Zhu Guangyu hotpot had 200 stores and one bad agent — Changsha lost all five overnight

Zhu Guangyu (朱光玉火锅馆) rose out of Chongqing as the self-styled 'queue king' of hotpot: a retro-styled, social-media-ready chain that scaled through regional agents and franchisees to more than 200 stores across 31 provinces, nearly half of them in second- and third-tier cities.

In August 2025 all five of its Changsha stores suspended operations at once. The brand's response, issued on the evening of 21 August, was that this was an individual case: the Changsha regional agent — who had joined in 2023 and run the five stores itself — had lost money on investments outside the restaurant business, and those losses had dragged the stores down. As recently as June, the same agent had been planning five more Changsha stores.

The brand said it was coordinating refunds of members' prepaid stored-value balances, and that the agent had agreed to bear the employee, supplier and rent debts. That division of responsibility is the case: in an agent model, the brand collects the reputation and the fees, while the cash that matters most to customers — the prepaid balances — sits with a partner whose other bets the brand does not see. One agent's bad quarter became five dark stores and a city's members chasing refunds from a company that calls itself a bystander.

The brand blamed one agent's outside bets, but the prepaid balances sat with that agent, so the brand's 'individual case' defence left customers unpaid.

Regional agents concentrate a brand's local risk in one balance sheet the brand does not audit — the agent's outside investments are the brand's hidden liabilities.

Prepaid member balances are customer money held by the weakest link in the chain; when the agent fails, the brand's 'individual case' defence does not refund anyone.

Planning five new stores in June and suspending five in August is a signal that the network's health is measured in the agent's cash position, not the brand's store count.

In an agent model, the brand's risk is exactly the partner's balance sheet it cannot see — audit the agent's finances like your own, because customers do not distinguish your logo from their ledger.