By Dan Guin and Sam Jones
Fast Food Chains such as KFC and Pizza Hut conjure up many images inside an American’s mind. Usually the latter reminds us of those strange red booths with cracked faux-leather, and a strange 80’s wood theme throughout the restaurant. It is not the most romantic place to go on a date. Dig about 8,000 miles through the Earth, and you would find a stark difference between the Pizza Huts of America, and the Pizza Huts of China.
Unlike its American cousin, usually known for its cheap and passable pizza, Pizza Hut in China is known for its unique and experimental pizzas, an upper-middle class clientele, and as a place that many teens take their dates on. Pizza Hut in China is obviously not the brand we know and (love?) here in America, so we were curious as to the motivation between the sharp shift in branding.
To understand this however, we need to take a glance at the beginning of the fast food revolution in China. American Fast Food chains, like a modern day manifest destiny with a greasy twist, entered the Chinese restaurant market in 1987, with KFC opening its first Chinese branch in Beijing. McDonalds followed soon after, and these two fast food chains became the number 1 and 2 top fast food restaurants in China, respectively (Big Mac: Inside the McDonald’s Empire). By 2002, 80% of Chinese citizens had eaten at one of these fast food restaurants. But why the rapid expansion? Researchers at the Oxford Club speculate that this may be due to the rapid expansion of the middle class, as well as grueling work hours, causing many to not be able to eat at home. Researchers also wonder that if marriages, now happening later in life, are having a meaningful impact on fast food sales.
This brings us back to our original question. Why does Pizza Hut look so different in China? What it comes down to is the demographic. When fast food first came out in China, it could only afford to cater to the upper middle class/upper class citizens. Now that the standard of living and general wealth have increased, a larger portion of citizens are now able to eat fast food without the fast food company having to drop quality or class.
Though growth is slowing, the future of fast food in China is bright, with millions of potential customers ready for a slice of pizza.
Citations
Great topic and interesting pictures; the post gave me a good glimpse at the restaurant market in China. However, the main question is raised at the very end of the post and id only addressed with a one sentence answer. You have a great start to the blog, but keep working because I still don’t know why the dining experience is so different in China.
This post looks great from a stylistic point of view. The paragraphs break up nicely, the pictures are placed well, and the text fits the space. However, you need to use a continue reading tag, and you need to categorize and tag this post. Also, you say that you are shortening Pizza Hut to PHA and PHC, but you never actually use the PHA abbreviation, or even talk about PHA again in the post. Maybe you should delete this?
Interesting topic! Born and lived in China for 17 years before coming to the U.S, I never consider Pizza-hut as a fast food restaurant. When I first come to the U.S.A, the dirty look of the Pizza-hut shocks me. Also, KFCs in China look and taste much better than the KFCs here.
There are couple of problem in the blogs I like to address. First, this blog needs a proofread. As Dr.Blumenfield points out, there are lots of grammatical problem that stop the flow of the article.
I will also add more hyperlinks in the text to direct readers who are interested in the topic to read more. For example, when talking “Researchers at the Oxford Club speculate that this may be due to the rapid expansion of the middle class,”, adding a hyperlink here will be helpful.
Based on what I know, the differences between fast food in China and in U.S was due to their different ownership. KFC and Pizza-hut first come to Hong Kong before reaching to mainland China. The owner, if not, biggest stoke owners of KFC in China are from Hong Kong. So when KFC and pizza hut come to mainland, they have already been modified dramatically by the people from Hong Kong. Doing some research on this can be really helpful to your blog. Here is the link that might be helpful for your blog. This article talks about Hong Kong’s fast-food industry and how it develop by making inroad to mainland China. http://go.galegroup.com.libproxy.furman.edu/ps/retrieve.do?sgHitCountType=None&sort=RELEVANCE&docType=Industry+overview&prodId=AONE&tabID=T002&searchId=R1&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchType=AdvancedSearchForm&contentSegment=¤tPosition=1&searchResultsType=SingleTab&inPS=true&userGroupName=furmanulib&docId=GALE%7CA17225656&contentSet=GALE%7CA17225656
Last but not least, I am little concerned about the length of the blog. It seems to me that your blog is too short to meet the 1000-1200 words requirement. Correct me if I am wrong, you can add more information to this blog or make another short blog about the same topic to meet the requirement. I will recommend you add information of different food KFC and pizza hut had in China to the food they had in the U.S. That will be interesting. Also, you need more pictures. After all, it’s all about food!!!
My roommate who is from China told me that restaurants like Pizza Hut and China are mainly for the upper class citizens. I was surprised to hear this because here in America, most people(poor or rich) eat at fast food restaurants like these. I never considered Pizza hut to be a type of luxury restaurant but quite the opposite. I find it very interesting how the same restaurant can almost be completely different in another country.
Excellent post! The tone and the way of showing statistic numbers make it really professional. I am really interested in the topic of your blog. As a Chinese, I always wonder why Pizza Hut became so popular in China. It looks really fancy from the outside look of the restaurant, but the food is in fact not tasty at all. I never have Pizza Hut here in America, so I can’t really tell the difference between them. What I can say is that the food in China Pizza Hut must be very different from the food in Pizza Hut here, since it is so expensive and aimed for the middle class. I think the reason why Chinese people like Pizza Hut so much is that it differs from cheap fast food like KFC and McDonald and provides a delusion of “we are having fancy, interesting, and decent western food here.” for Chinese people. It might not be necessary to be tasty, but helps Chinese who want some “high-level” enjoyment to jump out of their daily homemade food and have something new and cool. The Chinese version of Pizza Hut is completely different from the American one except of sharing the same name, so I think it is helpful for you to show some pictures of the food of Pizza Hut in China in the blog.
