What do Chinese "foodies" love most? Hot pot steadily won the "must eat" national category

What do Chinese "foodies" love most? Hot pot steadily won the "must eat" national category. In Chongqing's list of recommended dishes, eight of the top ten are hot pot side dishes. In addition, brown sugar sticks and lamb skewers are also "circle powder" for all ages, becoming "national snacks".

In addition, the post-95 generation has become a "tide force" for foodies, and young men have gradually become a "new force" in the foodie industry, which has led to the rapid growth of online orders from 2 to 4 am.

Preference for local flavors Each city has a unique pyrotechnic atmosphere

Falling in love with a city has a fairly good chance of starting with a delicacy. The most beautiful fireworks in a city are not necessarily a big meal, maybe a street stall, or local specialties, farmhouse dishes, etc., full of warmth in that bowl of fireworks.

The "love" and "preference" of the people are all attachments to the "local taste". China is a vast country, each city has its own food characteristics, local specialties coupled with fried steaming various means, so that each city has its own unique pyrotechnic atmosphere.

There are significant differences in the recommended favorite dishes of people in different regions, especially reflecting the strong local characteristics, such as the northeast region's promotion of pot wrapped meat, North China's preference for brown sugar and hand-cut lamb, East China's crayfish, South China's old friend fish, Central China's flavored shrimp, Northwest China's meat sandwich steamed buns and biangbiang noodles that can't be written, Chongqing's spicy chicken and wrapped tofu in the southwest region are more favored.

Each dish is selected by foodies using their taste buds in local must-eat stores. Recently, Dianping released the must-eat list for the fifth consecutive year, showing the changes in the behavior habits and preferences of online foodies in the past five years. Judging from the ranking of consumer recommended dishes, local specialties have gradually entered the recommendation list and become the cognitive representative of local food culture in the minds of consumers. The popularity of these dishes with strong regional characteristics reflects people's pursuit of "local taste".

The data shows that no matter which age group of must-eat list users, the first choice is the hot pot store, and the people under the age of 20 have one in every two consumptions of hot pot. Hot pot has become a well-deserved "must eat" national category. With the development of the number of hot pot barbecue stores, pork belly has become the most popular barbecue ingredient, and spicy beef has become the most popular hot pot meat ingredient.

In addition, lamb skewers and brown sugar sticks have become the "national dishes" with the largest number of recommenders, and poplar manna has become the "national drink" with the largest number of recommended people.

Punching cards drive the surrounding economy Foodies eat "fire" a city

In internet celebrity punch card cities, people's attention often comes from those carefully designed punch points, and this consumption model is equivalent to "visiting here". However, as more and more offline catering merchants open up online spaces and transmit store information, dish information, service information, etc. to foodies in Tiannanhaibei, the amount of information people obtain has increased geometrically, and they have begun to explore a city from a more dimensional perspective. And every punch card consumption for eating will drive the overall growth of regional traffic and form a driving effect on the surrounding economy.

Taking Chongqing as an example, the keyword search rankings in the past three years have undergone some changes, although hot pot is the main theme forever, but well-known business circles and brands have successively appeared in the list, and two brands have been listed in the first half of 2021. The legend that "in Chongqing, there is a hot pot restaurant every 200 meters" is not an exaggeration. Eight of Chongqing's recommended dishes are hot pot side dishes. At the same time, the people of Chongqing put forward higher requirements for hot pot and pursued the ultimate freshness. Duck blood should be fresh, beef and mutton should be tender, and the hair belly is required to be "slaughtered" on the same day.

In recent years, Changsha's frequent "out of the circle" on social platforms is closely related to the shine in the catering industry. Many catering enterprises adopt the "one trick to eat all over the sky" playing style, choosing one of the Hunan dishes as a signature dish to break through. The famous cooking tobacco small stir-fried yellow beef and Chef Fei's chili stir-fried meat are the king of the local well-known restaurant queue. These catering enterprises that deeply cultivate regional flavor products have gradually gone out of Changsha and expanded their territory in other provinces and cities, and are affectionately known as "Changsha Little Pride".

Nanjing people living in the ancient capital pay special attention to health, "pumpkin porridge" ranks first in the list of recommended dishes, and duck blood vermicelli soup, as one of the most representative Nanjing special snacks, is no accident on the list. The representative of Huaiyang cuisine, Babao Lion Head, was also loved by the local people and successfully entered the list.

Since ancient times, the Guanzhong region has been the production area of wheat, and the history of Shaanxi noodles is naturally very long. As the "pasta capital" of Xi'an, oily noodles and biangbiang noodles are not unexpectedly shortlisted in the top 10 recommended dishes, and another noodle meat sandwich bun on the list has long become Xi'an's food business card, and even has the saying that "if you don't eat a meat sandwich bun, you don't count Xi'an". Along with the meat sandwich bun, there is also the famous Shaanxi dish "Chang'an Gourd Chicken", which combines local famous dishes with historical place names, showing the cultural heritage of the ancient city.

Stay up the deepest night eat the best night

As the "Internet natives" of the post-95s, the main force of new consumption, the new "tide force", love to share curiosity, active in major Internet platforms, skilled in the application of digital tools, have a clear pursuit of their own life propositions, these characteristics profoundly affect their time, scene and consumption methods in catering consumption.

From the perspective of the age distribution of online consumers in Chinese catering, the proportion of consumers under the age of 25 has increased significantly, and the proportion of groups under the age of 20 has increased most obviously. Judging from the changing trend of the gender distribution of consumers on the must-eat list, young men have gradually become the "new force" in the foodie industry. The rise of this group of "tide forces" and "new forces" has brought about changes in the consumption behavior of the entire catering industry and changes in different consumption periods.

From the comparison of online orders in different periods, in addition to the phenomenon of double peaks for lunch and dinner, the annual increase in online orders in different periods has attracted attention. Among them, the highest increase in online order volume is from 2:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m., staying up the deepest night, eating the best night is the stubbornness of contemporary young people to youth. In addition, the order volume increased significantly around 15:00, and leisure afternoon tea has gradually become a scene of girlfriend gathering and business communication.

Search for food online And "eat, drink and have fun" offline

Using a small program to order has become a quick way for office workers to "order takeaway". With the acceleration of the number of online orders, more consumer behaviors are gradually "digitized", and the digital operation of users in the catering industry, restaurant stores and supply chains are gradually being promoted. As the integration of online and offline development continues to accelerate, digital transformation has become the consensus of the whole society. For catering merchants, how to embrace the online and offline "double home", provide services for massive online customers, let the service break through the limit of offline restaurant area, and extend the service range from hundreds of meters to several kilometers, more than ten kilometers or even a larger range, has become an unavoidable development direction of the catering industry.

At the same time, in recent years, everyone's consumption habits have changed. In the past, it was often just to search for keywords related to "food" in the food channel just for "eating", and the pursuit of "delicious" was the first. But now, looking at the search keyword rankings of various cities, we can find that many well-known local business districts have also begun to enter the forefront of the list. The commercial district complex integrating "eating, drinking and having fun" can meet the various needs of customers.

For example, from the increase in the search for business districts in Chongqing and Shanghai, it can be seen that consumers have become a trend from simply traveling for food to comprehensive consumption in business districts with eating as the core, which has given more expectations for the matter of "eating".

Text/Reporter Chen Si

Source: Beijing Youth Daily