Restaurant bosses sprint for Chinese New Year's Eve dinner: some people lie down to earn, some people survive
定焦（dingjiaoone）原创
Author |
Edit | Wei Jia
Chinese New Year's Eve is approaching, and the streets and alleys are getting stronger. At this time of year, the busiest people are probably the caterers preparing for the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner.
A week before Chinese New Year's Eve, Chinese New Year's Eve dinner reservations in restaurants and restaurants in many places have come to an end, and a private room is even more difficult to find.
The hit of "Flowers" has ignited the business of many restaurants in Shanghai. Huang Qi, who stayed in Shanghai for the New Year, told "Fixed Focus" that he did not expect to book the Peace Hotel, but even the prototype of the Zhizhen Garden in the play was a Chinese New Year's Eve dinner second, and it was difficult to make a reservation call for a long time.
The boxes for Chinese New Year's Eve dinner at many time-honored restaurants in Guangzhou and Beijing were fully booked as early as mid-January.
The hot reservation of the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner has also brought sweet pressure to many restaurant owners.
Chen Sheng, the person in charge of a seafood chain restaurant in Hangzhou, told "Dingjiao" that lobster is particularly popular for the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner in the Year of the Dragon, but the price of seafood ingredients changes greatly, and how to reasonably prepare goods during the Spring Festival is very testing for catering people.
The "labor shortage" of the Spring Festival in the catering industry has always existed. The owner of a restaurant in Suzhou said that some employees had gone home for the New Year, and in order to retain employees to prepare for the Chinese New Year's Eve, he gave employees three times their wages and hired hourly workers.
Chinese New Year's Eve dinner is the most important meal of the lunar year, if you go out to eat, the family goes to a time-honored restaurant, a large and medium-sized restaurant or a traditional Chinese restaurant to have a reunion dinner, which is the first choice for most people, which is not only down-to-earth, but also closer to traditional culture.
And when the younger generation of the family began to have a Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, the market saw some changes. More cafeterias, hot pots, spicy fragrant pots and other restaurants have joined the army of Chinese New Year's Eve dinner. In order to prepare for the Spring Festival, many restaurants began to catch the trend: launched Chinese New Year's Eve meal packages and attracted traffic on Internet platforms such as Meituan and Douyin; in order to generate income, "pre-made dishes" were launched in dine-in and takeaway, such as Chinese New Year's Eve lunch gift boxes such as Buddha jumping over the wall and family photos.
The Chinese New Year's Eve dinner is the year-end test for catering people. Although the overall price of the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner set has steadily decreased this year, the recent small peak of bookings has really made many restaurants feel warm.
However, this warmth is more concentrated in the big cities. In the relatively sinking market, only a small number of large hotels receive two Chinese New Year's Eve meals on the day of the Chinese New Year's Eve, and the reservation situation is relatively optimistic, and the vast majority of hotels choose to close. More small and medium-sized restaurants are still waiting for the recovery after the year.
No matter how many tiers of cities you are in, for the catering people who have survived the epidemic, the catering consumption market of this Spring Festival has a more special meaning.
Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, a table is hard to find
The Chinese New Year's Eve dinner was booked at the last moment, and the catering industry from north to south felt the long-lost popularity.
The closer the Chinese New Year gets, the more the reservation phone in Li Lin's store rings non-stop, "There are too many reservations for the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, and there is no end to the reception." Li Lin, the manager of a northeastern restaurant in Harbin, told "Dingjiao" that since New Year's Day this year, guests have ordered Chinese New Year's Eve dinners one after another, and the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner for 1,400 yuan a table has long been fully booked, and late guests can only wait for the hall to cancel or take out.
Located on Harbin's Central Street, this restaurant is a popular spot for locals and tourists alike.
Liu Chun, an out-of-town tourist who brought his family to Harbin for the New Year, wanted to find a local restaurant with a good reputation and high grade for Chinese New Year's Eve dinner and taste authentic pot wrapped meat. In recent days, he began to do strategies and choose restaurants, "On February 1, I made a call in the morning, and many of them were fully booked, and the private rooms of the more famous restaurants were gone, and the take-out was not suitable for us foreign tourists." ”
Liu Chun has not yet booked a favorite restaurant, and he decided to choose a Northeast cuisine restaurant with a good hall environment after flying to Harbin on the 29th of the lunar month.
