- Wu Zhixun has left his hometown and work in a local bank to spend his 20th anniversary pursuing an acting career in Beijing.
- He entered the thirty ready for a career change and noticed that Beijing did not have the flavors of his hometown.
- A year after opening his restaurant, Wu, now 31 years old, says he made his initial investment.
Wu Zhixun stumbled into the game by accident when he was a young adult. Years later, an equally unexpected turn of events led him to open – and become the face of a popular restaurant in Beijing.
In 2013, the Li ning sports brand sponsors university basketball matches across China. They chose Wu to appear in an ad. Shortly after, people began to recognize him in the streets of Yunnan, the province of southern China, where he had grown up.
After graduating, he was hired by a local bank, but six months, a The video broadcasting company asked him to appear in a reality TV show in which he would cook for celebrities.
“I thought it was a scam at the start,” he told Business Insider. But they offered to buy him a flight in Beijing, 1,500 miles northeast of Yunnan, so he left his job and Dove in the world of theater and television.
At university, WU was invited to appear in an ad. After graduating, he worked briefly in a bank before moving to Beijing to pursue a career in the theater. Wu Zhixun
Carther Transfer to F&B
During a seven -year -old acting career, Wu appeared in three television shows and a Huawei campaign.
In 2017, after his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, he returned to Yunnan for a year and a half to spend time with her.
While he was back home, he invested money in two F&B companies, which was not extinguished.
The first was a snack shop. Wu and three partners each invested 100,000 yuan in the shop, which sold the chicken feet, rice noodles and mango rice. The store closed after six months.
Then he invested 50,000 yuan in a Japanese restaurant. In three months, the restaurant closed. With hindsight, he said he could see the problems with location and management.
The restaurant was hidden on the second floor of an office building, and no one in the management team had experience in the management of a kitchen. They did not know how many ingredients to command, and they often sold popular dishes before the end of the day.
Wu says he has made all interior design decisions for Can Bistro. Syrenchanphoto
Bring the taste of the house to Beijing
At the end of 2018, Wu returned to Beijing. In a few years, he met his partner and they started to discuss the idea of starting a family.
He wanted more career stability and was tired of being an actor. “You are still waiting to be chosen,” he said.
While living in Beijing, he spotted a market opportunity to serve authentic Yunnan cuisine.
“The flavors of Yunnan are textured,” he said. “There are bitter, scented, numb and spicy notes, and they are all natural plants.”
Beijing restaurants just didn’t get the flavors – so he decided to launch his third F&B adventure.
He needed money for the initial investment, so he sold an apartment that his mother had given him and invested 600,000 yuan in the restaurant.
His mother was against the idea of selling. “My mother needs to know that something will have a 100% success rate before she does it,” he said.
Wu has invested 600,000 yuan to open can bistro. Syrenchanphoto
Practical management
It’s been almost two years for Wu, NOW 31, started planning its restaurant, Yican or Can Bistro in English. He works with a trading partner, whom, which has invested 400,000 additional yuan in the company.
Learning from his previous commercial failure, Wu knew he wanted to open the restaurant in an lively area. He chose A Southeast Beijing Commercial Park, near Sihuidong station.
They hired chefs from Yunnan and slowly renovated a space that had previously been a clothing store.
The sour bamboo shoots of the bistro and water spinach are a dish not often consumed in Beijing. Syrenchanphoto
The restaurant has been open for about a year. When Bi visited the restaurant At the beginning of February, the 10 tables were full of here noon.
Can Bistro is a restaurant adapted to dogs, and a Bichon Frize and a Schnauzer were one of the guests. The guests were seated on rattan chairs, eating black speckled ceramic dishes. Steel papaya fish vapor bowls, spicy beef, simmered chicken and crisp tofu covered the wooden tables. Some guests have washed their meals with Asahi beer and Yunnan natural wine.
A meal for four usually includes about six dishes. The cooked chicken, 68 yuan, has become popular. The potatoes collapse and the meat is perfectly tender. The sour bamboo shoots and water spinach is a rare combination in Beijing, but popular among the Dai ethnic minority in Yunnan.
Can Bistro is a restaurant adapted to dogs. Syrenchanphoto
Beijing changing food scene
Over the past five years, the Beijing culinary scene has seen waves of open and closed restaurants. “Eighty percent of the bistros close the first year,” a sales professional working in the Beijing lifestyle industry told Bi Fiona.
In order to do so on the Beijing market, Fiona has said that restaurants must be popular “from the start”.
And that’s where it completed the loop for Wu.
“It was first a question of looking,” said Fiona about the popularity of Can Bistro. “The look of the place, the restaurant setting and the beautiful being beautiful, attracted users to Rednote,” she said, referring to the popular Chinese social media app.
Shortly after the opening, the Wu marketing team published a series of candid photos of its owners on the Chinese application on social networks. The photos had legends like: “Do not drink coffee unless a hot guy is made for me.” Wu said people who saw the online restaurant started to come in person.
“Without this marketing campaign, they would not have obtained so much steps at the start,” said Fiona.
A year after the opening, Wu said that he and di made their initial investment. Wu said that in summer, the lines are often formed outside the restaurant.
Wu said that in summer, lines were formed outside the restaurant. Syrenchanphoto
Managing the restaurant meant that WU and its trading partner had to learn how to do things.
Wu says he’s happier now. He visits the restaurant every day – and still has time to play basketball twice a week.
“It’s a world far from when I was at the bank.”
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