Haidilao, founded by Zhang Yong in 1994 in Jianyang, Sichuan, is the largest hot pot chain in China. It is known for attentive service. In 2011 a book about the company by Huang Tiejian, Haidilao: You Can’t Learn It, swept the country.
The service also draws criticism. A 2022 article on the business site TMTPost wrote that its birthday greetings had become a scene of mass embarrassment, and that doubts about “pathological service and excessive service” kept coming.