Image source @ Visual China
Text | The Tao always makes sense
During the Spring Festival, the family reunion, accompanied by the overwhelming sound of firecrackers, the annual festival once again swept across the country, and each family also staged its own lively and joyful.
At this time, it is usually the important season of the catering industry, including the Spring Festival stalls of Chinese New Year's Eve meals, which is an important guarantee for the annual profitability of almost all restaurants, and the profit generally accounts for about 30% of the annual profit. Once this piece of "fat meat" is let go, the loss will affect the restaurant revenue for a whole year, as the catering person said, "the Spring Festival is extinguished and lost for half a year.".
Prefabricated dishes fired the first shots in the catering industry this year. Traditional catering enterprises such as Xibei, Meizhou Dongpo and Yunhai Cuisine, listed enterprises such as Weizhixiang and Qianwei Central Kitchen, as well as cutting-edge start-up companies such as Zhenwei Xiaomeiyuan and Lixiangguo, plus fresh e-commerce companies such as Hema, Dingdong Buy Vegetables, and Daily Excellent Fresh, have opened up pre-made dishes and flocked to the tables of the Chinese people.
Whether pre-made dishes can become a habitual choice for the future New Year is still unknown, but behind this reunion and liveliness, not every caterer is so happy.
Is pre-made cuisine a helpless choice for diners?
At the end of December, Hema Fresh launched the New Year dish reservation, opening the scheduled dishes including king crab, Dongxing Spot, Buddha jumping wall, braised pork, etc., from seafood to traditional hard dishes, followed by Zhong Xuegao's prefabricated dish brand Li Xiangguo also launched the Tiger Year Edition Annual Dish Series Gift Box, including more than ten dishes such as spicy red fire yellow croaker, Hongyun wine stuffy Dongpo meat, Huaiyang Qing stewed lion head and so on.
Some long-established brands that are well known to Guangzhou people have also caught up with the wave of hot orders for prepared dishes. Search for "Buddha Jumping the Wall" on major e-commerce platforms, and the goods of old stores such as Guangzhou Restaurant and Tao Tao Ju rank at the top.
The popularity of prepared dishes in the past few years can be seen. On Weibo, topics related to prepared dishes have emerged in an endless stream, such as #Prefabricated dishes are popular during the Spring Festival sales doubled#, #Prefabricated dishes or trillion-level large markets#, #Chinese New Year's Eve rice pre-made dishes consumption is 70% of young people#, etc., all of which mobilize the appetite of young consumers. One woman said that in the past, she used to be busy in the kitchen at home during the holidays, and the appearance of pre-made dishes greatly reduced her burden.
Prepared dishes are even more appealing to people who can't go home for the New Year due to the epidemic or other reasons and are unlikely to cook. Nan Nan, a post-95 in Beijing, decided not to return to her hometown because of the epidemic, this is her first time in a foreign country for the New Year, in order not to let her family worry, she wants to make a decent Chinese New Year's Eve meal. For her, who can't cook, thanks to the pre-made dishes, she made a Chinese New Year's Eve meal at home.
In the capital market, prepared dishes are also becoming an outlet. From 2020 to 2021, there have been 23 financings in the prefabricated vegetable track, taking the zhenwei xiaomeiyuan as an example, which got the angel round in the 2 months of its establishment, and completed three rounds of financing in the past year.
Prefabricated dishes have set off a new boom in the catering industry and successfully driven the secondary market, which makes the catering market look very lively during the New Year, but behind this bustle seems to be the "pain" that the core business of the catering store has not been restored under the impact of the epidemic.
Taking Chinese New Year's Eve rice as an example, in Beijing, Tianjin, Nanning, Guangxi, Shaoxing, Zhejiang, Hangzhou, Jinan, Shandong, And Dezhou, after investigation, it was found that the reservation of Chinese New Year's Eve meals in the catering industry was waterloo this year, and the orders related to restaurant companies generally fell by 35%-50%. Yuxiang Jiangnan Hotel, a well-known Sichuan restaurant chain in Tianjin, said that in order to increase the number of reservations, the store Chinese New Year's Eve meal reservations were one month earlier than in previous years, but despite this, the average booking rate was still only 50% of last year.
