A 7.9M-follower influencer opened a hotpot restaurant — it lost ¥1M in 10 months

Li Liangliang (李凉凉) was a car-model-turned-influencer with 7.9 million followers on Chinese social media. In October 2024, she opened 'Li Niangniang Hotpot Chuan Chuan' (李嬢嬢火锅串串), an 800-square-metre hotpot restaurant in Chongqing — her second attempt at the F&B industry after a prior Chongqing noodle venture had also failed.

The restaurant closed in July 2025 after just 10 months of operation, losing over ¥1 million. Combined with the earlier noodle shop failure, Li's total F&B losses reached approximately ¥5 million. The closure fell well short of the industry-average restaurant lifecycle of 15 months in China.

The case illustrated a recurring pattern in China's influencer economy: social-media followers do not automatically translate into restaurant customers. Despite millions of online fans, the 800sqm venue could not sustain sufficient foot traffic. Online-channel expansion attempts also failed to generate meaningful revenue.

Li's experience joined a growing list of Chinese influencer F&B failures, reinforcing the lesson that audience reach on social platforms is not equivalent to the operational capability required to run a physical retail business.

Li Liangliang's second F&B failure lost ¥1M in 10 months, totaling ¥5M across both ventures, as online fans did not convert into diners.

Social-media followers do not convert into restaurant customers at scale — Li's 7.9M online fans could not fill an 800sqm venue consistently enough to cover rent and operating costs.

The hotpot restaurant was Li's second F&B venture after a prior noodle shop failure, suggesting the first failure had not produced the operational learning needed to avoid repeating the same mistakes.

Online-channel expansion attempts failed to generate meaningful revenue, showing that influencer-to-restaurant traffic conversion requires capabilities beyond content creation.

The 10-month lifespan fell short of China's 15-month average restaurant lifecycle, indicating fundamental unit-economics problems rather than bad timing.

A million followers is not a million customers — influencer-led restaurants fail because social-media reach does not substitute for location, operations, and repeat-visit economics.

Li Liangliang formally announced the closure in July 2025. The case was widely cited in Chinese media as evidence that influencer-to-entrepreneur transitions in F&B carry a high failure rate, even for creators with massive audiences.