Zhang Lan cooks up beautiful success

The group is also accelerating its domestic expansion.

"We plan to open 30 new restaurants annually in the next three to five years, most of which will be in less-developed cities, such as Chengdu in Sichuan province," Zhang said.

According to a recent feasibility study by McKinsey, out of China's 800 main cities, more than 300 hold potential for South Beauty Group.

Zhang said compared with Beijing and Shanghai, less-developed cities enjoy lower costs in terms of rent, labor and raw material purchasing, while the number of potential customers grows.

Her success is the epitome of China's fast-growing dining market, analysts said.

The nation's dining business has maintained annual double-digit growth during the past 30 years. Last year, revenue from China's dining industry topped 2 trillion yuan. The figure is expected to reach 3.7 trillion yuan by the end of 2015, according to the Ministry of Commerce.

The domestic market offers higher returns and lower costs compared with foreign markets, with the steadily growing middle-class providing a strong impetus for the group to expand domestic operations, said Guo Jie, an analyst with Beijing-based Citic Securities.

Guo said despite the downturn in China's dining industry, hit by rising costs and slowing economic growth, the market for mid and high-end dining is still huge.

Zhang, who never visits spas, said work is her best reward and she never draws a distinction between work and life. "The secret for me to stay energetic is to do things that I like every day."

Born in Beijing in 1958, she worked as an accountant at a State-owned construction company after graduating from Beijing Technology and Business University in 1987.

She went to Canada to pursue further education in 1989. While studying there, she once took six part-time jobs at the same time, including washing dishes and cutting chunks of beef.

"During that period, I was so tired by the end of the day that I had to lift my legs onto the bed with my hands," Zhang says. Through hard work at restaurants and beauty shops, she made her first $20,000 within two years.

In 1991, Zhang opened a small but special restaurant serving Sichuan cuisine in Beijing. At the time, not many people were dining out, but Zhang focused on the cleanliness of the restaurant and the quality of dishes to distinguish it from others.

She traveled to the countryside in Sichuan province and hired farmers to gather bamboo, which was taken to Beijing by train and helped transform her restaurant into a little bamboo house.

In 2000, she opened her first South Beauty Restaurant in Beijing's China World Trade Center, a high-end office building in the capital's Central Business District.