Jiumaojiu Brand Guidelines: A 1995 Haikou Noodle Shop, Tai Er Fish & a 2020 Listing

A northern noodle shop on a southern island.

Jiumaojiu (九毛九, pinyin Jiǔmáojiǔ) is the name of a Chinese restaurant group, Jiumaojiu International Holdings, and of the northwestern-cuisine chain it started with. The group is based in Guangzhou, but it did not begin there. Chinese Wikipedia says the founder, Guan Yihong, who comes from Taiyuan in Shanxi province, opened a noodle shop called Shanxi Mian Wang (山西面王, “Shanxi noodle king”) in Haikou, on the southern island province of Hainan, in October 1995. The Standard in Hong Kong also gave 1995 as the founding year when it reported on the group in February 2024.

The early years were spent on the name as much as the menu. In April 2001, Chinese Wikipedia says, the shop was renamed Shanxi Lao Mianguan (山西老面馆, “old Shanxi noodle house”). In 2003 the business entered the Guangzhou market, and in 2005 it settled on Jiumaojiu as its brand name, concentrated on northwestern Chinese cooking and moved its headquarters to Guangzhou. From 2010 it turned itself into a chain operator and began to expand across the country.

The 2005 date is therefore the year of the name and the Guangzhou head office, not of the first restaurant; the company’s story starts ten years earlier in Haikou, with Shanxi-style noodles sold a long way from Shanxi.

The namesake chain’s menu, as Chinese Wikipedia describes it, is built on dishes from China’s north-west: big bones (stewed meat on the bone), perch in aged vinegar, roujiamo — the meat-filled flatbread associated with Shaanxi — and lamb skewers. Those dishes, rather than any single signature item, defined the first Jiumaojiu brand.

Tai Er and the brands that followed.

The group’s second brand changed its shape. In July 2015, according to Chinese Wikipedia, Jiumaojiu launched Tai Er (太二酸菜鱼, Tai Er Suancai Yu), a restaurant concept built around suancai yu, fish cooked with pickled mustard greens, and aimed at younger diners. The English names vary: the company and the press use “Tai Er Sauerkraut Fish,” while the full Chinese name refers to fish with pickles from an old crock. Chinese Wikipedia adds that some Tai Er restaurants have since been converted into a “new Tai Er” format centred on fresh ingredients in Sichuan style.

More brands followed. In 2019 the group launched Song (怂), which began as a Chengdu-style cold-pot skewer concept and was turned into a Chongqing hot-pot brand designed for young diners, and a higher-end Cantonese restaurant, Na Wei Dashu Shi Dachu. Chinese Wikipedia also lists Lai Meili, a grilled-fish brand; Shang Xian Yue Mu, a beef hot-pot brand; and Shanwaimian, a Guizhou sour-soup hot-pot brand.

Not every concept stayed. Chinese Wikipedia records that the group sold most of its stake in 2 Eggs, a jianbing (Chinese crêpe) brand, in 2022, and that Na Wei Dashu Shi Dachu stopped operating in April 2024.

For a design reader the group is a study in a house of brands. Each restaurant line carries its own Chinese name and its own dish: northwestern noodles and stews under Jiumaojiu, pickled-fish under Tai Er, hot pot under Song and Shanwaimian. The group name sits above them on the stock exchange and in filings, while diners meet the individual brands on the street.

Category context.

China’s tea-drink, coffee, burger and restaurant chains present themselves first at street level. A shopfront, a cup and a paper bag are often the first things a customer sees of the brand, and many chains add a mascot, a theme song or a recurring character that appears on signs, packaging and social media at the same time. Some keep their shops small and built for takeaway; others put the same care into seating, lighting and a bakery counter as into the drinks.

Menus are usually organised by named drinks and dishes rather than by codes. Fruit teas, cheese-topped teas, lemon drinks, soft-serve ice cream, fried chicken and hotpot appear under house names, and chains that move abroad often add local flavours while keeping the core list the same. The names, the cups and the colours of the shop carry the brand from one city to the next.

The size of a network is something these companies publish themselves, in annual reports, listing documents and on their own sites, and the press repeats those counts with a date attached. Some chains run every shop directly; others rely mainly on franchisees, and several have moved from one model to the other. Store networks now reach Southeast Asia, Australia, Europe and North America as well as the home market.

Ownership is usually set out plainly on corporate pages: who founded the business and where, which group owns it now, and whether its shares trade in Hong Kong, on a mainland exchange or in New York. This guide follows those published facts, attributes counts to dated sources, and treats each chain’s visual identity as a design subject rather than a claim about its food or drinks.

A Hong Kong listing and restaurants abroad.

The group took two routes to the stock market. Chinese Wikipedia says Jiumaojiu filed a prospectus with the Shanghai Stock Exchange in June 2016 and withdrew it in April 2018. It then filed with the Hong Kong exchange on 28 August 2019 and listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on 15 January 2020, under the stock code 9922.

The restaurant count grew after the listing. In December 2023, Marketing-Interactive reported that the group operated more than 670 restaurants under its various brands in mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore and Canada. In February 2024, The Standard put the figure at more than 700 restaurants globally.

Tai Er led the move into Hong Kong. Marketing-Interactive reported that the brand opened four Hong Kong restaurants in December 2023 in a single investment, in Tsim Sha Tsui, Sha Tin, Kowloon Tong and Kai Tak, the first two opening on 9 December; the opening was assisted by Invest Hong Kong, the city’s inward-investment agency, and the Hong Kong company behind it said it hoped to use the city to build the brand in the wider region.

Weeks later the group changed how some brands could grow. In February 2024, The Standard and Marketing-Interactive reported that Jiumaojiu had introduced a franchise model for Tai Er and for Shanwaimian. From 3 February 2024, Tai Er franchises were available in certain regions of China, at transport hubs such as airports and high-speed railway stations, and in Australia and New Zealand, while Shanwaimian opened a cooperative model in designated shopping malls.

For a design guide, Jiumaojiu shows how one company can run several restaurant brands with distinct names and dishes rather than one master brand. Compare Haidilao, another listed Chinese restaurant group built on hot pot, and Laoxiangji, a chain that renamed itself to travel beyond its home province. For this guide we use pickle green, chili oil red and charcoal with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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