Today, I find very funny American expats story, very good

BEIJING — At first glance, China seems like a bad place to open a Texas-style barbecue joint: Beijing residents can go weeks without seeing a pickup truck, meat generally comes in chopstick-accessible pieces and most locals have never seen a football, let alone a football game.

But former Austin resident Tim Hilbert is a believer in the taste of Texas and the opportunity for profits in China. The 49-year-old left his job as an executive for Computer Sciences Corp. last summer and opened Tim's Texas Bar-B-Q in downtown Beijing.

"I thought there was room for a Texas barbecue because there was nothing like it here," he said as he sipped an iced tea at his restaurant. "The U.S. (restaurant) market is completely saturated. Over here there are niches that are readily obvious and where there's a lack of competition."

The venture is part of a boom in small foreign-owned business in China as investors tap China's rapidly growing consumer economy and large foreign population.

"Ten years ago there was a tiny handful of foreigners involved in small-scale enterprise (in China)," said Arthur Kroeber, managing director of Beijing-based consulting firm Dragonomics. "Now there are people all over the place doing all kinds of business."

Foreign investment in China's food and beverage industry nearly doubled between 2004 and 2006 to $830 million, according to Chinese government figures.

Tim's Texas Bar-B-Q, a two-story building finished in corrugated steel, highlights the attractions of the Chinese market to foreign investors.

Since opening in November, the restaurant, which Hilbert co-owns with another American, has been steadily profitable and will return its initial investment within a year, Hilbert said.

The quick return is due partly to low operating costs. Waiters at the restaurant earn just over $200 each month, more than the typical wait staff salary in Beijing, and food costs are generally lower than in the United States.

China's growing foreign population also contributes to profits. The number of foreigners living in Beijing has grown to about 200,000 over the past decade and most foreign residents are "upper-middle class in demographics," Kroeber said.

More than half of the customers at Tim's Texas Bar-B-Q are Westerners who visit for a taste of home and sometimes to watch American sports. During the Super Bowl, the restaurant was full, despite a 7 a.m. local kickoff.

Chinese customers are also gaining a taste for barbecue. "Especially younger (Chinese) have been exposed to Western food," Hilbert said.

But replicating a Texas establishment was difficult.

Since the local contractor he hired "had never seen a barbecue, Hilbert took photographs of restaurants in Texas and spread them out on a table in Beijing to show his builder what he wanted.

To get interior woodwork that looked authentic, he looked at dozens of suppliers. Later he had friends in Texas send memorabilia.

His grandmother provided horns of a deer she had shot near San Antonio years ago.

In a downstairs room, he hung a Longhorns football helmet signed by Heisman trophy winner Earl Campbell.

When Texas A&M fans saw it, they contributed a helmet signed by Aggies coach Dennis Franchione.

Getting taste just right

Authentic food was another issue: To teach his Chinese chefs to make beef brisket and pork ribs, he advertised for a Texas cook on craigslist and eventually hired Austin chef Tim Teal to spend three months in Beijing training staff.

Born in Houston in 1957, Hilbert grew up in Seguin, Texas, before studying accounting at the University of Texas at Austin and Southwest Texas State University (now called Texas State University at San Marcos). He lived in Midland in the 1980s and in 1990 took a job with Continuum, an information technology company later bought by Computer Sciences Corp., which moved Hilbert to Australia, Singapore and China.

Living overseas, he most missed "Mexican food, BBQ and Schlotzsky's (sandwiches)," he said.

Building a small business in China is challenging and investors, including Hilbert, complain about numerous hurdles.

One chief concern among foreign companies is that while Chinese laws treat foreign and Chinese companies equally, in practice Chinese officials often hold foreign companies to higher standards.

One recent example was an investigation of McDonald's, KFC and Pizza Hut franchises in China's southern Guangdong province for underpaying workers, even though the practice is rampant in Chinese-owned businesses and authorities later cleared the restaurants of any wrongdoing.

Fuzzy regulations are also a problem for many foreign business owners. To open his private company last year, Hilbert had to make two trips to Texas to have credit reports certified by a state office and stamped by the Chinese consulate in Houston.

Even with the documents, Beijing officials asked for further documentation before local lawyers "argued them into not requiring it," Hilbert said.

High quality hard to maintain

Another problem for foreign managers is maintaining quality. While restaurants in the United States control quality by working with trusted suppliers, "in China the supply chain is fragmented," Hilbert said.

He said it took six weeks to train a local butcher what cuts of meat he needed and that local beverage distributors repeatedly have delivered fake bottles of alcohol.

In the longer term, rampant copying is a bigger problem.

More than a quarter of the companies responding to the American Chamber of Commerce survey said that intellectual property rights infringement was either their biggest or a major challenge.

"Once you open up a successful store, it starts getting copied by locals, and their costs are a whole lot less than Westerners, largely because of non-compliance with regulations that Western businesses feel compelled to comply with," Hilbert said.

Despite the challenges, Hilbert plans to open two new restaurants and a "Texas roadhouse" featuring Cajun food and live bands, including his niece, Austin musician Carmen Hilbert.

To succeed as a small business owner in China, Hilbert said foreign business owners need to commit to staying in the country for several years to succeed.

"They have to develop local perspective," he said.

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/business/content/business/epaper/2007/05/27/a1f_ChinaBiz_0527.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=6