The world's largest pizza chain opened its first restaurant in China Monday, embarking on what many would consider an impossible mission - coaxing the Chinese to love cheese.
"Chinese people simply hate cheese," Beijing Pizza Hut operations manager Patrick Tan said with a wry smile and a shrug. "Our job is to educate them to like this product."Throngs of curious Chinese gathered outside the new pizzeria in Beijing's diplomatic quarter for the opening ceremony, but few said they had any clear concept of the Italian food known in Chinese as "bisabing."
"It's some Western thing. I don't know," Beijing auto worker Cao Jie said.
Selling cheese in China might be likened to making an unusual Chinese dish - say, boiled sea slugs - palatable to a Westerner. They've probably never tried it but they know they don't like it.
"When you say the word cheese to a Chinese person, they immediately think of Xinjiang cheese or Mongolian cheese - some really strong, smelly stuff," Tan said. "But we think that once they try our mozzarella, they will quickly take a liking to our pizza."
The opening was closed to all but invited guests, but many Chinese on the street said they would return to give pizza a try.
One Pizza Hut worker said it was palatable but had too many ingredients - a comment echoed by several other Chinese.
"I didn't mind the cheese so much as all the tomato paste," she said. "Actually, I think I would prefer to eat the crust just by itself. It's nice and crispy."
PepsiCo Inc. says the $1.3 million Beijing Pizza Hut is the first family-oriented Western restaurant to offer full table service at prices within reach of many Chinese.
At about $7.40, the price of a large pizza is equal to a week's wages for the average Chinese worker, but executives are convinced the price is not too high.
One Chinese newspaper reporter disagreed. "This may be cheap in the United States, but it's expensive in China," she said.
The world's largest pizza chain, Pizza Hut plans to open a new restaurant every year in China and says it does not expect to turn a profit until at least two are operating and most ingredients are locally purchased.
But winning Chinese acceptance of cheese and tomato-covered bread is not the only challenge posed by China, whose system is still repressive, coercive and bureaucratic.
Pizza Hut's plans to open last year were ditched after Chinese guns and troops silenced the nationwide democracy movement.
Managers were stunned last week when city officials hijacked their 50 Chinese workers for two days of unannounced "hygiene training" - leaving just two days to for crucial baking trials.
Pizza Hut has doted on its staff, preaching the virtues of politeness and cleanliness in a country where chicken bones and bottle caps litter restaurant floors and customer service ranges from abysmal to downright surly.