Tiaohai Doesn't Spend on Marketing: One Person Steps Behind the Bar, and 20 More Show Up Outside
Tiaohai never spends money on Xiaohongshu or Douyin. Its growth engine is the bartender: invite regulars and friends to stand behind the bar, and once one person steps in, his friends outside come too — 20 more people outside the door.
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The company sold for 200 million, and he got none of it
His fourth startup was called Huojian Technology. In 2018 the team was acquired by the soon-to-IPO Ucommune, at a paper valuation of 200 million, but he says he actually didn't receive a single yuan, and still had to stay at Ucommune for two years to help it list. What followed was WeWork blowing up, the China-concept-stock affair, and the pandemic — and he watched the people he used to ride bikes with fall from the high point. The conclusion he drew: ‘you will eventually return to value equilibrium.’ In the short run you can be brilliant with financial engineering, like Evergrande or LeEco, but over a longer cycle, ‘it is always the more efficient beating the less efficient, always the better product beating the worse product.’ So with Tiaohai, the first thing he did was turn it into a project that makes money.
— Liang ErgouThree taps, 300,000 in sales in one month
When the pandemic hit in 2020, the Houhai store was already signed but couldn't be renovated, so the team retreated to his home. There were three taps at home. They told friends in the community there was beer to sell, sealed it in cans, and delivered it by on-demand courier and takeout. It took off for three reasons: locked down at home, alcohol was a hard need; Taobao and JD logistics had stalled, small supermarkets only had Asahi and Kirin, and the only place with better beer was his; and traditional craft beer bars couldn't find customers while customers couldn't find them, because they had no community. With those three taps, they sold 300,000 in a month. For comparison, he says a 40–50 square meter street-corner bar in Beijing doing 150,000 a month is considered good.
— Liang Ergou30 part-timers replace one full-time store manager
He didn't want to stand in the store every day. A friend called and said, ‘if you're there I'll come, if you're not I won't,’ so he had friends watch the store, and insisted on paying them: ‘I have to pay you, that's the only way this lasts.’ The deal was 150 yuan a day base plus 1% of revenue as commission; on the day you pour, you drink free, on the condition that you don't get drunk and don't disrupt operations. Once this mechanism was fixed, a bartender only comes to pour once every week or two, keeping them in good form. The comparison: hire full-time for the same role and at that pay you only get waiter-level people, ‘he has no soul’; whereas 30 part-timers can replace one full-timer. So Tiaohai open-sourced the clerk and store-manager role: no delivering drinks to the table, no floor service — the bar counter became the biggest touchpoint.
— Liang ErgouTiaohai isn't dead yet, so the world still has hope
The year the episode was recorded was the hardest year of the pandemic: renovation workers were sealed inside construction sites, the company's account was running dry and next month's payroll couldn't be paid, and they got through by livestreaming the World Cup and selling takeout. The other side of it was that this made the community stronger — ‘Tiaohai isn't dead yet’ itself became a belief, and for many people it meant you could believe the world would get warmer, so after the lockdown lifted people were willing to meet offline the person who had kept them company. He doesn't think this year is better: ‘this year it's just reopened.’ People are extremely anxious about income and careers, VCs are nearly gone, and he saw a fund manager cry mid-conversation.
— Liang ErgouStartups are a succession of stage partners
After the Guangzhou store proved the model in 2020, he judged that the early buddies couldn't carry a national expansion — some couldn't even go full-time. His approach: they kept the profit rights to the Beijing stores, he kept leading the company, then he changed the equity structure to 55/15/15/15, leaving each person one more point. He says it was an extremely painful decision, and at the time he was crying while playing drums. But he has the architecture math clear: his first startup used 30/30/40, and ‘nobody had the final say — the 40 had the final say’; and 55/15/15/15 can't survive two rounds of financing either, it would fall below absolute control. Today the four are on good terms, and the original initiator took over the food business at several Beijing stores. His phrasing: ‘startups are a process of constantly choosing stage partners.’
— Liang ErgouIndependent cafés don't make money; bars can
He has run the café math: rent is the same as a bar, but ticket size and repeat purchase lock the industry down, and independent cafés rarely truly make money. Startup costs are high too — breaking even on an espresso machine within three years is considered good, and a good machine costs at least 80,000 to 100,000. Starbucks is a different financial model: ‘that store doesn't even pay rent, it takes a share of revenue,’ and many malls recruit Starbucks first, giving it the best terms. Coffee's advantage is that it's a harder need than alcohol, with baseline foot traffic every day, making it a traffic funnel — and a high share of customers photograph and post to Xiaohongshu, which is free brand promotion. But he says most people who open cafés aren't economically rational actors; they just want a nice space where a few friends can hang out.
— Liang ErgouLowering the service standard is the business
Tiaohai's drinks are five to eight yuan more expensive than similar bars in the same city, and the service isn't good either: no floor service, no delivering drinks to the table, no singing happy birthday, no unified SOP — ‘the only SOP is this sentence: how you'd host friends at home is how you host guests in the bar.’ As for how to serve, that's the staff's own business. His explanation is a closed loop: lower the cost of standardized delivery so a lot of people step behind the bar; use a certain premium to attract a certain kind of customer; then use that premium to support the community builders, so events happen here. So pure consumers who come to check in and find it expensive are right to feel that way; bartenders and community builders get discounts. He says that with the 100-store premise, neither price nor service standard will move, because those two things determine the underlying revenue structure.
