Chinese online BBQ seller's Colonel Sanders dream

Semi-finished products for barbeque on sale on yesbbq.taobao.com.[Photo/yesbbq.taobao.com]

BEIJING - Li Ye's parents expected their son's crazy idea of opening an online barbeque store to flop. But the young businessman has become a millionaire and dreams of building his company into the KFC of the Chinese barbeque industry.

Born into a family of modest means in Yancheng city, Jiangsu province, about a four-hour drive from Shanghai, Li enrolled in Shanghai Publishing and Printing College in 2005 to pursue a multimedia design major.

His parents moved to Shanghai in 2006 to look after him and run a small barbeque stall at the night market, selling skewers of meat and vegetables.

"My parents work their tails off to support the family. They could at most sell 1,000 yuan ($163) of barbequed food every night, and they only made a profit of about 100 yuan from it," said the 30-year-old entrepreneur.

"My mother was diagnosed with knee arthritis after long hours of standing, and my father was diagnosed with hyperlipidemia after toiling at the grills every night for years. Now I can make enough money to support them financially, and I want them to enjoy stress-free retirement starting this year," he told Xinhua Tuesday in an interview.

barbeque stall, online store

Li found his business inspiration in his parents' humble barbeque stall. Some college students organizing barbeque parties and eager to avoid exhausting preparation work used to come to the stall to order ready-to-cook barbeque.

When his parents received these orders in the amount of several hundred yuan or more, they were overjoyed. They did not need to cook the food, but could make a handsome profit from the sales.

Now Li can make as much money daily online as his parents earned each year at the market. The business revenue of Yesbbq (Yesbbq.taobao.com) surged to 8 million yuan last year from 2.8 million yuan in 2012. The company's profit margin remained stable at about 30 percent, three times higher than his parents' barbeque stall.

"My business is a combination of my family's barbeque tradition and my major in college," he said.