Consumption is the main engine that drives economic growth. The catering industry is closely related to the daily lives of the people and is an important area for promoting consumption, benefiting people's livelihood and stabilizing employment. Recently, at the seminar on "Give full play to the role of enterprises and help boost consumption" held by Xinhua News Agency's China Enterprise Development Research Center, the experts at the meeting pointed out that due to multiple factors, there are still many practical difficulties in boosting consumption in catering. Empowering catering consumption through digitalization is of great significance to promoting consumption quality and upgrading and better meeting people's high-quality life needs.

  The catering industry is an important driving force for consumption

  The experts at the meeting generally believed that the pace of upgrading residents' consumption from commodity consumption to service consumption has been further accelerated, and the catering industry has become an important driving force for consumption. From January to November 2024, the national catering revenue was 5016.9 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 5.7%; the total retail sales of consumer goods was 442.723 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3.5%, and the overall growth rate of the catering industry was higher than the growth rate of social retail.

  Since 2024, some restaurant companies have achieved significant revenue growth with their strong operational efficiency and innovation. The global number of stores of milk tea brand Bawang Tea Ji has exceeded 4,500; Xiaocaiyuan International Holdings Co., Ltd. and Gu Ming have successively passed the Hong Kong Stock Exchange hearing and listed.

  Takeaway innovation supports catering revenue

  In catering consumption, online takeaway services have produced significant radiation and diffusion effects in the entire digitalization process of the catering industry. By enriching catering consumption scenarios and increasing consumption periods, catering consumption demand will be created and the catering industry will be vigorously developed. Data released by the Ministry of Commerce shows that my country's online catering sales increased by 29.1% in 2023, and its proportion of total catering consumption further increased to 22.2%.

  The "2024 China Catering Industry Annual Report" shows that in 2023, my country's catering takeaway market size was about 1.2 trillion yuan, accounting for 22.6% of catering revenue. Nearly 50% of the surveyed companies said that their takeaway sales increased compared with 2022.

  "Take delivery has built an instant delivery system covering the whole country, which has greatly improved the operation efficiency of the entire industry and better met consumer needs." Experts at the meeting pointed out that the instant delivery system is not only the basis for the development of the takeaway business, but also provides spillover economic value for the development of the economy and society. Instant delivery is an improvement and supplement to my country's current circulation system, and solves the problems of spatial layout and supply structure in the process of urban development.

  Taking the catering industry as an example, the service radius of traditional small and medium-sized catering stores is generally about 500 meters. The average delivery distance of Meituan Takeout is 987 meters, nearly doubled. According to Meituan’s takeaway business data, the scale of takeaway in 2023 increased by about 600 billion yuan year-on-year compared with 2019, and the revenue of the catering market increased by 616.8 billion yuan during the same period, and the proportion of takeaway to the growth of the market exceeded 95%.

  Driven by many takeaway e-commerce companies, omni-channel retail has developed rapidly. Instant delivery categories have also expanded from early catering takeaways to fresh home delivery, supermarkets and retail, flower cakes, pharmaceutical delivery, clothing, shoes and hats, 3C electronics, beauty and other categories. The new retail format represented by Meituan Flash Sales combines large, medium and small local physical retail merchants in all categories of retail to help merchants conduct online operations through the forward warehouse model through digital means to meet the real-time consumption needs of local consumers for "30 minutes to get everything to home".

  Digitalization empowers catering consumption

  Digital consumption has profoundly reshaped residents' consumption behavior, and has improved consumers' shopping experience and quality of life with its convenience, diversity and high efficiency, showing the characteristics of vigorous development of innovative consumption models, continuous emergence of new consumption growth points, and accelerated rise of new consumer groups.

  Liu Yi, director of the Service Economic and Internet Development Research Office of the Institute of Finance and Economics Strategy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, pointed out that industry associations and platform companies are encouraged to provide guidance and consultation on digital transformation to help small and medium-sized merchants clarify their positioning and development direction; guide various e-commerce platforms to provide service merchants with more universal digital transformation tools, expand service consumption content, and increase service consumption space.

  The catering industry draws on the "C2M model" of the e-commerce retail industry (from consumers to producers) and the affordable takeaway products launched are developing rapidly. This type of product gathers demand at the front end and dilutes costs at the back end, thereby optimizing the supply chain and expanding scale effects to achieve "cost-performance ratio".

  Taking Meituan Pinhaofan as an example, this product not only attracted a large number of traditional street shops to be launched, but also attracted a large number of well-known chain brands to settle in. The study found that 90% of Pinhaofan merchants have increased sales by more than 30%, and the improvement in meal delivery efficiency has led to a decline in average costs, with an average drop of more than 20%.

  A relevant person in charge of Meituan said that Meituan Takeout is participating in the upstream construction of the catering supply chain, helping catering merchants continue to deepen their digital construction, explore multi-dimensional supply models, continuously improve supply and iterate products, improve the overall production efficiency of the catering industry, and improve supply chain efficiency.

  Experts at the meeting expressed that they hope that more and more companies will increase the supply of high-quality services by constantly innovating service content and forms, making service consumption a strong driving force for consumption and injecting continuous vitality into the consumer market. (Reporter Zeng Liangliang)

[Editor in charge: Wang Mengmeng]