— Liang ErgouStanding where the sun doesn't reach, calling for sunlight
He sums up the internal values in three phrases: stand on the back side, watch the frontier, share and co-create. ‘Standing on the back side’ is the stance — always stand where the sun doesn't reach and call for sunlight, always stand on the back side of grand narratives to talk to the mainstream, because only from the back side do you have enough spiritual tension to talk to a world that has already hardened; he says even if one day it lists, even with a thousand or ten thousand stores, it will always stand on the back side. ‘Watching the frontier’ is the weapon — he spends a lot of time studying what was web3 and now AI, and thinks web3 isn't even a technological current but a change in organizational form; Tiaohai has no office anywhere in the country, and many of its graphics are made with AIGC. ‘Share and co-create’ is distribution, which he describes as borrowing a hand from everyone, like the Spirit Bomb in Dragon Ball.
— Liang ErgouIn their own words · checked verbatim
It is always the more efficient beating the less efficient, always the better product beating the worse product, always good service beating bad service.
永远是效率高的 打败效率低的 永远是优质的产品 打败劣质的产品 永远是好的服务 打败不好的服务
Liang Ergou14:05
As long as one person stands behind the bar, there will be 20 more people outside. So we never spend marketing money on Xiaohongshu, on Douyin, on Dianping.
就是只要有一个人站在吧台内部 就会外面就会多20个人 所以我们从来不会花marking的费用 去投小红书投抖音投大众面评
Liang Ergou29:27
Because what we drink is the human flavor, the human emotion, that tension — not someone singing you a birthday song.
因为我们喝的是人味 喝的是人的情感 喝的是那个张力 而不是喝的是给你唱海里老生日课
Liang Ergou31:40
Last year, the whole of Tiaohai staying alive meant to a lot of people that Tiaohai isn't dead yet, and then, we can believe the world will get warmer.
去年整个跳海活着 对很多人的想法就是跳海还没死 然后呢,我们可以相信一下这个世界会变寒
Liang Ergou35:48
Our standard is: how you'd host friends at home is how you host guests in the bar. There isn't even a particularly agreed SOP — the SOP is only this sentence. And as for how you serve? That's your business.
我们的标准就是叫你在家怎么招待朋友,你在酒馆怎么招待客人。 甚至没有特别同意的SOP,SOP只有这句话。 而至于你怎么去服务呢? 那是你的事。
Liang Ergou1:06:17
Lower the cost of standardized delivery, let a lot of people step behind the bar, use a certain premium to attract a certain kind of customer, and use that premium to support the community builders. Let events happen here. This is our underlying business logic.
降低标准化的交付成本,让大量的人走进吧台,用一定的溢价去吸引一定的客人,用这部分溢价去养活社群的建设者们。 让活动在这里发生。 这是我们的底层的一个商业逻辑。
Liang Ergou1:07:17
Standing on the back side means you always stand where the sun doesn't reach and call for sunlight, always stand on the back side of grand narratives to talk to the mainstream — because only from the back side do you have enough spiritual tension to talk to a world that has already hardened.
就是站在背面是你永远站在阳光照不到的地方去呼唤阳光 永远站在一个就是宏大叙事的背面去对话主流 因为你只有站在背面,你才有那个足够的精神张力 去对话这个已经被固化的一个世界
Liang Ergou1:08:20
Standing on the back side is your stance, your source of emotion, your value proposition. Watching the frontier is the weapon in your hand — the place where you can be different from the old players, the old organizations, the incumbents of today.
站在背面是你的立场 你的情感来源 你的价值主张 关注前言是你手里有的武器 你能够跟老的那些玩家 老的组织 跟现在既得利益者 不一样的地方
Liang Ergou1:11:20
Figures
| Tiaohai stores in operation | 13 (about 1 more in preparation) | 3:02 |
| Tiaohai stores planned this year | about 30 | 3:02 |
| Monthly revenue from three home taps during the pandemic | 300,000 yuan | 19:18 |
| Reference monthly revenue for a 40–50 sqm Beijing bar | 150,000 yuan | 19:18 |
| Bartender pay | 150 yuan/day base + 1% of revenue commission | 28:25 |
| Tiaohai cumulative funding | two rounds, both in the tens of thousands of yuan, no single round over 1 million RMB | 34:46 |
| Number of bartenders at the Shanghai store | 300+ | 39:51 |
| Single-store monthly revenue and full-time headcount | nearly 1 million yuan monthly revenue, only 2 full-time staff (peers about 20) | 1:04:15 |
| Nationwide part-time bartenders | 1,000+ | 1:05:15 |
Glossary
- MVP / Minimum Viable Product
- Prove one thing works first, then scale and systematize — a startup method he uses repeatedly
- SOP / Standard Operating Procedure
- Tiaohai deliberately has no unified SOP, only one line: ‘host them like friends at home’
- social ladder
- The class channel for ordinary people to move upward; he says this ladder has been pulled away
How to listen
Founders building offline chains and consumer brands, plus operators and investors who want to understand how community can replace marketing spend.
The Douyin, Wang Wei and Zhang Xiangdong stretch is lyrical and unrelated to the business — you can skip it.