How a Haidilao waitress rose to become CEO of its international business

Yang currently serves as CEO of Super Hi, the operator of Haidilao restaurants outside China. She previously led the parent company in 2022 after co-founder Zhang Yong stepped down as CEO.

The chain, whose name means "scooping the bottom of the ocean," is one of the most popular Chinese cuisine brands globally with 1,363 outlets in China and overseas as at the end of last June, according to The Standard.

Born in 1978 in China’s southwestern province of Sichuan, Yang left school at 16 due to the heavy debts incurred by her two older brothers, entering the workforce when her peers were still studying.

She joined Haidilao when it was still a small local operation. She worked from morning until night, pouring hotpot broth, looking after customers’ children, cleaning up and even polishing shoes.

Yang later recalled that she felt she had "no choice" at the time, but said the job helped shape her work discipline.

Her first year at the restaurant was also shadowed by financial strain, with creditors frequently turning up at her family home to demand repayment. But Zhang stepped in to help and gave her 800 yuan (US$115), roughly twice the average monthly wage at the time, according to the South China Morning Post.

The gesture reportedly convinced Yang to stay with Haidilao for life.

Zhang Yong (right) and his wife Shu Ping, co-founders of the hotpot chain Haidilao, pose before an investors' luncheon ahead of the company's IPO in Hong Kong, China, on Sept. 10, 2018. Photo by Reuters

From there, her career advanced in step with the brand’s expansion. She became a store manager at 19 and, two years later, was tasked with spearheading Haidilao’s first outlet beyond Sichuan, in Xi’an.

She ran the restaurant by day and taught herself how to manage staff, work with suppliers and handle customer complaints at night. Within a year, the Xi’an branch had become one of the group’s top-performing outlets.

Chinese media outlet Sohu reported that when more than 60 armed troublemakers showed up at that outlet late one night in 1999, Yang stepped forward to confront them and protect her staff instead of fleeing. The incident has since become an anecdote of her firm leadership style.

As the chain began to push into overseas markets in 2012, Yang was put in charge of the chain’s entire operations.

She also led the brand’s expansion to Singapore and the U.S., according to The Business Times. She personally traveled to both countries to inspect food supply chains, study local tastes, negotiate with landlords and adapt the service model to suit each market.

Haidilao went public in Hong Kong in 2018. As a key management figure, Yang held a roughly 3.68% stake in the company valued at around 3 billion yuan at the time.

Yang Lijuan at Haidilao's Hong Kong IPO, Sep. 26, 2018. Photo by Reuters

After 24 years with the brand, Yang went from a waitress earning just 80 yuan a month to a self-made businesswoman.

The years that followed, however, proved to be the most challenging period of her career. As Haidilao was hit by rising costs and operational pressures, Yang led a restructuring effort known as the "Woodpecker" campaign, which saw around 300 underperforming outlets shuttered and the chain overhauled.

The effort paid off and the chain gradually returned to the black. It posted a net profit of 4.495 billion yuan in 2023 alone, up 174.6% from the previous year.

During her tenure, Haidilao also rolled out its "smart hotpot restaurant" model, which introduced service robots, AI-powered ordering systems and kitchen automation to cut labor costs and improve efficiency.

The shift, however, also led to the elimination of many front-of-house roles.

Having risen from a service role herself, Yang refused to leave employees behind. She launched an internal initiative that involved personally meeting with each worker on the layoff list to learn about their circumstances and help them find new jobs after leaving the chain.

"A business can only grow if its workers are protected," she said. "I don’t allow myself to ignore employees’ hardships simply to chase profit."

The Hurun Rich List named her among the world’s 50 richest self-made women and ranked her seventh among China’s wealthiest professional managers in 2021.

Reflecting on her career, Yang has often avoided lofty, motivational rhetoric. She has said she does not consider herself especially talented, but credits her rise to a willingness to endure hardship, persist through setbacks and seize opportunities to challenge herself, particularly given her limited formal education.

In 2024, co-founder Zhang announced his return to the CEO role and appointed four new executive directors, all of whom are women that began their careers as frontline employees at the company. They are widely seen as Yang’s successors.