Chinese fast food in the cracks: white-collar workers complain that it is too expensive and restaurant companies do not earn much

If you work in an office building in the business district every day, can you eat an affordable and delicious work meal?

In recent years, with the rise of new consumption tracks, new models such as on-site stir-frying, weighing self-selection, and small bowl dishes have been born, and Chinese fast food has also become the choice of many office workers.

Red Star Capital noted that according to Euromonitor International's "Consumer Behavior Preference for Consuming Chinese Fast Food" data released in September 2020, the proportion of white-collar office workers in the entire Chinese fast food consumer population is as high as 9%.

In this context, many Chinese fast food chain brands have also been born in the industry, such as Country Ji, Mr. Rice, Lao Xiang Chicken, Zhen Kung Fu, Yonghe Dawang, Shun Wangji, Lao Niang Uncle and so on.

While Chinese fast food brands are developing rapidly, recently, consumers' remarks on the Internet that Chinese fast food is too expensive have also aroused discussion and resonance among many people.

Urban office workers

"Can't afford to eat" Chinese fast food?

Under the general trend of consumption upgrading, Chinese fast food is developing towards the trend of healthy cooking food, on-site cooking methods, brand characteristics, and casual dining environment.

Convenient, fast, healthy, good environment... Perhaps this is the reason why many office workers choose Chinese fast food.

Is Chinese fast food expensive?

Due to the different levels of economic development in different regions, Red Star Capital Bureau mainly selects popular Chinese fast food brands in Shanghai and Chengdu, and calculates them according to the standard of one person, one meat, one vegetarian and one soup.

In Shanghai, a meal of 42 yuan "stings" the stomach of office workers

In Shanghai, Red Star Capital Bureau selected popular dishes from three Chinese fast food brands, Mr. Rice, Laoxiang Chicken and Zhen Kung Fu.

According to the standard of "one meat, one vegetarian and one soup", Mr. Rice's popular dishes are matched, and the price of a single meal is 36 yuan; The popular dishes of the hometown chicken are paired down, and the price is 46 yuan; The popular package of Zhen Kung Fu starts at 42 yuan.

If calculated according to the standard of 42 yuan per meal, 22 working days a month, lunch costs a total of 924 yuan, and if dinner is calculated as two working meals a day, it costs 1848 yuan.

What level of consumption is this? According to data released on the website of the Shanghai Municipal People's Government, the per capita disposable income of urban permanent residents in Shanghai in 2022 will be 84034,7003 yuan, with an average monthly income of <>,<> yuan.

Working meals alone may account for nearly one-third of disposable income.

According to the per capita consumption expenditure, the per capita consumption expenditure of urban permanent residents in Shanghai in 2022 will be 48111,4009 yuan, with an average monthly consumption expenditure of <>,<> yuan.

According to the estimated working meal expenditure of 1848 yuan / month, this expenditure accounts for nearly half of the household consumption expenditure.

Two working meals a day for 42 yuan, consumption in Shanghai is indeed not low.

In Chengdu, a 25 yuan working meal is also not cheap

In Chengdu, Red Star Capital Bureau selected the popular dishes of three leading Chinese fast food brands, Mr. Rice, Country Ji and Shunwang Ji.

Also according to the standard of "one meat, one vegetarian and one soup", Mr. Rice's popular dishes are matched, and the price of a single meal is 25 yuan; The price of the village-based popular package is 24 yuan; Shunwangji's popular products are matched with the price of 29 yuan.

On the whole, in Chengdu, according to the standard of "one meat, one vegetarian and one soup", the price of a Chinese fast food is between 20-30 yuan. If calculated according to the standard of 25 yuan per meal, 22 working days a month, lunch costs a total of 550 yuan, and if you add dinner to two working meals a day, it costs 1100 yuan.

According to data from the Chengdu Municipal Bureau of Statistics, the per capita disposable income of urban permanent residents in Chengdu in 2022 will be 54897,4575 yuan, with an average monthly income of <>,<> yuan.

According to the estimated working meal expenditure of 1100 yuan / month, this expenditure accounts for about a quarter of disposable income.

According to the per capita consumption expenditure, the per capita consumption expenditure of urban permanent residents in Chengdu in 2022 will be 32171,2681 yuan, with an average monthly consumption expenditure of <>,<> yuan.

According to the estimated working meal expenditure of 1100 yuan / month, this expenditure should account for more than <>% of the household consumption expenditure.

Whether in Shanghai or Chengdu, it is indeed difficult to achieve the freedom of Chinese fast food, and it is not difficult to understand why there is a discussion on the Internet about "20,000 a month income cannot afford Chinese fast food".

Office workers, the budget for meals is really not that high

According to the 2022 per capita consumption expenditure composition data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, residents spend about 30.5% of their consumption expenditure on food, tobacco and alcohol.

According to this ratio, the total expenditure of urban residents in Shanghai on food, tobacco and alcohol in 2022 will be about 1228 yuan/month, and the total expenditure of urban residents in Chengdu on food, tobacco and alcohol will be about 818 yuan/month.

This partly suggests that most people don't have that much budget when it comes to diet.

How do office workers view lunch consumption? Red Star Capital Bureau has compiled relevant reports on white-collar budgets for working meals in recent years, and "expensive" is the keyword that white-collar workers complain.

