There are many chain restaurants in Shanghai these days, with all kinds of flavors. This noon I went to an Japanese restaurant with my old friend at Lu Jia Zhui (the financial district in Pudong). I noticed that restaurant has a store in my current office building too. I don’t have problems with Japanese food. But it’s the first time I saw yellow curry in the noodle, which I don’t like. But I can not complain it to my friend because he treated me for the lunch. The other problem is there are not much food except the noodle. A bit rice and salad. I felt hungry at 4:30 PM and went to the “Dun Huang” for “Lan Zhou La Mian”, it’s much cheaper than the Japanese food (RMB 8 vs. RMB 40). But it’s much filling.
This made me thinking about the cost, the pricing, and the business model of different restaurants. The price of those chain restaurant is high because they got better location (higher rent), higher marketing cost, etc. From consumer point of view, I would go to the other kind of restaurant because I got real Chinese food for less money.