This Noodle Restaurant Gives Free Bones to Good Doggos

A small noodle restaurant featuring Hubei cuisines has been handing out free bones to customers to treat their four-legged friends since it opened three years ago.

Chuwei Legend is just a few minutes' walk away from Lingzhan Shopping Plaza. The restaurant specializes in traditional Hubei cuisine, including beef noodles, hot dry noodles, lotus root soup with pork ribs, and rice wine.

Be that as it may, the restaurant is better known for another reason. A month after opening in 2019, owner Qiao Mu started the tradition of giving free beef bones to dogs and puppies. We spoke with her to find out more about her idea.

How did you come up with this idea?     
We use about 30 pounds of bones to make beef broth each day. There is really not much we can do with leftover beef bones after they have been cooked and we don't want to waste them. There are actually many dog owners who spend a lot of money to shop for bones online. So, I thought to myself: Why not just save these leftover bones we use for our customers who are dog owners? That's when I decided to hand out free bones to puppies who love to have something to grind on.  

Can you walk me through the process of getting bones for dogs?   
The process is quite simple. When customers come over to the restaurant, they simply need to show the photo of their dog to our staff, and they will decide how much bones are needed for their dog based on the dog's size.

Do larger dogs get more bones?     
Of course. We have to make sure that we don't overfeed dogs. I mean you cannot expect a puppy that is only six-months-old to gnaw on huge chunk of bones like a three-year-old does. Also, we will give more bones to larger dogs like Samoyeds or Alaskans as they tend to consume a lot more energy than smaller-sized dogs like chihuahuas.

Can you tell us more about the beef broth?     
We usually simmer our beef broth for about eight or nine hours until it's absorbed all the richness from the beef bones. Essentially, all the meatiness is left in the beef stock and the bones have been stripped of their flavor after being cooked for so long. You would think that dogs would not show any interest at all in these bones that barely contain any meat, but it is actually quite the opposite A lot of our customers have told us that their four-legged pals really enjoy chewing on the bones that we give them. I believe the bones act as a nice chew toy for the dogs.

Also, we don't add any salt or additives to the broth and we can assure our customers that the broth is perfectly fresh and healthy for the pups. That said, we do season our broth with ginger and a little bit of peppercorns. We recommend our customers to clean the bones with water at home before handing the bones to their dogs.

How has this restaurant tradition affected your business? Has it brought in any new customers?      You know the proportion of households that have dogs in Beijing is not that high. On weekdays, we don't really see many customers coming in to our restaurants to get bones. However, on weekends, it's an entirely different story. Sometimes there are even people who will drive more than 50 kilometers just to come to get the bones.

I think nowadays social media has also helped our business grow. There are not many restaurants in Beijing that I know have adopted this dining concept, and many bloggers shared our idea on Red, which has also attracted some customers who are curious to find out what this is all about.

Chuwei Legend 楚味传奇
No. 33A, Floor 1, No.5, Zhongguancun Street, Zhongguancun, Haidian District
海淀区中关村大街中关村5号负一层33A号

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Images: Courtesy of 楚味传奇