Xiabu Xiabu closed 211 restaurants in one year — its fifth straight year of losses

Xiabu Xiabu built China's largest individual-hot-pot chain on one idea: a fast, cheap, single-person hot pot meal. Its upmarket sister brand Coucou did the same for group dining. Then the pandemic years met the price-war years, and the group's maths stopped working: net losses of ¥293 million in 2021, ¥353 million in 2022, ¥199 million in 2023 and ¥401 million in 2024 — more than ¥1.3 billion over five years.

The closures accelerated with the losses. In 2024 the group shut 138 Xiabu Xiabu restaurants and 73 Coucou ones, against 65 and 13 openings — a net loss of 133 restaurants in a single year, leaving 957. Coucou's revenue fell 26.5% in 2024. The company said most closures were loss-making locations that no longer fitted its 'high cost-performance' model — the chain's own phrase for the discount positioning it was trying to get back to.

The first half of 2025 continued the pattern: revenue down 18.9% year on year and a further expected loss of ¥80–100 million. What the five-year record shows is a chain caught between two markets: the premium Coucou format lost diners to cheaper competitors, while the parent brand's value proposition had been eroded by the very discounters it was now imitating. Closing restaurants stops the losses those restaurants make; it does not restart the ones the survivors need.

Shut 211 restaurants in 2024, mostly loss-making, to cut losses but revenue fell too, leaving fixed costs spread over fewer tables.

The premium format needed diners trading up; the market was trading down — Coucou fought the cycle for three years and lost.

A value chain that spent a decade moving upmarket cannot move back in one repositioning — the cost base and the brand both resist.

Closures cut the loss line but shrink the revenue line too; after 133 net closures in a year, the fixed costs simply spread over fewer tables.

When the market trades down, a premium format is a bet against your customers' wallets — reposition before the losses do it for you; a chain can close its way to smaller, but not to profitable.