【文稿】明星餐厅,能活多久？

Xiaohua: It is Roundtable you are listening to. Let’s talk about celebrities. Who doesn’t want to talk about them? Restaurants owned by celebrities usually draw enough attention from fans and public. However, how many of them can still remain profitable after a high-profile opening? The answer is: VERY FEW. 既能提高人气又能赚得大笔外快，开餐厅俨然成为各路明星的新财路。然而，名人开餐厅并不如人们想象的那样轻松，经营不善而被迫关门已成常态。 What’s the situation here? Heyang: There are numerous examples of celebrities opening their own restaurants. There is Jay Chou. His Mr. J Chinese restaurant opened in Beijing this year and it became very popular as its opening attracted more than a thousand fans, lining up in front of the restaurant. And there is also Ren Quan. He is very famous with his hot pot restaurant. And many, many others. But I think usually what they see is the initial popularity and later on, for many reasons, not very many of them succeed. I think the only successful example I see here is probably Ren Quan, and I’ll still wait and see to observe whether Jay Chou would receive the same kind of success in restaurants. Mark: The thing is, the whole concept is fundamentally fake. Because you know that actually that they’re not in there cooking. I mean, in fact, you’ll never see them in there. So how is it their restaurant? I mean particularly if they have more than one, if it is a chain across China, how is that their restaurant? Yes, they may own it, it may have their name on it, but so what? If they were in there, then people would obviously still keep going there. But the fact is that you’ll never see these people in any of these restaurants, except possibly for five minutes when they opened the very first one. Heyang: Right, but was Jay Chou’s restaurant, sound like I’m doing an ad for them... Because there are a lot of elements from his music videos, his movies that are presented in his restaurant. So ultimately this is about getting more money from their fans. But if it is a real successful restaurant, then they should be attracting more people, not just the fans, right? Mark: Well, I don’t know... I mean there are two different things we can talk about now. You are now talking about themed restaurants - that’s a Jay Chou themed restaurant which is his own place in name. But I think something is quite different from - for example, an ordinary looking restaurant, but it’s owned by somebody who is one of these movie stars or singers. So I think it’s actually quite different. I’m surprised really the Jay Chou one... Is it doing well? I don’t know. We shouldn’t say if it isn’t probably, give it every chance of success. But the thing is that it will attract their fans. I think those ones, the theme restaurants, could keep going... But it will be much less likely for them to keep going if it is just owned by one of these celebrities. They just lent their name to some business people who have done all the work. Heyang: That is probably why they don’t succeed later on. Mark: Right. There isn’t the personal connection. Heyang: And some people say it is low entry kind of business and because celebrities have fame and you immediately have some sort of built-in customers who are gonna come. But in the long run, it really depends on whether you are giving the service to people that they are gonna be satisfied with. I can totally understand why celebrities want to get involved in either opening a restaurant or have their own business, because being a celebrity often means you only get fame and money with the fleet of the moment and the popularity could die out any minute. There is a lack of sense of security and that’s why many of them want to have another business. Xiaohua: Yeah. But again I have to say that opening and managing a restaurant is probably one of the most difficult businesses in the world. It’s a very, very hard and highly competitive business and I hope that these celebrities will sort of know what they are doing before they pour all their money into investing in a restaurant.