This happened as early as last year's Spring Festival. Relevant data show that in 2021, there was a high cancellation rate of Chinese New Year's Eve meals by restaurant companies, and some restaurants even suffered 100% cancellations. Like Tongchun Garden, Huajiayi Garden, Meizhou Dongpo and other long-established restaurants, there are still vacancies in the Chinese New Year's Eve table, but in previous years, near the Spring Festival, the reservations of Chinese New Year's Eve have long been full, and the full order rate can continue until the fifth day of the first year.
Perhaps it is the lack of Chinese New Year's Eve meal reservations for two consecutive years that makes catering companies have to target pre-made dishes. The form of pre-made dishes allows consumers not to go to the store to consume, but also to meet the needs of those who celebrate the New Year in place for the taste of their hometown. Of course, the shortcomings of prepared dishes also make it impossible for catering companies to rely on prepared dishes to make up for the impact of the setbacks in their core business.
885,000 restaurant companies behind the cancellation of the catering life
In 2021, the mainland catering industry can be described as a double day of ice and fire, on the one hand, new brands that continue to pour into the market and drive new entrants, and on the other hand, traditional restaurants that are constantly shut down or transferred. From the figures, we can intuitively see that according to the enterprise investigation, there will be 3.167 million registered restaurant companies in 2021, while 885,000 restaurant companies will be suspended.
It is worth mentioning that this figure is higher than the outbreak of the epidemic in 2020, and it is also higher than the peak period in 2019. According to the data of the enterprise investigation, a total of 875,000 were cancelled and revoked in 2019, and the sales volume of the cancellation and suspension in 2020 was 858,000.
One reason why many people still choose to jump into the catering industry under the difficult situation of survival is that the new consumption boom is driven. Just like the popularity of this prefabricated dish, the annual registration volume of pre-made dish-related enterprises in 2019 and 2020 reached the highest in a decade, and as of 2021, there are more than 68,000 pre-made dish-related enterprises in the mainland. Last year, capital competed to embrace catering, and in the first half of the year alone, 333 new consumption projects were born, and 50 billion yuan of hot money rolled in, exceeding the amount of 2020.
However, this new consumption has spawned one new brand after another, and the traditional restaurant has reported the collapse of the box again and again.
At the end of November, the last Xuliushan franchise store in Yau Tong was closed. A few days ago, half an hour before the store opened, dozens of citizens lined up outside the store to patronize, perhaps knowing that Xu Liushan was about to close, many citizens came to buy desserts and bid farewell to this dessert shop full of childhood memories.
Xu Liushan started in Hong Kong and laid the foundation for becoming the "King of Desserts" in Hong Kong by relying on the ace product "Mango Mi Xi Lao". In 2004, Xu Liushan opened its first store in Shanghai, located in K11 MALL on Huaihai Middle Road, and the queue at the entrance of Xu Liushan at that time was no less than today's Xi tea, Nai Xue's tea and tea beauty. A Hong Konger said, "Many of the old shops in hong Kong are closed, like many tea houses, and everyone is only left with memories."
Also carrying a city's memory but eventually going bankrupt is Changsha's Golden Bull Horn King. Before the Spring Festival arrived last year, the Golden Bull Horn King Chinese and Western Restaurant suddenly closed all its stores in Xiang, which caught many consumers off guard.
Ms. Liu, a citizen, said that when she was a student more than ten years ago, the Golden Bull Horn King was the preferred dining place that would come to mind when needing "luxury", and the special assorted mushrooms and minced pepper fish heads were impressive, but she did not expect to open for so many years and actually went out of business, she sighed, "I originally wanted to eat a meal when I wanted to go to the New Year."
