Summary of the Key Points
The highly popular Black Duck Pot dish in 2025 plummeted from a trendy dining trend that required customers to wait in lines for three hours to a situation where top brands such as Huiwei Black Duck Pot closed all or reduced their operations in cities like Shanghai and Beijing. Smaller brands either shut down or disappeared from the market. This is not an isolated case; other internet-famous dishes like Jie Jie Pot and Shunde Steamed Dishes also suffered a similar fate of initial success followed by rapid decline. The reason behind this is that these dishes rely on traffic and novelty marketing, lacking a solid product foundation and customer loyalty, making them more akin to short-term profit-making ventures rather than sustainable dining businesses.
From “Incredibly Popular” to “Complete Shutdown”: The Wild Ride of Black Duck Pot
In 2025, Black Duck Pot became an absolute sensation, with some customers waiting for up to three hours to get a meal. A Henan hot pot restaurant that converted into a Black Duck Pot restaurant recouped its costs in just nine days, and the dish became a trending topic on social media, attracting numerous new brands (the number of related businesses in 2025 was ten times that of 2024). However, by July 2026, four of Huiwei Black Duck Pot’s stores in Shanghai had closed, two in Beijing were shut down, and only one remained in Tianjin; the store at Tianhe City even closed after just seven and a half months. Other brands like Ya Xian Ke and Qiao Lan Zi also largely disappeared, with only a few outlets left. What was once a “hot commodity” has now become a symbol of the fleeting nature of internet-famous trends.
Three Major Reasons for Black Duck Pot’s Quick Decline
The main reason it didn’t last longer than a year is that its success was based on superficial factors rather than a solid foundation:
1. Easy to imitate: The preparation of Black Duck Pot involves marinating and freezing duck meat, which can be easily replicated by any restaurant, with no significant technical barriers.
2. Poor quality due to shortcuts in ingredients: Many brands claimed to use freshly slaughtered duck meat, but actually used frozen pre-made products, resulting in a dry and unpleasant taste. This led to customer complaints about the decline in quality, causing them to lose interest.
3. Short-lived marketing tactics: The initial popularity was driven by gimmicks like “spicy challenge competitions” on social media, which attracted novelty-seeking customers but failed to generate repeat business.
A Pattern of Short-Lived Internet-Famous Dishes
Black Duck Pot is not the only example of this phenomenon. Many other dining trends have experienced a similar rise and fall in recent years:
- Jie Jie Pot: Popular in 2025 for its “sizzling” clay pot experience, it saw massive popularity on TikTok with over 2.6 billion views, but by 2026, many of its stores in major cities had closed.
- Shunde Steamed Dishes: Promoted as “made without a drop of water” and using no pre-made ingredients, this trend led to a surge in new stores nationwide, only for many to close within half a year, with specialized equipment being sold as scrap metal.
The Trap of Internet-Famous Dining: Quick Expansion and Quick Failure
These trends follow a similar pattern, all centered around the pursuit of quick profits:
1. Creating initial buzz: Opening stores in key areas and using tactics like hiring people to form long queues or relying on influencers to create a sense of urgency.
2. Rapid franchising: Expanding through franchises to quickly expand the brand presence and spread costs.
The problem with this approach is that it relies solely on temporary factors (traffic and novelty) without a strong product or customer loyalty foundation, leading to failure once the initial excitement fades.
The Essence of a Sustainable Dining Business
A sustainable dining business depends on four key elements:
1. Customer Loyalty: Will customers return?
2. Supply Chain: Can ingredients be sourced reliably and costs controlled?
3. Reputation: Will customers recommend the business to friends?
4. Efficiency: How fast can orders be served, and how efficient is the use of space?
Trendy dishes often focus on speed, but this only captures short-term attention. As one of the founders of a successful chain said, “If you enter the market half a year later, you might not even have the chance to create a queue.” Even if you can generate demand through long queues, the trend will eventually pass. True success in the dining industry comes from patiently refining products and services.
(The translation maintains the original structure of the Chinese text, using clear and easy-to-understand language suitable for a non-financial audience.)