold Mine"

1. Communal dining culture — An advantage no one can copy

Vietnamese people do not just eat to be full. They eat to connect.

Hotpot and BBQ are formats that require people. You cannot sit alone in front of a bubbling pot without feeling something is missing. You cannot grill for one person without waste. These dishes are designed for togetherness.

What does that mean for franchising? The demand does not need to be created — it is already there, reinforced across generations. Every wedding, birthday, class reunion, client dinner, or free weekend — Vietnamese people reach for hotpot or BBQ first.

This is what international franchise investors call built-in demand. And it is one of the most important criteria they look for when evaluating a brand.

2. The buffet model — An ideal financial formula

In F&B franchising, the most important factor is not how delicious the food is. It is whether the business model can scale and generate profit.

The hotpot and BBQ buffet model has several standout financial advantages.

Revenue is predictable. Fixed pricing per person makes it easy to calculate break-even and projected profit. Investors do not have to guess.

Table turnover is fast. An average sitting runs 90 to 120 minutes — a significant revenue advantage at peak hours compared to traditional restaurants where guests might stay for three or four hours.

Ingredient control is easier. A fixed menu means better forecasting of ingredient needs, less waste, and optimized operating costs.

Self-service reduces labor pressure. Guests handle the cooking themselves — meaning lower staffing costs compared to full-service restaurants.

These are exactly the reasons why the buffet hotpot and BBQ model is so well-suited for franchising: the financial numbers are transparent, easy to present to investors, and replicable.

3. Experiences you cannot deliver — A firewall against the digital economy

When GrabFood, ShopeeFood, and BeFood exploded after COVID, many traditional restaurant formats took a serious hit. Customers stayed home and ordered in.

But hotpot and BBQ are different.

You cannot deliver the experience of sitting around a shared pot. You cannot package the smell of meat smoking over charcoal. You cannot ship the feeling of laughing with friends inside a buzzing restaurant.

Hotpot and BBQ are experience-first businesses — the experience is the product. That is why these brands are far less threatened by the delivery wave than most other F&B formats.

In franchising, this is called a moat. And hotpot and BBQ have a very deep one.

Part 3: Five Franchise Lessons From the Hotpot and Grill Industry

After years of working with F&B brands wanting to expand through franchising, here are the five core lessons I take from Vietnam's hotpot and grill sector.

Lesson 1: A unique concept is the starting point — not the finish line

Kichi Kichi's conveyor belt, King BBQ's Korean grill, Wulao's signature broth, Tian Long's fresh beef Chaozhou hotpot — every winning brand starts with a clear and differentiated concept. But the concept is only the entry ticket.

Any brand that stops at concept without building the operating systems behind it will not be able to franchise successfully. Because a franchisee in Da Nang or Can Tho needs to be able to run that concept without the founder standing beside them every day.

Lesson 2: The menu needs a "soul" — but also "discipline"

Korean brands like Palsaik and Meat Plus focus on premium experiences. Yakimono and Panda BBQ attract younger diners with accessible price points. The diversity of positioning shows how many segments this market holds.

Too many menu items means difficult standardization — which means difficult franchising. Too few means customers have no reason to come back.

The art is in finding the balance: diverse enough to be compelling, lean enough to maintain consistent quality across every outlet. The hotpot and BBQ brands that succeed in franchising all understand this well.

Lesson 3: Location is everything — and this is the biggest challenge

Vietnam's hotpot and grill chains face rising costs across ingredients, rent, and management — with Golden Gate recording negative operating cash flow of 52 billion VND in 2024.

This is the most expensive lesson: hotpot and BBQ restaurants need large spaces, prime locations, and high rental costs. Unlike coffee or bubble tea which can operate in 30 to 50 square meters, a hotpot restaurant needs at least 300 to 500 square meters to run effectively.

That means significantly higher investment thresholds and greater pressure on profit per square meter. Franchise investors need to work through the unit economics carefully before signing anything.

Lesson 4: Operating systems determine survival — not the menu

Golden Gate has set a target of nearly 8.12 trillion VND in net revenue and 205 billion VND in after-tax profit for 2025. But the road there is not smooth — in 2023 the group recorded a 79% drop in profit to just 139 billion VND, its lowest since 2017.