In the list of catering brands in 2021, we see that there are many well-known brands that have been open for more than a decade, and industry giants such as Haidilao, Sipping and Feeding, and Dicos have also begun to close stores on a large scale. In addition, many cities of hot pot shops and milk tea shops are also the "hardest hit area" of enterprise cancellation, there are data show that in the first half of the year alone closed 16,000 hot pot shops, even chengdu local hot pot shop enterprises new registration number has dropped significantly.
The warmth and coldness of the domestic catering market has even affected KFC, an invincible fast food giant. A netizen said on Weibo that he did not expect KFC to go out of business, and it was in a large shopping mall with a large traffic of locals. Since the outbreak of the epidemic, the shopping mall has not been as lively as before, and the restaurants around KFC have been empty. At the same time, in the center of a fourth-tier city, KFC, which has been open for nearly seven or eight years, even posted a notice of "soon to close the store".
Catering shop "blood loss", second-hand catering equipment "earned upside"
Switching from a catering person to a second-hand catering equipment recycler is a helpless choice for Mr. Liu, a Chengdu native, after failing to start a business. Before the epidemic, he opened more than ten rice noodle stores in the suburban counties around Chengdu, and in 2020, when the epidemic was encountered, it was difficult to sustain, and finally reduced the number of stores to about 3. Last year, he felt that the catering industry was even more difficult to do than in 2020, especially after switching to second-hand catering recycling, he often saw that the store closed after a month or two of operation, mainly hot pot restaurants.
But the more restaurants shut down, the more he makes money from second-hand recycling. After the end of the epidemic in Chengdu in early November, in the three days after the resumption of work, the company collected equipment from 20 restaurants, and the 1,000 square meters of warehouse that was rented that month was quickly filled. Among them, there are 9 skewer shops, 2 large hot pot restaurants with thousands of square meters, 3 Chinese restaurants, 3 small noodle restaurants, 2 milk tea shops and 1 bar.
Mr. Liu said that at the beginning, the company recycled more than 10 restaurants a month, and now it can reach about 30 per month, but "the more you receive, the heavier your heart is", as a person who has come over, he can imagine that these catering people are really not easy.
Jiang Ming, who is also doing second-hand catering equipment recycling, has been busy every day for the past two years, busy smashing walls and demolishing shops during the day, often being woken up by the phone at night, either being urged to ask whether there is a steaming box, or asking whether there is a shaved ice machine... Many of the freshly received catering equipment was sold before it entered the warehouse.
According to Jiang Ming, the most of the restaurants he demolished were milk tea shops and hot pot shops. In the all-hot pot store, the single store does not have the advantages of the chain store's brand, supply chain, etc., the survival rate is low, a considerable number of hot pot enterprises can not live for five years, about 30% of them closed within two years.
Since the resumption of work in all walks of life in 2020, the merchants who have made reservations for the recycling of catering equipment have been continuous, and Jiang Ming has to see seven or eight stores a day, and demolishes five stores a day when he is busiest. Their company's business only for the opening time of new restaurants to acquire equipment, these stores are often very willing to spend money on the equipment, because the time spent is short, the acquired equipment can easily find the next home, earning a large intermediate price difference.
In the past two years, Jiang Ming has seen too many unwilling catering people leave the catering industry with tears. A bakery customer, spent 300,000 to buy equipment, we gave the offer of 80,000, he felt that the price was too low, and went through multiple channels to sell, and later found that we gave the highest.
Of course, the activity of the second-hand catering equipment market does not mean that the catering industry is depressed, but the industry is changing faster and faster. The "wave of store closures" after the epidemic has further amplified the problems of large investment, low gross profit and slow growth in the catering industry, but with the influx of new stores, the corresponding "store opening tide" may also be a matter of time.
A catering person who has been in the industry for nearly a decade said, "Only the enterprises that have collapsed, there are no closed industries", many people's enthusiasm for catering has not diminished, and he is waiting for the arrival of spring.