After the Spring Festival, there were more people who came to the Internet café with suitcases to stay overnight. "Some people have already quit their jobs and don't have a dormitory to live in, so they come to transition for a few days. There are also people who have just come to Hangzhou to look for work. Jiang Qiqi, the 29-year-old regional manager of Hangzhou Wanyu E-sports, said.
After 7 years of working in Wanyu E-sports, Jiang Qiqi has witnessed the decline and recovery of the Internet café industry. According to data from the China Internet Service Industry Association, the number of Internet cafes dropped sharply from 152,000 to 77,000 from 2016 to 2023, until 2024.
In 2024, more than 300 new Internet cafes will be opened in Hangzhou. The industry leader Wanyu E-sports will also bottom out in 2024, with the number of stores exceeding 1,300, a record high. In a county-level city like Liling, Hunan, there are 23 Internet cafes in the 20-square-kilometer main urban area, including a Qianping store.
The prosperity of Internet cafes has also attracted talents from various industries. A year ago, Jiang Qiqi recruited a group of new people, including a salesman in the financial industry, a store manager in Haidilao, and a manager of a food factory. In the past, Internet cafes would not have been their career choice, but now they are one of the few opportunities they have to maintain a decent life.
While many other industries are still in the doldrums, why are Internet cafes growing against the trend? In Jiang Qiqi's view, "Internet cafes are the last place to take in all kinds of people."
About 70% of the income from Internet cafes comes from Internet fees, and the remaining 30% comes from other ancillary services such as beverages and small goods. Southern Weekly reporter Luo Huanhuan pictured
"Cheapest Entertainment Consumption"
Huang Fanzhi used to be an Internet café owner. But in 2021, he felt that there was no hope for an internet café, so he turned around and started a coffee brand. At that time, he believed that investing in a coffee brand was much less expensive than investing in an Internet café, and it was more suitable for standardization and development into a chain.
Time has passed, and in 2024, he will turn back and open an Internet café, opening one in Liling, Hunan and four in Changsha. "After the epidemic, the logic of the offline consumer market has completely changed, and Internet cafes have become a good business again."
He found that when other industries were highly competitive and involuted, Internet cafes did not join at all. There are more than 80,000 Internet cafes in the country, and there are only 1,300 outlets of the top brand Wangyu. However, the coffee industry has long been entrenched, "the competition is very fierce, and the capital will flow to the depression, and the Internet café is the depression that has not been discovered before."
Huang Fanzhi clearly feels that part of the reason for this round of Internet café recovery comes from the outbreak of the demand side, but the more important driving force comes from the investment side.
Zheng Yanhong, the person in charge of the Zhejiang-Fujian Theater of Wangyu, told the Southern Weekend reporter that the investment in Internet cafes is relatively stable, and it will not be said that more than one million yuan has been invested, and there is nothing to lose later. The residual value of the Internet café will be 60%. Even if it goes out of business, the computer equipment can be sold again.
Attracting investment is one of Zheng Yanhong's most important jobs, and the clients who invest in them are called allies. The vast majority of her allies are repeat customers, "more than 80 percent."
Dong Rui, who works in Guangzhou, began to invest in Internet cafes in his hometown in Hunan in 2019, and will add nearly one million yuan in 2024. Judging from his investment experience, the past return performance of Internet cafes is in line with expectations, "an investment cycle of about five years, three years to return on investment, one or two years to make a profit, about 10%-20% profit per year".
In the current situation, he thinks it is difficult to find a project like an Internet café, which is "relatively stable in cash flow and less competitive".
While the number of Internet cafes is increasing, the consumer group is also increasing inexplicably.
Zheng Yanhong observed that although the time spent online has not increased, the number of people who have gone online has increased, and the number of users has increased, which means that more people choose to go to Internet cafes for consumption.
She analyzed that about a few years ago, when script killing and various board game stores were emerging, they once robbed some of the consumer groups of Internet cafes. However, in the past two years, there has been a wave of closures of script killings and board game stores. Zheng Yanhong speculated that "this part of the consumer group is back".
