The total number of brand stores is almost halved, and high-end restaurants are going to be cool?
This article was originally published by Red Meal Network (ID: hongcan18), author: Zhou Mo, editor: Wang Xiuqing.
The Michelin restaurant can't hold it anymore!
Recently, Beijing's Michelin-starred restaurant Opera BOMBANA suddenly released a "farewell letter" on its official public account, saying that it will officially close on April 14.
Founded in 2013, Opera BOMBANA has an average per capita unit price of nearly 1,000 yuan, known as the "ceiling of Italian restaurants in Beijing", and has been selected as a Black Pearl restaurant many times and won a Michelin star in 2022.
Many netizens expressed surprise and sigh at the closure of Opera BOMBANA: "It is really regrettable that Michelin and Black Pearl, which have attracted much attention in Beijing", "I have consumed many years ago, and I have the impression that there are few high-end Italian restaurants in Beijing, which is a pity"......
In fact, there has always been a popular jargon in the catering industry - "Immortals are sad in March and April." Every year after the Spring Festival, the catering industry has to go through several months of off-season. Compared with last year, this year's catering market seems to be more brutal: the off-season is lighter, the competition is more intense, and the speed of reshuffle is further accelerating. According to Qichacha data, in the first quarter of 2024, the sales volume of catering-related enterprises will reach 433,000, more than twice that of the same period last year.
Among them, the high-end restaurant industry seems to have a harder time. Especially in Shanghai, the most mature city for high-end catering, a reshuffle is being staged.
The total number of stores and turnover have both shrunk!
Shanghai's high-end restaurants are in a reshuffle
In the past week, Red Meal Network has received news from netizens that high-end restaurants in Shanghai are closing or about to close.
Xiao Liu, who works in the operation of shopping malls, revealed that the high-end Cantonese restaurant on the Bund in Shanghai with an average of 1,000+ yuan per family officially closed last month, and the restaurant opened and closed for less than half a year.
Another high-end restaurant that is closing is Osteria, which has been in business for 15 years, and has opened on Shaanxi West Road in Shanghai, with an average price of about 500 yuan per person. Recently, Red Meal Network called Osteria Oyster Seafood Restaurant and received a response from the staff that the restaurant plans to officially close on May 30.
Many diners left messages under the public comment of the restaurant to express their regret: "My favorite oyster restaurant is closing, so let's visit more before it closes." "Finally, I've come to check out Shanghai's legendary Oyster Bar, and I've heard that it will close at the end of May. ”......
△ Image source: Screenshot of Dianping
Whether it has been open for less than half a year or has been in operation for 15 years, the two high-end restaurants have come to the same end, which is embarrassing.
In fact, the closure and closure of the above-mentioned high-end restaurants is not an isolated case. This is just the tip of the iceberg of the intensified reshuffle in Shanghai's high-end catering market over the past few months. The reshuffle of Shanghai's high-end catering industry began to be staged in the second half of last year.
Wang Yugang, a columnist for Red Food.com, told RedFood.com that he has been paying attention to the dynamics of Shanghai's catering market all year round, and since the second half of 2023, many high-end restaurants in Shanghai, which were difficult to book in the past, are relatively easy to book.
Lao Sun, who has studied Shanghai's high-end catering industry, also said, "Probably from the autumn of 2023, the turnover of many high-end restaurants with thousands per capita will begin to decline, and it is not surprising that it will be cut in half." ”
Weng Yongjun, the head of Yongfu Catering, a well-known high-end restaurant group in Shanghai, also said in a media interview: The catering market in 2023 is like a roller coaster.
The challenges encountered by Shanghai's high-end restaurants have not eased with the arrival of the peak season for food and beverage consumption. Before the Spring Festival in 2024, Xiao Kuan, a senior food critic and manager of the self-media food list, posted that in the traditional concept, the eve of the Spring Festival is the busiest season in the high-end catering industry, and reservations should be hot and a table is hard to find. However, many high-end restaurants in Shanghai did not usher in the peak of consumption as expected, and on the contrary, the waiters in front of the luxurious private rooms of some restaurants were a little idle and yawned.
