Restaurant chain puts design on the menu

The "Miffy Kingdom" experience is designed to stand out in China's saturated hotpot market, where consumer tastes are shifting toward experiential and design-driven dining. Zhang believes this differentiation — combining food with storytelling and themed environments — will help cultivate stronger brand loyalty.

This partnership also marks CouCou's first full-scale collaboration with a global IP. Zhang revealed that two to three more collaborations are currently in the evaluation stage, with plans to regularly launch new campaigns tailored to different consumer segments.

CouCou has set ambitious goals for the campaign: a revenue surge that's multiple times the usual intake, a table turnover rate exceeding six times per day on holidays, and a 25 percent increase in customer foot traffic. "More importantly," Zhang said, "we'll be looking at customer satisfaction and repurchase intent as our primary indicators of success."