BEIJING — Olav Kristoffer Bauer makes an unusual business mogul. At just 24, Bauer co-owns six restaurants in Beijing and it looking to expand.

The Buckhead native, who also lived for a time near Stone Mountain, has a tattoo of a Chinese flag on his back (he decided against a hammer and sickle design) and wears his hair in a shaggy Mohawk. He figures he lost $100,000 last year by ignoring his accounting books and dreams of opening a charity school.

“It’s kind of unreal,” Bauer said over Chinese beers at The Kro’s Nest, one of two pizzerias he runs in Beijing. “I’m a 24-year-old sitting on 6 or 7 restaurants. Where does that happen in America?”

Bauer’s eateries include one modeled on a combination of a Fellini’s pizzeria franchise and Fox & Hounds, the English-style pub in Buckhead. He’s not sure how much money he’s earned since 2006, when he opened his first pizzeria, but he estimates that the number might “push like six zeros.”

Atlanta, on the other hand, gave him a love for food. During summers in college he worked at a Fellini’s pizzeria franchise in Buckhead and frequented the Fox & Hounds pub, which he liked for its dart boards, pool tables and “the old arcade game in the back.”

After graduating in 2005, he combined his two loves: “I wanted to be in China and I saw there was no good pizza,” he said.

The start-up costs were appealing. Opening a restaurant in Atlanta would have cost $250,000 “with a bunch of the capital up front,” he said.

But in Beijing he could open a comparable restaurant for a quarter of that price, low enough that he convinced relatives to lend him money.

Protecting his intellectual property was also difficult. Shortly after he trained his first chefs, several left and sold his recipes to a competitor.

Bauer’s first pizzeria returned the $62,000 he and a Chinese partner invested within eight months.

The other restaurants they have opened — a second pizzeria and four sandwich shops on Beijing college campuses — have been steadily profitable and they are considering franchising.

Bauer also plans to open a “Georgia-style barbecue” modeled on Fat Matt’s Rib Shack, the barbecue restaurant on Piedmont Avenue, and a “1950s-style American diner.”