In early September 2026, a business registration change stirred ripples across the dining and capital circles. "Beijing Henjiuyiqian Catering Management Co., Ltd." officially changed its name to "Beijing Henjiuyiqian Catering Management Group Co., Ltd.," converting its enterprise type from a limited liability company to a joint-stock company.

This signaled that the direct-operated chain brand, famous for its Hulunbuir lamb skewers and jokingly called the "Haidilao of barbecue" by consumers, had cleared the first institutional threshold in the IPO process. If subsequent steps proceed smoothly, the A-share and Hong Kong markets will welcome the first listed restaurant chain primarily engaged in barbecue, filling the gap for a "first grilled skewer stock."

However, the corporate restructuring is merely an admission ticket; actually taking a seat is still a considerable distance away. Against the backdrop of a continuously cold Hong Kong consumer IPO market in 2026, with no restaurant company having completed a listing yet, the questions Henjiuyiqian must answer are far sharper than "can it list": Can the scale of over 100 directly operated stores support the valuation imagination of the capital markets? In an extremely fragmented sector with a chain rate below 30%, is it a category disruptor or just another queuer swept up by the capital cycle?

Restructuring Is More Than a Name Change: Governance Upgrade and Capital Layout Advance in Tandem

On the surface, the restructuring is a name and type change at the business registration level. But viewed within the full IPO process, its substantive significance lies in transforming a "boss's company" into a joint-stock enterprise that can be scrutinized by public investors. According to regulatory rules, domestic enterprises seeking to list on either the A-share or Hong Kong markets must have a joint-stock company as the issuing entity, so restructuring is often seen as the "first hurdle" in the IPO sprint.

Alongside the name change came a carefully designed reshuffling of personnel and governance structure. After the adjustment, the company's board of directors consists of five members: founder Song Ji serves as chairman, with Song Qing, co-founder Wang Liang, Black Ant Capital founder Zhang Peiyuan, and Jueliao Fund executive director Yu Yanxin serving as directors. The financial officer changed from Zhang Shuai to Gong Zhiqiang, and the supervisory board was expanded to three members, with Zhao Lei appointed as chairman of the supervisory board. The entry of key figures from two external investors into the board means the company's decision-making mechanism has shifted from founder-led to a governance structure that includes checks and balances from institutional investors—exactly the signal that brokerages, exchanges, and potential cornerstone investors want to see.

Supporting this governance upgrade is years of accumulated capital backing. Between 2017 and 2024, Henjiuyiqian completed multiple rounds of external financing: Jueliao Fund participated in the A round in 2018, Black Ant Capital exclusively invested nearly 100 million yuan in the B round in 2020, the C round was completed in 2022, and the B+ round was completed in May 2024. Jueliao Fund was jointly initiated by Juewei Food and Ele.me, while Black Ant Capital is a well-known consumer investment institution that has backed Pop Mart and Laopu Gold. As of before the restructuring, the company had 11 shareholders: Song Ji directly held 25.84%, and other entities associated with Song Ji collectively held 37.86%; Jueliao Fund collectively held 19.39%, and Black Ant Capital collectively held 9.02%. From a voting rights perspective, Song Ji controlled approximately 63.7% of voting rights through direct holdings, related entities, and employee stock ownership platforms, maintaining absolute control over the company while bringing in institutional capital.

A clear capital path can be read from this equity structure: early-stage institutional financing to solve expansion funding, mid-stage governance standardization to meet listing conditions, and the founder retaining control through voting rights arrangements while ceding some equity. But restructuring is ultimately about "whether one has the qualification to tell a story"; the next challenge is whether the story itself is persuasive enough.

The Narrative Cracks in the First Grilled Skewer Stock: When the Growth Ceiling Meets the Capital Winter

Henjiuyiqian's brand foundation has its unique qualities. Founder Song Ji is from Hulunbuir, Inner Mongolia. He worked as a part-time DJ in Beijing in his early years, and in 2008 opened his first store in Shunyi, Beijing, with 60,000 yuan in startup capital, originally named "Henjiuyiqian Is Just a Skewer Shop." He brought the lighting, music, and atmosphere of nightclubs into the barbecue restaurant, using smokeless grilling and an immersive experience to upgrade street-stall-style skewer eating into a nighttime social scene. Lamb skewers are the absolute core product, with the brand emphasizing the use of only 5-to-6-month-old Hulunbuir lamb. Stores are mostly located in mid-to-high-end shopping malls, equipped with automatic grills, cooling patches, and deodorizing sprays as part of extreme service details.

