2026 US Rotating Hot Pot Equipment Procurement Trends: Intelligence and Customization Become Core Competitiveness

In 2026, the US self-service hot pot and Asian fusion catering track continues to heat up. According to statistics from the National Restaurant Association, the compound annual growth rate of the rotating hot pot industry has approached 20% in the past two years, and the number of stores in cities such as New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago has increased by more than 25% year-on-year. However, along with the expansion comes the increasingly severe labor shortage — the average hourly wage in the US catering industry has increased by 32% compared with that before the epidemic, and the turnover rate of waiters and food delivery positions has been consistently higher than 40%. Against this background, more and more restaurant owners are turning their attention to Rotating Hot Pot Equipment from China, trying to restructure the front-of-house operation model through automated conveying systems.

The person in charge of Hotpot Buffet, a chain brand located in Irvine, California, admitted: "In the past, a 200-square-meter self-service hot pot restaurant needed 12 front-of-house staff. After introducing the rotating hot pot line, we only kept 4 waiters responsible for guidance and ingredient replenishment, reducing monthly labor costs by nearly 20,000 US dollars." This is exactly the pain point that HaiSheng Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. focuses on solving. With 16 years of equipment manufacturing experience, this Chinese enterprise exports hundreds of sets of customized Hot Pot Buffet Equipment to North America every year, relying on a 10,000-square-meter intelligent workshop and a team of more than 100 technical engineers.

Compared with traditional European and American equipment, the biggest highlight of HaiSheng's export version of Rotating Hot Pot Equipment lies in its intelligent track-changing food delivery system. Equipped with advanced track-changing and conveying technology, the food delivery carts can automatically complete precise delivery, U-turn, obstacle avoidance and intelligent error correction on the track. When multiple food delivery paths intersect, the system will automatically calculate the optimal route to avoid collisions and congestion. More impressively, the intelligent carts adopt track-changing technology when turning, which can smoothly switch tracks without deceleration, and the food delivery efficiency is more than 40% higher than that of traditional fixed-track equipment. At the same time, the designers have strengthened the anti-slip and anti-tilt performance of the bearing platform: adding protective enclosures and optimizing the flatness of the tabletop, so that tableware filled with soup base and ingredients hardly displace during movement. The vehicles avoid obstacles and uneven roads in advance, reduce operations such as sudden acceleration, sudden deceleration and sharp turns, and greatly reduce the risk of soup spillage.

In response to the diverse ground environments of US restaurants (tiles, wood floors, carpets, etc.), the HaiSheng team has set multiple sets of operating parameters for the power control system. The equipment can automatically identify the friction coefficient of different grounds, adjust the starting and stopping acceleration and steering torque, ensuring stable operation posture in any complex scenario. A Chicago store owner feedback: "Previously, when using a conveyor belt from a European brand, slight unevenness of the ground would cause the plates to tip over; after switching to HaiSheng's equipment, even if thick carpets are laid, the carts still run smoothly."

In addition to stability and durability, the core mechanical structure of the equipment has also been deeply optimized. The adjustable tension device innovatively developed by HaiSheng allows restaurants to manually or automatically adjust the chain tension according to the actual wear of the chain, thereby extending the service life of the entire conveying system and reducing maintenance costs. The rotating chain is made of acrylic silent material, which has the characteristics of smoothness, wear resistance and low noise. Tests show that the noise of the equipment is less than 45 decibels when running at full load, which fully meets the noise limit standard for shopping malls' night operations.

Kitchen hygiene and odor management are also key points of US catering inspections. HaiSheng has preset reasonable ventilation interfaces in the equipment, which, combined with the upper smoke exhaust system and multi-functional drawers, can thoroughly clean the conveying channels and bearing platforms at any time to remove residual food crumbs and odor molecules. At the same time, merchants can install active deodorization devices to promote air circulation, timely discharge accumulated oil fume, avoid cross-taste of different ingredients, and improve the comfort of the dining environment.

For chain brands, the modular design is another major attraction. HaiSheng's Rotating Hot Pot Equipment supports various customized layouts such as linear, U-shaped, circular and island-type. Whether it is a 300-square-foot community store or a 3,000-square-foot large self-service hot pot restaurant, it can be tailored to the needs of size and movement lines. The equipment has a short installation cycle and flexible disassembly and assembly, which is especially suitable for rapid store expansion and store renovation.

In terms of intelligent experience, HaiSheng also equips the high-end version of Hot Pot Buffet Equipment with intelligent food delivery carts with customizable IP shapes — train, spaceship, cartoon animal and other images can be realized. When a retro small train carries beef rolls slowly towards customers, the fun of the dining process is greatly enhanced, which also helps the restaurant gain spontaneous dissemination on social media.

At present, HaiSheng's Rotating Hot Pot Equipment has passed the triple international safety and food hygiene certifications of UL, CE and NSF, fully complying with US catering access standards. Combined with transoceanic after-sales service, standardized parts supply and English technical manuals, the procurement concerns of North American merchants have been eliminated one by one. It is foreseeable that as the US self-service hot pot market continues to expand, Rotating Hot Pot Equipment with intelligence, stability, fun and high cost performance will become the core standard for the next stage of catering upgrading.