"Small meals" "single seat"... Epidemic detonates personalized catering demand
"We can fight for 3 months to half a year. Even if Meizhou Dongpo died, he would still be a martyr." This was the most tragic and tragic sentence said by Wang Gang, the founder and chairman of Meizhou Dongpo Restaurant, at the beginning of this year.
In January this year, the sudden outbreak of new crown pneumonia caused the Dongpo restaurant in Meizhou to lose nearly 100 million yuan a month.
11144 table refund orders, tens of millions of Chinese New Year ingredients inventory can not be processed... And Wang Gang "would rather fight to the death of the mall than wait for the results": open up a "battlefield canteen", a cheap vegetable shop, "Meizhou Dongpo vegetable market small program" Go online, develop convenient cuisine from supermarket to table; live catering for all staff, store managers bring goods; sell finished products, semi-finished products and ingredients of the central kitchen directly to commercial supermarkets...
The transformation experience of Meizhou Dongpo in adversity was written into the "Blue Book of Catering Industry: China Catering Industry Development Report (2020)" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report").
Recently, at the launching ceremony of the report held by Kunming College, Xing Ying, executive vice president of the World Chinese Catering Industry Federation, said that the new crown pneumonia epidemic has caused a serious impact on the catering industry, which has developed well in recent years, and hopes that the report will reshape the industry’s confidence, It helps to clarify development thinking.
Catering industry has become a popular industry for college students to start businesses
According to Yu Qianqian, the executive editor of the Blue Book and the deputy dean of Yunnan Pu'er University, "catering consumption has an obvious ballast effect on consumption growth."
He said, “The innovative development of urban commerce integration, the transformation and upgrading of commercial streets, the development of urban and rural night economy, the development of global tourism, and the catering industry have all become important formats, leading the development of the consumer economy.”
"Because of the low threshold for catering entrepreneurship, its personalized and younger development trend has increasingly become a hot industry attracting college students to start businesses." Yu Qianqian said.
It is worth noting that, as a typical labor-intensive service industry, the catering industry provides a large number of employment opportunities for low-income groups, disadvantaged groups, young laborers from rural areas, and female laborers, and has played an important role in stabilizing employment.
The report estimates that in 2019, nearly 7 million people were employed in the catering industry, and more than 26 million people were employed in the catering industry.
If you add takeaway, express delivery, mobile, food vendors, farmhouses, etc., the actual number of employees providing catering services is estimated to exceed 30 million.
In addition to direct employment contributions, the catering industry also promotes indirect employment in industries surrounding its development such as agriculture, food processing, catering, equipment, manufacturing, and catering information services.
At the same time, the catering industry has achieved remarkable results in implementing the targeted poverty alleviation strategy.
The report pointed out that the catering industry connects farmland and dining tables, with a demand for food materials exceeding 2 trillion yuan and a catering consumption market exceeding 4 trillion yuan.
Farmhouses, farming and breeding in rural areas, and food processing have also provided employment opportunities for poor rural laborers.
Takeaway platform weaves an emergency protection network
In February this year, a courier brother in Wuhan said: "As long as I am still delivering goods, this city will be alive."
Since the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, the courier brothers in various cities have become everyone's "kindest stranger" and the "chief community buyer" that people can't live without.
"In the fight against the epidemic, this merchant-consumer-transport network organized by the takeaway platform is not only a life service network, but also an emergency protection network." The financial strategy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences that participated in the report writing Zhao Jingqiao, director of the institute, said, “From international experience, countries with frequent disasters generally incorporate convenience store retail networks into the national emergency protection system.”
The report shows that in 2019, catering stores went online quickly, and online stores expanded the service radius of catering stores, extended consumption time, and promoted the rapid development of online food delivery services.
In 2019, online food delivery transactions have exceeded 600 billion yuan, a growth rate of more than 30%, which is much higher than the average growth rate of the catering industry.
There are more than 420 million online food delivery users, which is an important profit growth point for catering stores.