This differentiated positioning indeed brought early rapid growth. It entered Shanghai in 2013, and annual revenue reached 400 million yuan in 2016. After the visa-free policy took effect in 2024, the Shanghai Nanjing Road store unexpectedly went viral due to a large influx of Korean tourists, briefly becoming a social media check-in hotspot. As of now, the brand has approximately 148 operating stores nationwide, covering 17 cities in 9 provinces. Shanghai and Beijing have 52 and 41 stores respectively, with per capita spending of about 88.66 yuan.

The problem is that the ceiling of this model is equally clear. Henjiuyiqian took a unique path: it tried franchising in its first four years, then wavered through a joint venture phase, and finally returned to a fully direct-operated model, establishing a "five no's" principle of no discounts, no promotions, no group buying, no prepaid cards, and no delivery. The direct-operated model preserved brand tone and quality control底线, but it also locked down expansion speed. In the past year, the brand's net growth was only about 20 stores, and its 148-store scale is only about one-tenth of Haidilao's 1,389 stores. Muwu BBQ, also a direct-operated model, has opened over 400 stores, Fengmao Skewers has about 60-plus, and Judian Chuanba has over 50 in Beijing—Henjiuyiqian does not hold an absolute advantage in scale.

And the sector it wants to enter is precisely a "large but scattered" market. Data from the Red Meal Industry Research Institute shows that the national barbecue market reached 268 billion yuan in 2025 and is expected to exceed 280 billion yuan in 2026, with growth rate surpassing hot pot for the first time. But another set of data reveals the true competitive intensity of the sector: as of February 2026, the number of barbecue stores nationwide had fallen from a peak of 517,000 to 409,000, a decline of over 20%; the top 10 barbecue brands by store count occupy only 1.02% of stores in the sector, with market concentration CR10 below 2%, and nearly 80% of brands have 10 or fewer stores. Although the chain rate for barbecue rose from 14% in 2021 to 22% in 2024 and is expected to reach 26% in 2026, it remains significantly lower than categories such as snacks and fast food. In an extremely fragmented category with low consumer loyalty and highly localized taste preferences, scaling a direct-operated chain is far more difficult than hot pot or tea drinks.

An even colder headwind comes from the capital markets themselves. Since 2026, over 100 companies have completed listings in Hong Kong, with tech companies accounting for more than half, while no restaurant company has listed. Banu Hot Pot, after two failed filings, is making a third attempt with an annualized 8% repurchase clause, and the prospectuses of several restaurant companies such as Yuanji Yunjiao, Laoxiangji, and Big Pizza have also expired in 2026. At the end of 2025, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission jointly issued a letter criticizing sponsor institutions for inadequate due diligence, raising requirements for consumer and restaurant projects and significantly lengthening the review cycle. Hong Kong investors already find it difficult to assign high valuations to the restaurant industry, a highly cyclical consumer sector vulnerable to public opinion shocks, and with food safety and revenue authenticity easily becoming short-selling reasons, institutions have become more cautious.

Henjiuyiqian's own risks are not without precedent. In May 2026, the brand proactively refunded over 1.1 million yuan and apologized after 24 stores grilled skewers for too long, causing 48,000 tables of customers to receive lamb skewers that did not meet "optimal condition." The proactive stance of taking responsibility won public goodwill, but it also exposed the fragile link in standardized execution for direct-operated chains—when store count grows from 100 to 200 or more, the challenge of quality consistency will only grow.

Henjiuyiqian's restructuring completed the leap from "whether it has the qualification to list" to "what story it can tell about listing." It has decent brand recognition and a single-store model in the 280-billion-yuan barbecue sector, and its capital backing is solid enough. But the core proposition it must answer remains unchanged: in a market with a chain rate below 30%, a visible ceiling, and a narrowing capital window, how much imagination can a 148-store model support? The narrative of the first grilled skewer stock requires not only the skill to grill a good lamb skewer, but also proof to the capital markets—that this plate of skewers grilled for eighteen years deserves to be priced with a different valuation logic. This article was created with the help of AI tools to collect and organize market data and industry information, combined with auxiliary analysis and writing.