The New Year is coming, and the streets and alleys are full of New Year's flavor. Hotels and restaurants in many places across the country are bustling and lively, and catering consumption is ushering in a peak.
Today, all the private rooms and halls of the 8 stores were full, and some of the private rooms during dinner were turned over 3 times. On Chinese New Year's Eve, Li Weiyi, brand marketing director of Beijing Sishi Tongtang Restaurant, told reporters that the Chinese New Year's Eve meal is a hot spot for consumption during the Spring Festival, and in order to fully reflect the festive atmosphere, the store has done its homework at the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner serving ceremony. For example, the auspicious gong and drum roast duck that must be ordered at each table not only has a gong beating ceremony when serving, but also the chef of the duck has moved the duck table to the Beijing rhyme drum, which is full of Beijing flavor and is welcomed by consumers.
In Chengdu, Sichuan, hot pot is an indispensable choice for many people's Chinese New Year's Eve meals. Li Xiaoxiao, the founder of Chengdu Roaring Old Hot Pot, told reporters: "In order to reduce the waiting time of customers, we have made corresponding changes to the layout of the store, and the landscape area has increased dining tables and chairs, and the business hours have been extended to about 3 o'clock in the morning. "As one of Chengdu's food landmarks, the store has made careful preparations in terms of scenes and ingredients, and it is expected that the reception volume will reach a new high during the Spring Festival holiday this year.
The small peak of catering consumption on Chinese New Year's Eve is just a microcosm of the rapid recovery of the industry. In 2023, as the social economy continues to pick up, consumption promotion activities such as "cultural tourism + food", night economy, and "exhibition + food" will continue to make efforts to promote the further recovery of confidence in the development of the catering industry. According to the data, in 2023, the national catering revenue will exceed 5 trillion yuan for the first time, an increase of 204%。
Li Jiwei, vice president of Meituan Research Institute, believes that in the past year, under the general trend of overall consumption recovery, residents' enthusiasm for catering consumption has taken the lead in recovering and continues to rise. Driven by a series of consumption promotion activities from ** to localities, the potential of holiday consumption has been released intensively, pushing up the total annual catering consumption. For example, in the summer of 2023, the contribution rate of foreign tourists' dine-in consumption to dine-in consumption is nearly a quarter, which is a significant increase from the same period last year. The majority of merchants are also actively adapting to new changes, increasing production investment, accelerating digital transformation, and expanding services through online ordering and takeaway delivery, which has rapidly improved the level of market supply.
The vitality of the catering consumer market has been fully released, and various new scenarios and new formats have also been "renovated". On Chinese New Year's Eve, the Haidilao Licang Wanda store in Qingdao, Shandong Province was busy. Store manager Zhao Shuai told reporters that as the first seafood workshop in Haidilao in the country, special seafood is the biggest feature to attract customers, and the store will also have more than 20 kinds of fresh seafood such as clams, Jiwei shrimp and Boston lobster on the basis of Haidilao hot pot dishes. In response to the traditional way of eating "steamed seafood" that some customers are more accustomed to, the store also has a steamer and mustard sauce to meet the different dining needs of customers.
According to the relevant person in charge of Haidilao, the seafood workshop is also an innovative attempt to combine the needs of local consumers. Starting from 2023, Haidilao will encourage stores in different regions to gain in-depth insight into the market, grasp consumer needs, and carry out personalized innovation through a variety of measures. In the future, Haidilao will continue to launch different types of special theme stores to meet the diversified needs of customers to the greatest extent.
The Spring Festival is the traditional peak season for consumption. With the change of consumers' lifestyles and needs, many catering companies have launched special services such as dine-in reservations, home delivery, and in-store pick-up to attract consumers with rich product forms.
Li Jiwei said that with the continuous improvement of the consumption level of Chinese residents, the future of catering consumption will show a new trend, and the digitalization of catering will be further promoted. At the same time, the catering consumption space will be more concentrated, and the consumption agglomeration areas represented by shopping malls, neighborhoods and markets in the city are about to emerge; The county-level catering consumption space will also be further expanded, and the degree of online and offline integration will be deepened, which is expected to become a new growth pole for catering consumption; The multi-format linkage effect will become more obvious, and a large number of "catering +" cross-format linkage scenarios will emerge, effectively increasing consumption popularity. In addition, changes in consumption habits will lead to changes in the structure of catering consumption, and "one-person food", "healthy meals" and "meals for the elderly" are expected to usher in rapid growth. (Economic ** reporter Ji Leilei).