Xiaokuan pointed out in the article that under the pressure of the general environment, "consumption downgrade" has become the mainstream, business activities have shrunk, and the total number of high-end catering consumers is decreasing. At the same time, a year ago, a "ban list" circulated in the Shanghai catering circle, which caused anxiety among some local high-end catering industry players. It is said that this list is a list of restaurants that Shanghai civil servants and cadres of state-owned enterprises are not allowed to consume. In the context of strict investigation of corruption, the 'effectiveness' of this list is comparable to a bomb, and those who are selected are panicked, and those who are not selected are also in danger. ”
△ Image source: Picture Worm Creative
Lao Ma (pseudonym), an observer of high-end restaurants in Shanghai, told Red Dining Network that there was indeed such a "list" circulating in Shanghai's high-end catering circle a few years ago.
According to its disclosure, the "list" lists a number of well-known high-end catering establishments in Shanghai, and a large number of well-known brands are impressively listed, covering a wide range, including not only well-known high-end restaurant chain brands, but also independently operated single stores, private restaurants, and some membership-based restaurants, the per capita consumption level of these restaurants ranges from hundreds of yuan to thousands of yuan.
Lao Ma told Red Restaurant.com, "This list has been circulating in Shanghai's catering circle a few years ago, and there were only more than 100 at first, and later it was added to more than 200. I thought that the lockdown would be lifted after the Spring Festival, but after the year, I heard that I don't plan to unblock it, and it will be managed on a regular basis. ”
As of press time, Shanghai's high-end catering industry has not waited for the "unblocking" notice.
Some industry insiders bluntly said that although the authenticity of the source of the list cannot be verified, the worries and panic it has caused in the industry cannot be ignored, and this uncertainty may affect the high-end catering market in Shanghai and even the whole country.
Lao Yang, a high-end restaurant operator in Shanghai, said, "The economy is not good, and high-end restaurants will definitely shrink a little, which is the normal state of business." But once the government imposes a ban on certain restaurants, it will undoubtedly be a big strangulation for high-end restaurants in Shanghai. ”
Judging from the data, Shanghai's high-end catering industry has seen a considerable contraction in the past year.
According to the big data of Red Meal, as of May 10, 2023, the total number of catering stores in operation in Shanghai is about 201,570, of which 1.35% are restaurants with an average per capita customer price of more than 500 yuan, and 0.31% are more than 1,000 yuan per capita. At that time, there were more than 2,700 high-end restaurants in Shanghai with an average per capita unit price of more than 500 yuan.
As of April 19, 2024, the proportion of restaurants with an average per capita unit price of more than 500 yuan has shrunk significantly, from 1.44% to 0.8%, and the total number of stores has decreased by more than 900.
The 2024 Retail Business Trends Report released by Savills also pointed out that compared with 2022, the newly leased area of high-end fine dining in Shanghai in 2023 will show a significant downward trend in various sub-categories. In a way, this represents investors and brands becoming more cautious when opening new high-end F&B outlets.
Oversupply
Shanghai's high-end restaurant shuffle or special case
It is worth noting that there are many special factors in the reshuffle of Shanghai's high-end catering market. In the eyes of many industry insiders, there has been an oversupply in Shanghai's high-end catering market, which has directly led to the intensification of the reshuffle.
In fact, Shanghai is the city with the most high-end restaurants in Chinese mainland, and is far ahead of the other three first-tier cities. According to the big data of Red Meal, as of April 19, 2024, there are 1,754 restaurants in Shanghai with an average per capita consumption of more than 500 yuan, which is 1.9 times that of Beijing, 4.2 times that of Shenzhen, and 6.5 times that of Guangzhou.
Why are there so many high-end restaurants in Shanghai?
First of all, Shanghai is the first metropolis to become an international metropolis, and high-end catering started early.