Here is the link for Pizza Hut in China:
http://www.pizzahut.com.cn
You don’t need to understand Chinese but just look for pictures of food there. You may found it very interesting to see!
I really like the way this post was structured as well as the topic. I think it is really neat that restaurants, like KFC & Pizza Hut, are regarded highly in China. In the United States, I am so used to seeing those restaurants as cheap and inexpensive. It is a very interesting comparison between the United States and China. The post was informative, yet short. I think breaking up the paragraphs allowed me to be more engaged in the post. I was not lost in a long paragraph. To improve your post, I think you could add more photos to support your arguments…maybe consider adding pictures of KFC in both China and the United States. This would be a great visual for the reader. Some of the grammatical errors could also be eliminated. It was neat how you incorporated questions into the post however, be careful with adding to much in parentheses. It can be distracting to the reader.
This post is well structured and is written in a good tone for a blog, conversational and easy to read. It definitely needs more specific citations and in-text links, as well as author names and the photo captions mentioned by posters above. I don’t see the required sources used either. Specific areas to work on are noted below.
“It is for certain a decidedly unromantic . ” Strange sentence, missing a part?
“By 2002, 80% of chinese citizens had eaten at one of these restaurants (foodtank.com).”
Should be “McDonald’s” not “Mcdonalds” — be careful with this trademarked name.
You should not use the PHC or PHA abbreviation–remember that blog readers scan quickly, so you want your information to be available quickly too. Having to look up something like that will slow people down and they may not look it up.
What’s your source for this quote? “Mcdonalds followed soon after, and these two fast food chains became the number 1 and 2 top fast food restaurants in China, respectively.”
“Researchers at the Oxford Club speculate that this may be due to the rapid expansion of the middle class, as well as grueling work hours, causing many to not be able to eat at home. ” — I don’t know about this argument; many people I know in China do not consider, say, McDonald’s a proper meal, but more of a fun snack. This is different from needing to fill up for a meal missed at home. So, include your source and evaluate whether it’s a credible one or not–where did they get their speculations from?
“This brings us back to our original question. Why does Pizza Hut look so different in China.” (If it’s a question, don’t forget the question mark!)
“Though growth is slowing, the future of fast food in China is bright, with billions of potential customers ready for a slice of pizza.”
Do you mean millions? Even China only has 1.4 billion people.
This was an interesting post! It’s interesting to read about the American food in another country. It’s usually common for America to americanize other cultures but we don’t really think about on the other hand. Like meg suggested, make sure to include photo credits and link all of the images. Maybe incorporate a “continue reading” so readers can get a preview of your post before reading the whole thing. Heres a youtube video (in Chinese) but it’s a cool pizza hut commercial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-77CR7snQ8E
This post is really interesting and it’s cool because I actually have some first-hand experience with this. My family was traveling outside of the country and we stopped into an airport Pizza Hut to find that it was completely different than what we were familiar with. The food options were different and of a much higher quality, and like you mentioned, the restaurant lacked the classic Pizza Hut decorations. The only suggestion I have is to add more pictures and make sure the pictures have captions that credit the photographer.
Thanks Matt, you are the best!
I find this blog to be very cool. It shocked me to see how different the same chain restaurants (Pizza Hut) can be in different countries. I guess this makes sense because of cultures. In America, we just want quick pizza at a good price, while in China pizza is more of a delicacy, and it is a treat to go out for pizza, so the Chinese made their Pizza Huts fancy, tasty and pricey. The stat saying how in 2002, 80% of chinese citizens had eaten at one of these restaurants (KFC and Pizza Hut) shocked me. It shows how prevalent and normal Americanized fast food has become in China.
http://money.cnn.com/2014/08/21/news/china-fast-food/
(I found this article to be interesting and relevant!)
I think this post is very interesting and entertaining because it reads well (very conversational). I would be careful about some of the grammatical stuff, for example put (and love?) in parenthesis and keeping the way you present non-statistic numbers consistent (typing them out or 1,2,3). Other than that, I found the post to be very interesting, and I’d like to learn more about Yum!’s involvement in Chinese food culture (and society).
Food is always a great topic to talk about and choosing to focus on fast food in particular was a great choice. In choosing fast food you not only picked a subject that demonstrates an interesting contrast between cultures but also touched on a subject Americans can relate to. And i loved the undertone humor written into the article. (passable pizza. Strange 80’s wood theme). It kept the article interesting and engaging. Good work!
This is very interesting from an economics perspective because most american citizens I think would be upset to the idea of a restaurant in America happens to be of a less quality than that of another country. Then again this could allude to the idea of Americans having a lower standard when it comes to food. China could value higher quality food and so with the rise of the middle class as y’all indicated, this could create a healthier China both on a food quality and an economic standpoint. Get blog!
This is a very interesting post. I read an article for my sociology class last semester that talked about how McDonalds restaurants are very different in Japan and in Asia than they are here in the United States. I would assume this is because of the same reason that you have stated in your blog post. They are much higher class and kids go there after school to just hang out and have a snack. No one here would ever imagine doing that at a McDonalds. I also found out from this article that there are different types of McDonalds foods in every country, which I found very surprising. I assumed the food would be the same everywhere. I have added a link so that you can see the different types of McDonalds foods that they sell in Asia as well.
https://www.tsunagujapan.com/50-mcdonalds-menu-items-only-in-japan/
Such an interesting topic for a blog! I never knew there could be such a difference between Pizza Huts! Remember to add a caption below your photo and to cite where the photo is from. Also remember to add the names of the authors to the blog post.Maybe add a few more images too!
I really liked the introductory paragraph–great little slice (pardon the pun) of imagery that drew me into your article. One thing I’d love to see would be a bit about other fast food chains in China. Are the KFCs that swanky? McDonalds? If you can find images of the inside of those places as well, I think that would make a great addition to your post.