Chinese New Year's Eve is approaching, and Beijing's Chinese New Year's Eve dinner market is even more urgent.
The "Fixed Focus" visit found that many Black Pearl restaurants said that their seats were fully booked, and the buffet restaurants booked by the seats in many hotels were also very popular; the private rooms of well-known time-honored or chain Chinese restaurants were fully booked during the New Year's Day, but until three days before Chinese New Year's Eve, there was still a steady stream of people who came to book the Chinese New Year's Eve; most of the restaurant boxes with roast duck had been snapped up, leaving only a small number of seats in the hall.
图源 / Pexels
Zhang Xiao, who works in Beijing, decided to take his parents to Beijing for the Chinese New Year together. "I have to go to work on Chinese New Year's Eve, and I don't have time to prepare for the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner", she finally persuaded her parents to go to the hotel to rub a meal, but she couldn't book a private room in a time-honored restaurant in Beijing. However, fortunately, she "grabbed" a table in the Xiaoyun Hall of the International Hotel, 298 yuan per person, "so that my parents can eat something that they can't eat in their hometown".
According to data from Meituan and Dianping, as of January 5, the number of catering merchants in Beijing that launched the "Chinese New Year's Eve Dinner" themed group purchase package in the past week increased by more than 70% week-on-week, and the number of related orders increased by more than 112%.
Shanghai's Chinese New Year's Eve Dinner Market is even livelier than ever.
A hit drama "Flowers" has made the hotel business on the Yellow River Road continue to boom. Huang Qi has made several hotel reservation calls since New Year's Day, but they have all been empty. Among them, the staff of the Huanghe Road Moss Shengyuan store suggested that she make a reservation in late January, because not only the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner is full, but also the usual meal reservations are full, and reservations will no longer be accepted in the near future.
Seeing that there are still 3 days to go until Chinese New Year's Eve, Huang Qi decided not to follow the trend, "just order a good local restaurant." After looking for a long time, she finally booked an old Benbang restaurant near Jing'an Temple and paid a deposit of 100 yuan.
"Chinese New Year's Eve can eat lion's head, braised pork, and wine-stuffed balls...... It can be regarded as having the feeling of the New Year. However, Huang Qi still felt a little regretful, "This restaurant only has the location of the hall, and it can only eat mid-year dinner." Chinese New Year's Eve from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m., including the seats in the lobby are fully booked.
Han Jie, owner of Shanghai Benbang Restaurant, told "Dingjiao" that compared with previous years, many customers have been consulting and booking Chinese New Year's Eve dinner since Mid-Autumn Festival and November. Advance booking is to grab the golden hour of 7 pm to 9 pm on the 30th day of the Chinese New Year's Eve.
In Guangzhou, the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner boxes of major restaurants were snapped up by Cantonese cuisine-loving veterans.
Wang Ya, who temporarily decided to stay in Guangzhou for the New Year, made a difficulty, "There was still a week before Chinese New Year's Eve, and I started to book restaurants, but the Cantonese restaurants I often eat have no places." ”
Neither he nor his wife were very good at cooking, so they finally decided to "order takeout". A Cantonese restaurant they often eat, Chinese New Year's Eve meal delivery service, "take-out a reunion poon choi, can also make up for some New Year's flavors."
The person in charge of a Cantonese restaurant told Dingjiao that in early December last year, customers began to book boxes for Chinese New Year's Eve dinners, and by New Year's Day, the boxes were fully booked. As far as he knows, there are some well-known restaurants that are unlikely to book a place after entering February.
To prepare for the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, catering people have to break through three major levels
The Spring Festival peak season, including the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, is the most critical part of many restaurants' annual operations, and preparing for the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner has become an important fight for these restaurants.
"This year's Chinese New Year's Eve dinner is not like previous years, more or less affected by the epidemic There are some uncertainties, this time, the anxiety of the restaurant owner in this regard is not so heavy, but the pressure to prepare for the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner is not small. Han Jie concluded that catering people face at least three major hurdles.
The first level is to keep people or "arrest people".
The actual situation of Chinese New Year's Eve dinner reservations has always been two days of ice and fire. Reservations for sought-after restaurants are booming, but find a way to accommodate them. Relatively deserted restaurants need to find ways to attract more customers.