As early as modern times, Shanghai has been a place where consulates, foreign firms, and expatriates live together, which has brought a lot of high-end catering consumption demand to Shanghai, and this characteristic has even continued to this day. As of 2021, a total of 55 countries around the world have consulates in Shanghai, and the scope of consulates covers Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui and other regions in the Yangtze River Delta, making it the city with the most consulates in China. Today, as an important engine of China's economy and an international financial center, Shanghai is a city with relatively frequent business activities, and there is a strong demand for high-end business banquets and conference meals, which further stimulates the growth of the high-end catering industry.
Secondly, Shanghai has a large number of wealthy people, strong consumption capacity of high-end catering, and a huge economic scale and high-net-worth people, which provides fertile soil for the development of high-end catering.
In 2022, the Hurun Research Institute released a wealth report on Chinese mainland, in which the net worth of wealthy families was defined at 6 million yuan. That is, those with family assets of more than 6 million are wealthy families. 10 million yuan is a high-net-worth family, 100 million yuan is an ultra-high-net-worth family, and 30 million US dollars (200 million yuan) is an international ultra-high-net-worth family. Among them, there are 639,000 households with assets of more than 6 million yuan, 271,000 households with assets of more than 10 million yuan, and 17,600 households with assets of more than 100 million yuan.
The report also pointed out that there are 100,000 more households in Shanghai with assets of more than 6 million yuan than in Hong Kong, which is 3.5 times that of Shenzhen, 3.7 times that of Guangzhou, 4.7 times that of Hangzhou, and 9.6 times that of Tianjin, and more than that of Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, and Ningbo combined. In terms of provinces, it is 1.2 times that of Zhejiang Province, 2.1 times that of Jiangsu Province (85.05 million people), and 4 times that of Fujian Province (41.87 million people).
The strong demand for high-end catering among the above-mentioned groups has promoted the rapid development of Shanghai's high-end catering market.
In addition, the pandemic is also a catalyst.
During the epidemic, when the financial, real estate, education and training industries encountered severe challenges, and thanks to measures such as precise prevention, Shanghai's high-end restaurants took the lead in recovery, making many investors more convinced that operating high-end restaurants in Shanghai is a big business opportunity, and a number of investors flocked to open stores. There are even investors who have made a big deal and opened several high-end restaurants with an average average of more than 1,000 yuan per capita.
For example, at the end of 2022, Yongfu, which has the ceiling of high-end Ningbo cuisine in the magic capital, invested 180 million yuan to build three high-end restaurants on the 56th floor of Raffles City on the North Bund, with an average per capita unit price of 900-2300.
Nowadays, in Shanghai, especially in some key business districts, high-end restaurants are clustered. For example, in the business district within one kilometer of Nanjing West Road, there are high-end restaurants with a per capita unit price of hundreds or thousands, including Xinrong Ji, Jingxi Hui, Rongfu Banquet, Luyuan Moose, Jingcaixuan, Chinese Cuisine Touzao, Upstairs Huiguan, Gongyan, The Pine, etc.
△ Image source: Picture Worm Creative
The rapid growth of Shanghai's high-end catering supply has led to the risk of overheating and bubbles in Shanghai's high-end catering market.
In the eyes of many industry insiders, from 2020 to 2022, due to the particularity of the business environment, many abnormal things have happened in the catering industry, including the "abnormal prosperity" of Shanghai's high-end restaurants.
"During the two-year bonus period, new restaurants have continued to emerge in Shanghai, soaring unit prices of set menus, and irrational growth in the industry. A Peking University scholar who has studied high-end catering in China said. In his view, Shanghai's high-end catering industry will inevitably usher in a moment: reshuffle and remove the chaff.
Shou Wenbin, a columnist for Red Food.com, also said that Shanghai, as an international metropolis, has a particularly strong consumption power of residents, and the demand for high-end catering is significantly higher than that of other cities. As a typical cash-flow-intensive industry, whenever there are profitable catering stores in the market, they often attract external investors to enter the market, which leads to the oversupply of the high-end catering market in the short term, so the reshuffle has become inevitable.