Huang Fanzhi made up his mind to return to the Internet café industry, and he also took a fancy to this, "Internet cafes are the cheapest entertainment consumption, and they are basic consumption like eating and drinking, and can be used as a project to cross the economic cycle."
"People are getting more and more lonely"
If we make a rough classification of people who walk into Internet cafes, Jiang Qiqi believes that they can be divided into two types, "one is young people in their twenties, and the other is nostalgic middle-aged people." The former is here for the game, while the latter is more about filling the spiritual emptiness.
He has seen many older brothers, "There are wives and children at home, and there are normal jobs, but he just wants to take a break in the Internet café, turn on the machine and lie on the sofa to sleep."
Bi Xinchen previously worked in Haidilao and Lego, and joined Wanyu in 2023 and became the manager of two Internet cafes. In the process of looking for a job, he found that wages were declining in many industries, with the exception of Internet cafes.
This made him feel that compared to eating hot pot and building Lego, the Internet café seemed to be a rigid need. He did a careful survey and asked every guest who went to a single package for consumption, and found that 75% of them had computers at home, and the configuration was not low.
"In the past, people came to Internet cafes in groups of three or five, but now they come alone a lot, and it seems that people are becoming more and more lonely."
This trend is also reflected in the decoration plan of Wanyu E-sports, which has now been iterated to version 6.5, and the proportion of single private rooms has been increasing. This seems to be a rather paradoxical thing, people go into the public space of Internet cafes, but they crave more privacy.
Zhou Xiaotong, 36, is an engineer at a major Internet company, and going to an Internet café to play games is his main way to relax. There are elderly people and children at home, there is no relaxed atmosphere at all, and when the pressure is particularly high, he will take a day off to go to the Internet café to play games, buy a bunch of snacks and play for a day.
This is one of the values of an Internet café, providing a comfortable environment, a clean keyboard, scented air, and a computer that is powerful enough to provide some emotional support.
In this round of recovery, a large number of Internet cafes have been updated from social Internet cafes in the past to brand Internet cafes, which is also the reason for the significant increase in the number of Wanyu E-sports stores in 2024.
The so-called "social Internet cafes" are some traditional Internet cafes with simple decoration and no additional services. The brand Internet café is elegantly decorated, with a built-in water bar, which can be used for catering and milk tea drinks on site, and some high-end halls are also equipped with expensive external equipment areas.
A store manager told Southern Weekend that they have 56 processes every day, "such as refrigerator temperature checks and disinfection at 12 o'clock in the morning and at night, etc., all of which need to be fed back with data and photos.
The rise and fall of Internet cafes is also dependent on the esports industry. The most typical example is "Black Myth: Wukong", which will be released in August 2024, which has brought a wave of traffic to Internet cafes and has been hot for at least a month.
Nowadays, whether it is a first-tier city like Hangzhou, or a small city like Zhuzhou and Liling, NVIDIA's top 4080 and 4090 graphics cards have become standard. "The cost of a computer is at least fifteen thousand." Jiang Qiqi said.
This round of configuration craze actually emerged in 2017 with a game called "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds", which is characterized by eating configurations, "If anyone's configuration changes quickly, whose store business must be good." Jiang Qiqi recalled that the turnover of many stores directly doubled from 100,000 yuan to 300,000 yuan.
Esports games have very long life cycles, and the most popular game in Internet cafes today is still League of Legends, which accounts for "50%". In fact, League of Legends has been popular for more than a decade. Every year in major e-sports competitions, the results of the Chinese e-sports team will be directly fed back to the turnover of Internet cafes, "at least 10% increase".
Dong Rui also has an expectation for Internet cafes that a popular game will appear every three or five years, and once a popular game appears, the Internet café will usher in another round of opportunities, "It may be silent for several years in the middle, but it is worth waiting."