Popular restaurants generally offer "two-wheel" meals, mid-year meals and Chinese New Year's Eve meals on Chinese New Year's Eve. For example, some stores in Xibei Noodle Village have additionally launched Chinese New Year's Eve meals in the afternoon.
There are also restaurants that continue to add meals on the basis of two meals each for the Mid-Year Meal and the Chinese New Year's Eve Dinner. For example, the fourth generation of Beijing's time-honored brand has increased the Chinese New Year's Eve meal from the previous four meals to five meals.
In addition to providing Chinese New Year's Eve meals at different times, there are also restaurants that have partitioned the banquet hall in order to increase the number of seats, and in order to cater to the younger crowd, they have begun to make Chinese New Year's Eve meals for takeaway.
Not all restaurants are not lacking in popularity, and the vast majority of restaurants have to desperately "roll" the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner set, and at the same time use local life platforms and short video platforms to market.
Chinese New Year's Eve is the busiest day for caterers during the Spring Festival, and many restaurants only accept set meals, "which are more profitable, faster, less error-prone, and reduce the pressure on restaurants to stock up," Chen Sheng said.
One of the changes in this year's Spring Festival is that the price, number of people, and menu settings of the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner set are more flexible and trendy.
The package pricing is generally auspicious numbers, such as 388 yuan, 688 yuan, 888 yuan, 1288 yuan, 1699 yuan, and so on.
Zheng Song, the head of a Huaiyang restaurant in Suzhou, said that in order to cater to the dining needs of more small families, there is also a trend on Chinese New Year's Eve this year, on the basis of the previous large set meals for 6-8 people and 8-10 people, more restaurants have launched small set meals for 2-3 people and 4-6 people.
Zheng Song found that more and more young people began to organize a family's Chinese New Year's Eve dinner where to eat and what to eat, but most of them were mainly based on the opinions of the elders, meaning that a good meal can make the elders happy.
Therefore, the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner should not only taste good, but also please the mouth and Tujili. Many restaurants have given their set menus a full of New Year's flavors, such as the Year of the Dragon, Good Luck (dá), Lucky Dragon, and Descendants of the Dragon.
I am also very particular about how to match the dishes in the course. Eating chicken, meaning good luck, eating fish, meaning more than every year, this year of the dragon, the appearance rate of lobster is particularly high.
图源 / Unsplash
Every Chinese New Year, catering people who are still on the front line will worry about the difficulty of stocking up and the shortage of labor, and this year is no exception.
Chen Sheng, who is in charge of three stores in Hangzhou, has been preparing for the Spring Festival since November, but it wasn't until a week before Chinese New Year's Eve that he placed orders with suppliers to stock up on ingredients.
After experiencing the "wave of unsubscriptions" during the Spring Festival in previous years, Chen Sheng is more cautious in making food reservations this year, "mainly because the price of seafood ingredients changes too much, and once the estimate is not good, the burden of food loss is too heavy." As far as he knows, many peers are also relatively conservative in stocking.
Because the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner reservation exceeded expectations, Han Jie began to "look for people" everywhere in early February: contact employees who took leave to return to their hometowns, gave them triple their salaries, asked them to come back to help, and also recruited several hourly and part-time workers.
In addition to the fact that the catering service industry is too hard and the salary is not high, an important reason is that many restaurant owners are now very restrained in manpower, and would rather temporarily replenish when there is a shortage of manpower, rather than recruit too many full-time employees.
In order to generate income and attract traffic, catering people are even more powerful.
Many restaurants in Beijing visited by "Dingjiao" years ago placed "Chinese New Year's Eve Lunch Gift Box" in a conspicuous position in the hall. Not only time-honored restaurants, but also some individual restaurants are also selling family portrait gift boxes, Buddha jumping over the wall gift boxes, etc.
The manager of a time-honored chain restaurant revealed that the sales situation is basically in line with expectations, and the Chinese New Year's Eve lunch gift boxes are all hard dishes, and some customers have not booked a place for the Chinese New Year's Eve dining table, so they will consider buying a few hard dishes, and they can be served when they go back to the hot one. After all, hard dishes are more flavorful.
There are also some restaurants that choose to keep their distance from pre-made dishes. On platforms such as Meituan, many Chinese New Year's Eve meal packages include words such as "chef stir-fried" and "refusal of pre-made dishes".
