The people take food as heaven. The Chinese people's passion for food has always been so straightforward.
In 2017, the first xi tea landed in Taikoo Li, Sanlitun, Beijing, allowing young people in the capital to voluntarily line up in a long line, and the circle of friends posted pictures and comparisons, becoming the talking point in the office in their leisure time. Three years later, the Sanlitun Black Gold Store was re-equipped and upgraded, bringing new enthusiasm for punching cards. In addition, the hamburger brand Shake Shack has brought heat to Taikoo Li, and the introduction of a 141-year-old Guangzhou long-established Tao Tao Ju in the West District of Taikoo Li has a customer Yingmen, which is difficult to find for several consecutive days...
Sanlitun Taikoo Li has a good grasp of the diversion of catering, and truly enjoys the benefits of catering. The same handwriting has also appeared in many commercial projects: Wen Heyou, Tangshan Feast Snack Street in Tangshan South Lake, Beijing Hopson Hui Food Street, Beijing Xidan Shopping Mall...
The huge flow of food and beverage is unquestionable, and many shopping malls are also looking to food and beverage to bring some transformation to business. So, what can dining bring to the shopping mall? Shopping malls introduce catering, what kind of sparks will collide between the two?
01 Will catering become the traffic responsibility of shopping malls?
In recent years, China's catering revenue has grown year by year, and in 2015, China's catering revenue exceeded the mark of 3 trillion yuan for the first time, an increase of 11.7% year-on-year, and has reached 4672.1 billion yuan by 2019.
The catering track is an area that continues to attract the attention of all parties, and shopping malls will naturally not let go of this traffic responsibility. In fact, the marriage between shopping malls and restaurants has a long history. Over the past 10 years, traditional shopping-oriented department stores have transformed into integrated shopping malls. A similar situation occurs in the catering industry: many traditional old stores are gradually declining, special creative restaurants are widely popular, and a number of brands such as Haidilao, Jiumaojiu, walnut li have risen from them, and accelerated the development of chaining, branding and boutique.
In the past 10 years, the rapid growth of domestic commercial real estate has also incubated some shopping mall restaurant brands, such as green tea restaurants, Xibei Noodle Village, Grandma's House, etc., which were born in shopping malls and gradually expanded in scale, and even achieved national chain and IPO.
The evolution of the commercial retail industry and catering is the inevitable result of social progress and market development, and it is also accompanied by the change of mainstream consumer groups and the needs of young consumers.
At present, young people mainly in Generation Z have become the main group of consumers. They were born in the Internet era, and online platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, Xiaohongshu, Circle of Friends, and Dianping are the main gathering and voice positions. Likewise, they are passionate about going out, partying and experiencing. In terms of eating, takeaway is not their main battlefield. According to statistics, the number of post-90s users who go to the store to eat accounts for up to 46%, and the ranking of eating out has become the norm, and Shanghai restaurants have to issue an average of 50,000 equal places on the APP every day.
For young consumers, a comprehensive shopping mall with rich formats, integrating catering, entertainment, leisure, shopping, etc. has become an ideal place. Consumers have also changed from "shopping" malls to "shopping and eating" malls.
In this market background, on the one hand, restaurants have accelerated to shopping malls, and on the other hand, many shopping malls have begun to increase the proportion of catering formats. Some studies have pointed out that the golden ratio of shopping center operation is 52:18:30 for shopping, catering and entertainment. Now, this ratio is gradually being broken, moving closer to the 1:1:1 pattern. Last year, Shanghai opened 9 new shopping malls, and most of them accounted for more than 40% of the food and beverage. In Hangzhou Yintai City, the proportion of catering facilities is as high as 58%; one square city, the largest shopping center in Shenzhen, has 198 catering merchants.
Catering becomes the traffic responsibility of the mall, or does the mall become the traffic pool of the restaurant? It is difficult to generalize and can only be seen on a case-by-case basis.
Taking Beijing Hopson Hui as an example, its commercial area is nearly 200,000 square meters, and it is a sophisticated life experiential shopping center positioned in one of the shopping, catering, entertainment, leisure and children's experience formats. Hopson Is not only a paradise for shopping, but also a paradise for food. The food street created by District 21 on the negative floor not only includes Korean ingredients, Japanese ingredients, Southeast cuisine, desserts, European and American cuisines, etc., but also the special snacks of each city. Rich catering brings topics and traffic to Hopson Hui, and young people who come here usually hang out before and after meals, while driving the performance growth of other format brands.
02 Big mall, or big canteen?
The development of e-commerce has forced the business of physical stores to be cold, the popularity of shopping malls has declined, and traditional retail is facing a life and death disaster. Some shopping malls try to use catering as a life-saving straw, and constantly increase the proportion of catering, and the "canteenization" is becoming more and more unstoppable.