The lesson here is not that Golden Gate failed. It is that even the largest F&B groups must continuously optimize their operating systems to stay profitable. Labor, ingredients, rent, and management costs all keep rising. The brand with the stronger operating system survives longer.

This is the lesson for both franchisors and franchisees: do not buy a franchise because the brand looks good. Buy it because the operating system is strong.

Part 4: The Realities Nobody Tells You

The picture looks attractive. But I cannot write this piece without being honest about the headwinds.

High capital thresholds. Hotpot franchise fees range from 100 million to over 1 billion VND — and that is before the total investment budget of 1.5 to 3 billion VND for mid-range formats, or 7 to 30 billion for premium concepts. This is serious capital that requires real financial capacity.

Competition is intensifying fast. The market is not just growing — it is being disrupted by a wave of new formats from Taiwan and China, including Wulao and Yutang, alongside a generation of Vietnamese-built concepts inspired by Taiwanese and Chinese cuisine: Manwah, Hutong, and now expanding players like JiangHu, Bone & Pot, Chang Kang Kung, Ji Li Lai, and Tian Long.

There is a clear pattern worth noting: almost all of the successful Taiwanese and Chinese-concept hotpot brands in Vietnam have been built by Golden Gate as local concepts — inspired by Taiwanese and Chinese cuisine but built and operated by Vietnamese. Only Haidilao and Wulao are genuine foreign brands that have entered Vietnam directly. This suggests there is still significant white space for authentic Taiwanese and Chinese brands to enter Vietnam through franchising.

Because the investment threshold is so high, most of the major hotpot and grill chains today do not actively franchise — or do so very selectively. Finding franchise investors willing to commit at that capital level is genuinely difficult. As a result, the active franchise market in hotpot tends to fall to smaller brands: Lau Phan, Suon Cay, Kumoi, Dookki. The famous names — Kichi Kichi, Gogi House, Manwah, King BBQ — are not particularly enthusiastic about franchising in Vietnam.

Rising ingredient costs. Imported meats, fresh seafood, and seasonal produce are all under pressure from inflation and supply chain volatility. Nearly 50% of F&B businesses plan to raise prices in 2025 to offset costs — which may dampen consumer spending.

Complex staffing. A mid-range hotpot or BBQ restaurant requires 30 to 50 staff members. Training, retaining, and managing that team across multiple franchise outlets is a significant operational challenge.

Part 5: The Go Global Potential — The Next Wave

Most of this piece has focused on domestic franchising. But I want to close with a wider lens.

In 2025, 28% of Vietnamese small businesses anticipate strong improvement in overseas sales — up from 15% in 2024. That reflects a genuine shift in confidence about competing globally.

And the hotpot and BBQ sector has every reason to share that confidence.

Southeast Asian cuisine is a global trend. Vietnamese hotpot is already appearing in Singapore, Australia, the US, and Canada — largely through the overseas Vietnamese community. But the real opportunity is taking standardized, well-operated brands into ASEAN markets and beyond.

What does a brand need to go down that road? The same things I outlined in my previous piece on coffee and bubble tea: replicable operating systems, franchise documentation that meets international standards, and a brand story strong enough to cross cultural borders.

Closing: The Round Table and the Business Lesson

There is one small detail I always notice when I sit down in a Vietnamese hotpot restaurant: the round table.

Vietnamese people do not eat hotpot at rectangular tables. They sit in a circle — no one at the head, no one at the foot. Everyone equal, everyone able to reach the pot in the center.

That is not just table design. That is a philosophy.

And in franchising, the same philosophy holds: franchisor and franchisee sit at the same table, facing the same direction, sharing the same pot. When one side wins, both win.

The hotpot and BBQ brands that have understood this — and built it into a system — will be the ones that last.

Nguyen Phi Van is an international franchise expert, Chairwoman of the Vietnam Franchising & Licensing Network, and author of 10 books on global franchising and future-ready skills. She is the founder of Go Global — a platform connecting Vietnamese brands with international markets. In 2025, she brought Three O'clock Coffee to India and Indonesia, and HappiTea to the Philippines and India.