Ice and fire for Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, the "barometer" of the catering industry in 2024
The Spring Festival of the Year of the Dragon in 2024 is more precious for catering practitioners.
Chinese people have followed the Spring Festival reunion culture for thousands of years, the trend of Chinese New Year's Eve dinner gradually shifting from family self-control to eating out, and the rare time of family reunion in the past few years, all kinds of factors have driven the popularity of Chinese New Year's Eve dinner.
More than one person in charge of the chain revealed that because of the hot reservation of the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, the business situation in the first quarter of this year exceeded expectations.
However, many of the interviewed catering industry people mentioned that the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner has different impacts on different levels of the city. In first- and second-tier cities, Chinese New Year's Eve dinner is a small peak in catering consumption in a year, but in small places such as fourth- and fifth-tier cities and county seats, many people's traditional thinking is that Chinese New Year's Eve dinner must be eaten at home. Therefore, holidays and closures are the choices of most hotels.
However, regardless of the tiers of cities, the Spring Festival catering consumption, including the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, is not the catering industry's consumption "barometer" in the coming year?
Large and medium-sized restaurants pay more attention to the consumption power released in the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner market.
Although many restaurants have expensive Chinese New Year's Eve dinner prices, Shanghai and Sanya have Chinese New Year's Eve meal packages as high as 5888 yuan and 6999 yuan, but combined with the observation of many catering industry people, on the whole, the price of this year's Chinese New Year's Eve meal package is stable and decreasing. The prices of most restaurants are similar to those of previous years, and a few have been reduced.
Small and medium-sized restaurants are more concerned about whether this Spring Festival stall can get off to a "good start" and whether the catering consumption trend after the holiday is improving.
The tourism boom in the Northeast has driven the catering boom in the Northeast. Feng Yong, the owner of a small Northeast restaurant in Harbin, said, "Since New Year's Day this year, the biggest change in Harbin's catering has been that it has started to queue up."
This made catering practitioners, including Feng Yong, sigh that "the popularity of catering in the Northeast is coming". He told "Fixed Focus" that this round of heat will last for at least the entire Spring Festival holiday.
Some people rejoice, and of course some people are sad.
Many catering people who originally "gave up" the Spring Festival stalls chose to stay in the store for the New Year, always paying attention to the catering market, in order to open early and relieve the financial pressure of the restaurant.
Yang Wen, a partner at a Chongqing hot pot restaurant in Beijing, told Dingjiao that in previous years, restaurants would be closed during the Spring Festival, and by the way, they would take advantage of the off-season to give employees a holiday. This year's Spring Festival is different, the whole holiday including Chinese New Year's Eve is open, but it is closed until 2 p.m. on Chinese New Year's Eve.
In November and December 2023, the flow of Yang Wen Restaurant is not ideal, only there is a round of consumption climax during New Year's Day, and there is a small peak of group building dinner before the Spring Festival. "During the Spring Festival this year, we want to take advantage of the time when others are closed to make some hard-earned money, and we also hope to improve our ranking on the online platform. ”
"Many hot pot, spicy fragrant pot and other restaurants, in the past, the Spring Festival was directly closed, and this year's Spring Festival has also begun to 'roll' Chinese New Year's Eve dinner and Spring Festival stalls. Yang Wen said.
图源 / Unsplash
In previous years, the main forces of the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner war were time-honored restaurants, large restaurants, traditional Chinese restaurants, etc. Nowadays, new and old forces want to make money in the Spring Festival catering market, and the fierce competition can be imagined.
As Chinese New Year's Eve approaches, the restaurants preparing for the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner are getting busier day by day. Restaurant owners are also looking forward to the catering industry in 2024.
The consensus of many people in the catering industry is that the general trend is good, but the growth of the catering industry will gradually slow down, and the change and reshuffle will continue. They advise restaurateurs to operate steadily and expand cautiously.
During the exchange, "Fixed Focus" clearly felt that more and more catering practitioners have become more calm. They all believe that no matter what the general environment is, they must keep their feet on the ground.
*Image courtesy of Pexels. At the request of the interviewees, Huang Qi, Chen Sheng, Li Lin, Liu Chun, Zhang Xiao, Han Jie, Wang Ya, Zheng Song, Feng Yong, and Yang Wen are pseudonyms.