Blindly getting together to transform into a "canteen" often brings about the problem of homogenization. The catering brands of major shopping malls are highly overlapping, and their own characteristics have become blurred. For the shopping mall itself, increasing the proportion of catering is bound to weaken other formats, resulting in an imbalance in the distribution of formats, forming a cold and cold, hot and hot, and unable to form a virtuous flow cycle. At the same time, the unity of positioning "canteenization" is also contrary to the function of comprehensive shopping centers, which is not conducive to long-term development.
Many shopping malls introduce catering to focus on the ability to gather customers, and want to use catering to drive retail consumption, but ignore the derivative problems caused by the characteristics of catering. For example, catering merchants have low leasing capacity and occupy a large area. From the perspective of shopping mall profits, it is not cost-effective to introduce too many restaurants.
In addition, the catering industry has long opening hours, and shopping malls will extend business hours due to catering services, increasing costs such as lighting, heating and security. Kitchen bins, waste and garbage collection also incur some additional costs.
If the kitchen waste is not handled properly, it will also affect the cleanliness, comfort and experience of other format brands and the overall environment of the shopping mall.
In this way, the benefits of extended opening hours and the evening economy may be higher than the cost. Therefore, shopping malls should do detailed investigation, analysis and accounting between the traffic brought by catering and the cost paid when they fall off the chessboard.
03 What should shopping malls do?
Create a dining space suitable for the business district
If you want to integrate food and beverage services into the shopping mall environment, you need to create a catering space that suits the shopping mall's shopping district consumption and shopping methods. This has to do with the location and positioning of the shopping mall.
Beijing Chaoyang Hopson converges on the two major business districts of neighboring trade and China trade. Based on youth, trend and people-friendliness, it complements the high-end luxury positioning of The World Mall, SKP and SKP-S in the north, avoids the homogeneous competition of several major commercial entities in close proximity, and also appropriately fills the gap of the two major business circles, providing a good place for the public youth to eat, drink and have fun.
Hopson Hui has a large number of residential areas around it, and it is the residence of many office workers in guomao and Huamao business circles. Food-focused Area 21 BLOCK allows them to feast on their weekends after work.
Create a food destination with a cluster effect
In general, a single or similar form of food service group is conducive to creating a truly clustered gastronomic destination. Making catering itself an independent individual often leads to a unique consumer experience. Of course, shopping malls need to select restaurants with excellent operators and rich specialties, strategically disperse them in key areas, and create suitable space and cultural, theme and other related added value for them.
Located in The South Lake of Tangshan, Tangshan Yan Snack Street is known as a "museum that can be eaten". The first floor is dominated by local snacks, such as chess piece baked cakes, honey hemp candy, mung bean dumplings... There is also a shop Xiao Er who speaks an authentic Tangshan dialect. The second floor is home to nostalgic old objects that take you back in time. Here, you can eat Tangshan snacks, listen to Tangshan dialect, look at the old scenery and old objects of Tangshan, and fully feel the urban characteristics of Tangshan.
Catering is fully integrated with retail and leisure
As an integrated shopping mall, it is crucial to be able to successfully and seamlessly integrate food and beverage with other services such as retail and leisure. The heat and customer experience brought by catering have increased the flow of customers in shopping malls while also increasing the dwell time, which has led to the popularity of leisure and the performance of retail.
Beijing Chaoyang Joy City covers a variety of formats such as department stores, supermarkets, cinemas, and leisure. The spatial layout will be different types of catering distributed in different floor areas and spaces, so that customers can eat food at any time when shopping, before enjoying the food to visit the major brands, buy and buy by the way; after enjoying the food can watch a movie, or exercise, or go to the space to find a moment of tranquility.
--Conclusion--
China's food culture, dinner culture and the sense of atmosphere of dine-in have made catering an industry that will never go out of style.
In the face of the traffic and benefits brought by catering, shopping malls should be adjusted according to their own situation, and must not blindly follow the trend, or even try to survive by catering. You know, catering is only part of the shopping experience, if you want to drive retail consumption with catering, first of all, your own retail business should be solid, and then do business upgrading and optimization on this basis.
In addition, do not put all the bets on catering or a single format, the success of shopping malls stems from the rich formats and the variety of experiences brought to consumers. In the future, shopping malls will also pursue customers' experiential consumption more and develop in the direction of diversification and boutique.
*Some graphic reference network, copyright belongs to the original author
Time and place: May 18-19 / Poly World Trade Center Expo Center, Guangzhou
Business negotiation / media cooperation / consultation hotline: 020-37128283