The report pointed out that since the Spring Festival in 2020, "all-people home cloud shopping" has promoted new formats of commercial retail and life services, and the local timely delivery network of "everything can be delivered" provides a guarantee for the transformation of consumption patterns.
According to data from the Ele.me platform, during the epidemic, the outdoor sales income of catering companies that still had the ability to supply accounted for 60%-70% of the total income, which was 5-6 times that of normal days. Increased by more than 200% over the same period.
According to the report, among online shoppers, post-95s are the main force for take-out milk tea and supper; post-80s mainly patronize online supermarkets and purchase daily necessities; the order volume and purchase frequency of middle-aged and elderly people over 50 have increased significantly.
The catering industry faces a new wave of reform
The rise in online catering consumption reflects the embarrassment of the offline catering industry.
It is written in the report that the good growth momentum of the catering industry was quickly curbed in the national public health security incidents.
The epidemic has swept away the peak season of the Spring Festival in previous years, causing a large number of catering companies to be unable to operate normally. Many catering companies do not have the capital to insist on. According to the information provided by Tianyan Check, as of May 25, 2020, the catering industry has newly cancelled or revoked There are more than 150,000 enterprises.
In addition, the entire catering industry has also received a huge impact, including the supply chain market for food planting and breeding, seasoning production, and food processing, as well as the service and equipment manufacturing market related to the catering industry.
The report shows that in the first quarter of 2020, catering revenue nationwide will reach 602.63 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 44.3%.
Although the epidemic was effectively controlled in March, the decline in catering revenue further expanded to 46.8%, exceeding the decline in January and February.
According to the report, "As the global epidemic has further deteriorated and there is no corresponding domestic consumption stimulus, it is expected that the growth rate of the catering industry in 2020 will reach the historical'freezing point'."
Analyzing that there is no phenomenon of "retaliatory consumption" in the catering industry, Jing Linbo, president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Evaluation, said that catering consumption is different from other consumption. Everyone is limited by their own digestive ability, especially people are paying more and more attention to food. The phenomenon of health, overeating is becoming less and less, timeliness, inability to store, and the fact that catering consumption depends on the continuous growth of residents’ income, determine that the explosive growth of catering is not easy to achieve.
At the same time, normalized epidemic prevention measures will affect catering consumption.
For example, the meal sharing system and the promotion of public spoons and chopsticks have brought challenges to consumers and catering operators.
In addition, after several months of "home economy", some people have begun to adapt and enjoy the "benefits of home", online consumption habits have been developed, and online consumption needs have become increasingly diversified.
In this regard, the report pointed out that “the epidemic has detonated the demand for personalized catering, and the catering industry is facing a new wave of reform.” The outbreak of the epidemic has created new demands for consumers in terms of dining environment, food quality, takeaway delivery, and service models.
For example, the "one-person food" economy created by the increase in the number of singles has further innovated under the epidemic. The forms of dine-in services such as "one person, one table", "one-meter interval", and "independent single-person tables" are constantly emerging. The industry continues to experiment in terms of convenience in dining and flexibility in dish design. “Small shops,” “small meals,” “small meals,” “single-seater” and other new catering service models will emerge one after another.
Survival and development will force catering companies to quickly adapt to the process of economic digitization, especially in the four aspects of food sources, production methods, catering outlets, and business formats and business models, which will trigger profound changes in the catering industry.
"Food is the most important thing for the people. The epidemic has given the government and people a deep understanding of the safety of the catering industry. The inclusion of the catering industry in the construction of the public health system and emergency system will definitely promote the high-quality development of the catering industry." Kunming According to Ding Wenli, the principal of the college, Kunming University has participated in the compilation of the Blue Book of the Catering Industry: China Catering Industry Development Report for three consecutive years.
Different from previous years, this year's report focused on the analysis of the impact of the new crown pneumonia epidemic on the catering industry, and made recommendations from multiple perspectives such as industrial policy, catering business operations, digital construction, and food safety.
China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily reporter Zhang Wenling Source: China Youth Daily