What Does Nationalism Taste Like? A Tastien Tasting

The tabletops, the ketchup packets, the posters on the wall: everywhere you look, fast-food franchise Tastien (塔斯汀中国汉堡) reminds you where it comes from. 中国汉堡, ZHONG GUO HAN BAO, Made in China. On one poster at the store I visited this week, the text declared “The Chinese Hamburger Is Here!!!”; “Chinese Taste Hamburger”; and “MADE IN CHINA”. Another reminded eaters about the “Chinese Burger, Made in China”, and “Tastien, Creator of burgers in China”, as well as 国人口味 and 国味 — the “national” taste.? ?

Its website shows two young Chinese diners — we know because of their shirts that say “Chinese Youth” (华人青年) and “Chinese burger” (中国汉堡) — eating chicken nuggets and an egg-and-bacon sandwich off a mahjong table, next to a slogan declaring that “Chinese stomachs love Chinese burgers”.

What, exactly, is a Chinese burger, I wondered? Did I need my passport to enter the store? Would my American stomach be able to understand?

The founders of Tastien started out in Nanchang, Jiangxi, as small franchisees of massive Chinese fast-food chain Wallace?(华莱士), before pivoting into the not-so-Chinese world of pizza shops. In 2017, they added burgers to the menu and quickly latched on to rising patriotic sentiment in China, registering two trademarks (塔斯汀国潮汉堡 and 塔斯汀中式汉堡) in 2019 that showed the direction they were headed: more burger, less pizza.

Five years later, they have more than 7,200 franchise stores, mostly in lower-tier cities; have raised investment at a valuation of 7 billion RMB, including from the spin-off of Sequoia Capital (Hongshan); and are a topic of conversation in Yum! China investor calls, where KFC execs respond by promising they are developing their own “Chinese-style hamburgers.”

Their website advises potential franchisees that they can get a 65 square meter store up and running for about 450,000 RMB, including a 38,800 RMB initial franchise fee, and 150,000 RMB spends on equipment and store renovation.

So I went for lunch the other day to see what all the fuss is about, and ordered four “burgers” (China is very flexible with the term): a Peking duck one; a beef one with cumin-flavored mushrooms; roast pork with pickled mustard greens; and a fried chicken sandwich spiced with rattan pepper. That, plus a box of cold French fries, a chicken wing, and a Pepsi, for less than 100 RMB.

My first impression: this has been done before. China is full of fast-food chains that use western classics as a starting point for localization — see Dicos century-egg-and-roasted-pepper topping for their chicken sandwiches (currently on the menu) or KFC’s now-classic “Dragon Twister” play on Peking duck, or a hundred other examples. (Dicos also sells a ‘General Tsao’s chicken sandwich’, a cross-cultural interplay so dense I don’t know where to begin.)

So if the R&D-Department-Gone-Wild vibe is the same as many of its competitors, what’s different? The bread, the price and the aggressively patriotic marketing.

Tastien makes a point of advertising the “handmade” bread it uses, and it is indeed different. To me, it’s the most interesting part — a flatbread somewhere between a hamburger bun and a bing, more like a pita than a bun — though on my visit, it came out of a plastic tub, not fresh from the oven, as the advertising sort of implies. But seven billion RMB? That valuation is not for their bread recipe.

Instead, it’s probably for the combination of extremely low-pricing and of-the-moment national pride. The special at the branch I went to advertises two chicken sandwiches (the best of the four this American stomach tried) for 17 RMB. Dianping shows Tastien’s average spend as 19 RMB vs 26 RMB at the nearby McDonald’s and 34 RMB at a neighborhood KFC. In this economy, that matters.

I can’t say if Tastien will find a permanent place in the fast-food universe or not. Problems from its crazy rapid expansion (now more than 80 stores in Shanghai) have been well-documented in the Chinese press and review sites, from raw chicken to unreliable opening hours and under-trained employees.

Apart from the unique bread, it’s hard for me to see what real advantage Tastien has in terms of food. Maybe that’s not the point. Instead, it feels like Tastien is papering over its challenges with inexpensive nationalism. Perhaps it’s a shrewd political strategy — a kind of “red” Luckin for the fast-food industry — but as lunch? It’s a little heavy.