Wander decently
In the last year or two, some people have come and not set off again, and a group of homeless people have appeared in Internet cafes. The central figure is Zhang Tian.
Jiang Qiqi once blocked Zhang Tian, and he found that Zhang Tian was active in every store group, and his appearance was suspicious, like a competitor's investigator.
Mr. Zhang, 22, began moving into new internet cafes with his suitcase around two years ago, which usually offer free internet access a week or two before they open.
Originally, it was just a transition, but I didn't expect new Internet cafes to open more and more. When he was lucky, Zhang Tian had three or four alternatives at hand; And when you're unlucky, the Internet café will be located in a remote location. On the furthest time, he dragged his suitcase for six hours.
Zhang Tian told Southern Weekend: "We have a few core members, and more than a dozen peripheral members occasionally join. ”
Zhang Tian's long wandering life left mottled yellow spots on his white hoodie, and his long withered hair, which almost covered his eyes. He said in a show-off tone: "I have deeply experienced all Internet cafes in the west to Lin'an, Xiaoshan in the south, Xiasha in the east, and Liangzhu in the north." ”
Zhang Tian had a fairly stable job before, he recruited workers for the factory, "recruiting one person to earn 2,000 yuan". At the peak of his career, "I earned 30,000 yuan a month", when the cabin hospital was in urgent need of recruiting construction workers, and gave a high commission. After 2023, few people are hiring, and in March of that year, after the rental house expired, he moved into an Internet café.
His home is in Hangzhou, but he has a bad relationship with his parents, and his family still thinks he is still working outside. In the past, when he was recruiting, he recruited people through various WeChat groups, and now he uses these skills to find Internet cafes.
In order to get first-hand opening information, every three or four days, he will first conduct a round of searches on Dianping or Meituan to determine the information of the Internet café that will be opened. Through the phone number reserved above, after contacting the store manager, he joined the customer group, and the Internet café is still in trial operation, and he has already come.
Zhang Tian had heard of the "Sanhe Great God", but he didn't think he was such a person, "What I pursue is service". "Sanhe Dashen" refers to a group of young people living on the fringes of society near Shenzhen's "Sanhe Talent Market", living in Internet cafes and relying on odd jobs to make ends meet.
Compared with the desperate "Sanhe gods", he just made a more cost-effective choice. "Sanhe Dashen" is all in the "social Internet café", and he goes to some chain brands. The former is $1 per hour, and the latter is at least $6 per hour.
Zhang Tian also went to the "Social Internet Café" to collect wool, and on the third day, the boss issued an eviction order, "Hey, handsome guy, you've been playing for so long, go back to sleep." In contrast, chain brands will be more tolerant. Not only will he not rush people, but he will also send him drinks, encourage him to pull people for the store, and pull one person to send five yuan Internet fee.
Zhang Tian's wandering is more decent because of the upgrading of the industry, but in essence, his source of income still comes from the daily settlement. What makes him feel fortunate is that the Hangzhou concert has been extremely prosperous in the past two years, "there are large-scale concerts every week, and there are thousands of security guards, more than 200 yuan a day." It's his ideal job, he doesn't need to use his brain, and he doesn't deal with people.
He calculated that he spent no more than 1,000 yuan on food every month, and he could live a month by working as a security guard for four days. The only difficulty is that during the Spring Festival, there is no new Internet café opening during this time, and there is no concert, so he can only go home, "It's good to go home, you can make some New Year's money."
Jiang Qiqi has seen many such self-exiled people. In his opinion, boys have this experience, "There was a time when I didn't want to go to work, and I didn't have any self-motivation, but I couldn't be too empty, just in the Internet café." But he believes that they will eventually suddenly change at some point in the future.
Zhang Tian doesn't want to change yet, and he doesn't even worry that the days of wool gathering are coming to an end, and the experience of the past two years has made him full of confidence in the future.
• (At the request of the interviewee, Dong Rui and Zhang Tian are pseudonyms)
Southern Weekly reporter Luo Huanhuan
Editor-in-charge: Gu Ce