Owner, Mr Ling Guoxiang
How a Taiwanese eatery gained 700 members within one month of opening
Chuan Youyan Authentic Mala & Braised Hotpot in Taoyuan, Taiwan has opened for just over a month, specialising in lu wei (滷味) or braised meat and offal. The dishes are sold in individually portioned “hotpot”, known as xiao guo lu (小鍋滷). Similar to mala xiang guo, or spicy stir-fry hotpot, customers choose their own ingredients from a wide selection of meat, seafood, vegetables and noodles, then choose their soup base. The closest cousin to xiao guo lu we have in Singaporean cuisine is probably yong tau foo.
Chuan Youyan's three soup bases are all stewed for a long time, and the boss himself does not eat spicy food, so Chuan Youyan's mala soup is mainly "numbing", unlike most brands, which are mainly spicy. Their spice level can be customized so customers can have their own unique creations, fulfilling their brand concept: “吃可以隨便，麻只能川又焱”.
Or in English: “It doesn’t matter what you eat, but if ma (the numbing sensation from Sichuan peppercorns, here classified as its own type of cuisine) is what you’re eating, it can only be Chuan Youyan”.
Mr Ling, who has always been interested in cooking and the F&B industry, actually studied F&B in high school and worked in the Fullon Hotels & Resorts Group in college. As fate would have it, he began his career in politics but still maintained a keen interest in the restaurant industry. Whenever he had the opportunity, he would cook and prepare dishes for his relatives, friends and colleagues.
Photo credit: Courtesy of Chuan Youyan Authentic Mala & Braised Hotpot
It started with a vacuum packaging machine.
Mr Ling wanted to share his food with friends, so he bought one for everyone's convenience. As a result, the more he did, the more he learned and developed his recipes. He began selling his soup bases a year or two ago and finally decided to set up a brick-and-mortar shop.
Laying a good foundation, starting with dine-in customers
It’s been only a month since they’ve opened, and because Chuan Youyan’s brand is brand-new, the going is tough. Mr Ling decided to focus on dine-in customers and promote his brand as his priorities. He believes building good SOP and a strong staff at the same time is the best foundation for future growth.
“To cultivate loyal customers, we must use big data to make them come back!”
With a clear idea of his business needs, Mr Ling chose to use iCHEF for his restaurant operations.
In order to engage dine-in customers and have data for remarketing in the future, Chuan Youyan started their membership programme at the early stages of brand establishment on the premise of accumulating members. Their goal was to increase the willingness of customers to become members. Mr Ling has set up a rewards programme through the POS system, so that customers can join as members, and enjoy incentives for obtaining points each time they make a purchase.
He also shared with us his thoughts on structuring Chuan Youyan’s loyalty programme – Mr Ling believes that direct discounting is the most unfavourable to merchants because it reduces revenue. Offering gifts for point redemption, however, is relatively low cost. At the same time, customers still feel appreciated and like they received a bonus, which makes them more inclined to return.
There is only one way to become a member; and the number of members has reached 700 in one month
“It is really convenient to convert customers to members using QR codes.”
When asked about the method of membership signups, Mr Ling said that he mainly relies on QR Code receipts. For each customer receipt printed, there is a QR code they can scan which leads to a website where they either register as a member, or log in to collect points if they are already registered. One reason he chose to use QR code receipts is that there is currently no additional manpower to do various online marketing promotions, and the other is that he still hopes to focus on dine-in customers making their experience feel complete.
The current operating process of Chuan Youyan is to automatically print out receipts with QR codes containing the points from their POS system when checking out for dine-in and take-out. Instead of having the cashier explain the process of registering for membership and collecting the customer’s information like their mobile number, all they have to do is say one line:
“Use this to collect points for free dishes!”
The customers can understand easily and are very willing to add themselves as members to collect points, without the cashier having to ask them one by one and then manually enter the information for them.
And because their POS system is also integrated with delivery platforms, it can also print out a loyalty point QR Code receipt and send it along with the meal for the customer to register as a new member and claim points.
After a month, the current number of members has accumulated to nearly 700. Mr Ling is very satisfied with this result, and then further shared with us his observations about return customers from the background data:
“Out of the 700 members, 30% have returned and the frequency of their return visits is even 7-8 times!”
This achievement has made Chuan Youyan even more confident and motivated to continue to manage customer relationships in this direction.
Windfall! Customers start placing online orders after getting loyalty points
Mr Ling shared that he had always wanted to use loyalty points to incentivise customers to become members, and seeing the trend of customers becoming increasingly digital, chose to use QR codes as their method of signing up to give customers more convenience.
After claiming their loyalty points, members are automatically directed to Chuan Youyan’s ordering page, a special feature of iCHEF POS system
He was satisfied that customers automatically used the QR code receipts to sign up as members on their own and to check the number of points they had earned. However he was pleasantly surprised to find that after scanning the QR code to claim their points, some customers even began ordering food online for self-collection!
After logging in to claim loyalty points, the customer will be redirected to Chuan Youyan’s online store where they can order and pay for their food online. “It's really not easy to achieve such results within a month of opening an outlet!” says Mr Ling, who plans to organise activities and promotions for members next, if the number continues to grow steadily.
One of his ideas is launching package upgrades for members, in an effort to stay faithful to the original purpose of Chuan Youyan's business, which is "to maintain regular customers".
Chuan you yan 川又焱正宗麻辣小锅滷
Address: No. 16, Fuxing N Rd, Guishan District, Taoyuan City, 333, Taiwan
Business hour: Mon. to Sun. 11:00-22:00