According to the data of the "2019 White-collar Living Conditions Survey Report" released by Zhaopin.com, more than 20% of white-collar lunch expenses are controlled within 21 yuan, followed by 30-27 yuan budget, accounting for 64.<>%. For working meals, affordability and satiation are core requirements.

According to the data of the "2022 China Catering Industry Development Status and Market Research and Analysis Report" released by iMedia Consulting, among the acceptable prices of Chinese fast food consumed by Chinese white-collar workers in 2021, 41.5% of respondents chose 21-30 yuan (including 30 yuan), and 40.9% of respondents chose 10-20 yuan (including 20 yuan).

It can be seen that less than 30 yuan is the choice of the vast majority of white-collar workers, and less than 40% of respondents can accept the price of working meals above 4 yuan.

In addition, according to the data of the "2022 China Catering Industry Development Status and Market Research and Analysis Report" released by iMedia Consulting, among the areas where Chinese white-collar workers believe that Chinese fast food needs to be improved in 2021, 54.5% of respondents chose taste improvement, and 50.5% of respondents chose price adjustment.

In other words, more than half of the respondents believe that the price of Chinese fast food is higher and needs to be adjusted.

Although it "feels expensive", but under various objective factors, many office workers also have to choose "compromise".

According to Euromonitor International's "Consumers' Behavior Preference for Consuming Chinese Fast Food" data released in September 2020, consumers choose Chinese fast food mainly because of their work commute, busy work and lack of time to cook.

In this way, with a limited budget, no time to cook for themselves, and in the face of Chinese fast food that is not cheap, white-collar workers can only "complain".

On the one hand, consumers are complaining that Chinese fast food is expensive and losing the freedom of Chinese fast food; But on the other hand, chain Chinese food is also complaining, indicating that money is not easy to earn.

Chinese fast food business

Net profit margin is low

According to public information, the average net interest rate of Lao Niang Uncle, Lao Xiang Ji and Country Foundation in the past three years is less than 4%. According to the China Hotel Association, the overall net profit margin of the domestic catering industry is about 10%, and the net profit margin of Chinese fast food is significantly lower.

The reason why it is difficult to "make money" is that the "three mountains" of rent, raw materials and labor in the catering industry overwhelm enterprises.

Most white-collar workers working in CBD office buildings do not have a long lunch break, and can accept the scope of walking to dine-in, basically concentrated in the shops on the first floor of the office building, or the shopping mall adjacent to the office building on the negative floor.

If chain catering brands choose to open stores in such a place with a large flow of people and a fixed consumer group, the rent of the store will certainly not be low. And in order to provide diners with ample dining area, they often open hundreds of square meters.

Doing business in such a place where every inch of land is expensive, the cost is naturally grafted onto consumers. According to the data of narrow door dining eyes, the most crazy and exaggerated people who open stores in the mall are the "noodle restaurant upstart" Ma Jiyong, Hefu Lao Noodles, and Chen Xianggui, and more than seventy percent of their stores are opened in the mall.

For example, the Japanese fast food brand Yoshinoya also has half of its stores in shopping malls, while 20.2% of the stores of Laoxiang Chicken and 34.1% of its stores are located in shopping malls, which is already a low-proportion catering brand.

Here, Red Star Capital Bureau takes the rural base as an example to carry out specific analysis.

According to the prospectus of Country Foundation, from 2019 to 2022, the revenue of Country Foundation was 32.57 billion yuan, 31.61 billion yuan, 46.18 billion yuan and 47.06 billion yuan, respectively; in the same period, the net profit was 0 million yuan, -8.242 million yuan, 4 million yuan and 1 million yuan, respectively.

Obviously, the company's net profit is like a roller coaster, with profits falling sharply in 2020 and 2022, and losing money in 2020.

From the perspective of the cost side of the rural base, the prospectus shows that from 2019 to 2022, the above three costs of the rural base will show an increasing trend. In 2022, the raw materials and consumables, employee costs, property rent and related expenses used amounted to MOP 20.2 billion, MOP 11,74 million and MOP 1 million respectively, accounting for 32.42%, 9.24% and 9.2% of the revenue in the same period.

In other words, for every 10 yuan of income from the rural base, it has to spend more than 7 yuan on raw materials, labor, and rent.

However, there are also reasons for the high cost. The freshly fried mode of Chinese fast food, such as rural base, has increased the cost of raw materials and labor to a certain extent.

At the same time, the direct operation model of the rural base also makes its labor costs high. The data shows that by the end of 2022, Village Key had a total of 8402,1740 full-time employees and <>,<> part-time employees paid by the hour.

It can be seen that Chinese fast food, represented by rural bases, is really difficult to make money.

Will Chinese fast food chains that can't make money improve their profitability by raising prices?

If so, this may be another bad news for office workers.

brief summary

Consumers are facing Chinese fast food that is indeed not cheap, and catering companies are facing a situation of low profits, which also reflects the contradictions and dilemmas faced by the current Chinese fast food industry. To let office workers eat an affordable and delicious work meal, all parties need to seek an optimal solution. (Chengdu Business Daily-Red Star News reporter Liu Yao)