Under the trend of consumption grading, high-end catering still has potential
A series of special reasons have led to the reshuffle of high-end restaurants in Shanghai, but the situation in Shanghai is only a special case, and does not mean that "high-end restaurants are cool". From the perspective of the national market, high-end catering still has imagination and market potential.
On the one hand, the domestic high-end catering consumer market still has a huge potential consumer group, providing a stable market foundation for the high-end catering industry.
According to the "2023 Hurun Wealth Report" released by the Hurun Research Institute, as of January 1, 2023, the number of "wealthy families" with assets of 6 million yuan in China has reached 5.14 million, the number of "high-net-worth families" with assets of 10 million yuan has reached 2.08 million, and the number of "ultra-high-net-worth families" with assets of 100 million yuan has reached 133,000. Calculated according to the average number of people per household, the number of people with assets of 6 million, 10 million and more than 100 million yuan in the country is 15.42 million, 6.24 million and 399,000 respectively.
On the other hand, consumption grading has become a major trend, the public pursues affordable and cost-effective consumption, and the wealthy group has unabated momentum in high-end consumption, as well as high-end restaurants. According to the 2023 McKinsey China Consumer Report, the trend of premiumization continues, and even in the face of economic challenges, high-income groups still favor high-end brands in actual consumption.
△ Image source: Photo by Red Meal Network
Shou Wenbin said that the current high-end consumer market as a whole has maintained a relatively stable growth trend, which is not only reflected in the luxury sector such as villas, luxury cars, private jets and luxury cruise ships, but also applies to the high-end catering market.
In his view, the consumption trend of high-end food and beverage consumption is consistent with that of the luxury sector.
"In 2024, the catering market will inevitably have a polarization of customer consumption, and cost-effective consumption and high-end consumption will become the mainstream. Wang Dongmingru, a columnist for Red Meal.com, also holds a similar view. At present, consumption is both downgrading and grading, and cost-effective catering and less expensive high-end catering exist at the same time to meet the needs of people with different incomes.
Previously, the "2023 China Catering Consumption Trend Report" released by Red Meal Network also showed that in the past year, even though high-end catering was under pressure overall, catering consumption as a whole showed K-shaped differentiation, that is, high-end consumption and rigid demand consumption were both rising.
There are also many industry insiders who told Red Restaurant that some high-end restaurants that already have a stable group of regular customers have little impact on the whole.
Guo Qi, president of Beijing Dayali Wanwei Restaurant Group, told Red Food.com that the group's two high-end restaurants, Wanwei Yunyan and Wanwea Yuan, are located in Chengdu and Beijing, respectively. It was revealed that in the past year, the operation of these two stores has basically met expectations.
Zhai Bin also told Red Meal Network that according to his observation, a number of restaurants in Beijing that do high-end business banquets have not been affected much since the beginning of this year.
For the long-term development of high-end catering, there are still many people in the industry who are optimistic.
Yuan Xiaoran, executive chairman of the Chengdu Catering Association, said that the high-end catering market must exist, and there is supply where there is demand, especially in cities like Chengdu, where the high-end consumer market is still vibrant.
"Steady development, benign and optimistic. Tian Junfeng, general manager of Lucai Operation Center, summed up his prediction of the high-end catering market in 2024 in eight words.
Qi Lingyun, founder of Chengdu "Tingxiang Tang Banquet Restaurant", also told the red food network that when the market returns from impetuousness to rationality, with the gradual expansion of the market scale of high-end family banquet market, high-end private domain birthday banquet and high-end wedding anniversary, high-end consumption will still maintain a relatively good state.
Based on the positive expectations for the future development of the high-end catering market, Qi Lingyun and Guo Qi both revealed that their brands will expand their layout in the high-end catering market in 2024. Among them, Tingxiang plans to open a small but beautiful high-end cultural restaurant in Chengdu this year, while Da Yali Restaurant Group's second high-end restaurant in Beijing is planned to officially open after the National Day.