Haidilao, the hotpot restaurant chain known as much for its theatrical table-side service as for its broth, has brought in Infobip to power its customer loyalty program.

The deal, reported by Frontier Enterprise, pairs one of China's most recognizable dining brands with the global cloud communications platform (a service that lets companies reach customers through channels such as SMS, chat apps and email at scale). For a chain whose business depends on repeat visits and a famously engaged membership base, the choice of messaging infrastructure is a marketing decision, not just an IT one.

Loyalty programs live or die on the message. A birthday voucher that lands on the wrong channel, or a promotion that arrives after the dinner decision has already been made, is a missed booking. That's the operational problem Infobip is being asked to solve.

What does this change for Haidilao's marketers?

In practice, the partnership gives Haidilao's marketing team a single platform to orchestrate how, when and where loyalty members hear from the brand. For a company that operates at scale across markets, consistency of communication is the prize: the same member experience whether the diner is in mainland China or one of Haidilao's overseas locations.

For Infobip, the win adds a marquee hospitality name to its customer base and a live showcase for its loyalty and engagement tooling in the restaurant sector — a vertical where personalized, timely outreach translates directly into covers and repeat visits.

The companies have not disclosed contract value or deployment timelines. What's on record is the direction of travel: Haidilao wants its loyalty program to work harder, and it's betting a specialist communications platform is the way to get there.