The domestic catering market recovers, and the company's "changes change" strive to open up new growth points

"After restoring the eating, everyone's consumer demand should gradually increase, and we have prepared in advance." After the communication meeting with upstream and downstream companies, Wang Jingbo told First Financial reporter. His company is the Shuhai supply chain company (hereinafter referred to as "Shuhai"), mainly providing one -stop ingredients processing and supply services for chain catering groups and group meal companies.

During the epidemic, many catering companies were restricted, and the order volume of Shuhai was also affected. Today, with the recovery of the food food, the business of catering companies has returned to normal, and there are more people who come to Wang Jingbo to ask for the supply of ingredients and warehousing services. However, he said that the consumption confidence of the current population needs to be recovered for a certain time. At this stage, the consumption of the store has not yet reached expectations. "From the perspective of our company's order status, some of the more needed brands, the order volume has returned to about 70 %; some large catering companies are basically around 56 %."

Although it has not been "full of blood", Wang Jingbo, who has been engaged in the catering industry for more than ten years, believes that the overall restaurant industry is still in the trend. After all, the total consumption base is large and the prospect is promising.

In order to promote the acceleration of the restoration of the catering industry, in June, the Ministry of Commerce, together with 11 departments including the National Development and Reform Commission, jointly issued the "Notice on Promoting the Implementation of the Implementation of the Return of the Catering Industry to Promote the Return to the Development of the Catering Industry". Social insurance help enterprises' rescue policies, broaden corporate financing channels, enhance financing guarantee credit increase functions, play a good role in commercial insurance support, and support the consumption of elderly food assistance. Essence In this context, financial institutions are also actively acting to increase the funding support for enterprises through innovative models such as supply chain finance.

The order volume has been restored

As a head company in the field of catering ingredients, there are thousands of customers in Shuhai, covering catering companies such as Haidilao, 7-ELEVEN, Jiu Mao Jiu, Jin Dingxuan, New White Deer, snacks, etc. The situation has a more intuitive and comprehensive feeling.

"During the epidemic, some companies have been affected by a lot, and the order volume has declined significantly." Wang Jingbo told reporters that until early June, some takeaway recovered, and the order volume also increased, but it was not much compared to before.

For most catering companies, the proportion of takeaway business accounts for about 10%. The key is to eat good operations, and the key is to eat. "If you can't eat it, it can actually be understood that it is not open." Now that the epidemic has improved, the food has been released for many days, which will help catering companies to recover.

In order to help enterprises restore their operations smoothly, Shuhai has made emergency plans in advance to focus on meeting the rigid needs of downstream customers. For example, the proportion of some products with a higher degree of standardization and can reduce the operation of catering stores, especially the relatively long shelf life, to ensure that the catering industry can quickly increase income without increasing the burden on store employees.

"At the end of June, we learned that many customers' offline stores have been restored." Wang Jingbo said that Shu Hai also made a lot of preparations for this, take stock of inventory first, and then for some orders or menus for special needs, then Actively confirm with customers to prepare in advance. These ingredients include but not limited to pork, beef, poultry and vegetables.

From the perspective of order, many catering companies have recovered. "The recovery of enterprises in different categories is also different. For example, hot pot and barbecue will be higher, and Chinese food will be lower; the small store may be higher, and the store may be lower." Wang Jingbo said.

At the same time, in order to rush back to performance, some catering companies are also actively seeking changes. For them, it is currently reaching the stage of "encountering change", and they need to think about expanding new models.

In this context, catering retail sales emerge from time to time. There are more and more catering companies that break the inherent offline model boundary, and expand the service scenarios through retail expansion to enhance their risk of "opening uncertainty". Essence

"For example, due to the normalization of the epidemic and the changes in user habits and needs, if the food and beverage companies have only allex and takeaway, the utilization rate of the store is too low. It may only be two hours at noon and three hours in the evening. In fact, it is a very large waste. "Wang Jingbo further explained to reporters that under the" retail "model, offline stores can be transformed into a experience scene of catering brands. Catering companies can launch afternoon tea, supper or signature dishes, etc. Various retail products, promoted to brand fans, increased their revenue through operating brands throughout the period, and also opened up marketing channels.

Recently, the report issued by the First Financial Business Data Center and the Customer Development Department of Alibaba Group also shows that today's catering industry has passed the period of rapid expansion and entered the 3.0 era based on retail products and user operations to break through the time and space radius of catering stores. At present, catering retail has entered a window period for development.

In fact, regardless of the store, takeaway, or retail, it is a different consumer scenarios serving users. The chemical reactions between different scenarios may appear online and offline drainage, bringing greater benefits to dining companies. In Wang Jingbo's view, retailing will become the norm in the future. With the gradual rise in catering rental and labor costs, only by making full use of employees and making full use of scenarios can the company's revenue capacity be gradually improved.

Cash flow is the main problem

Although catering companies are actively seeking changes, a realistic problem currently faces is insufficient cash flow. Compared with other industries, cash flow is particularly important for the catering industry of light assets. Rental, labor, property expenses, purchases ... are all places to spend money. Wang Jingbo said that some large core companies were relatively small due to the epidemic, but the situation of many small and medium -sized micro -catering companies was more difficult. At this stage, cash flow was a big problem. "If you can survive this point, survive, and then with the recovery of market confidence, it may even usher in a chance of high growth."

But some restaurants may fall before the moment of "dawn". "There is a catering company in Pudong. The owner planned to close the door to his hometown in early July because the cash flow could not be supported. Although the rent was reduced at that time, the property fee was still relatively high, and the purchase expenditure of ingredients, etc. More. "A senior practitioner in the catering industry told reporters.

Mr. Wu, the person in charge of the downstream catering company responsible for the supply of Shuhai, also worried about the funding issue at the beginning of the restoration. "At that time, the company had made the preparations for the opening of the food halls in accordance with the government's requirements, but only in the past few months, the funds were very tense." He said that there is an expected wave of consumption climax after restoring the eating hall. The ingredients must be fully reserved.

In order to solve the funding problem of catering companies, many financial institutions have also paid attention to this group. For example, Bank of Shanghai through the bank's self -operated supply chain platform "uplink E chain", jointly designed and created an online supply chain integrated cooperation plan to provide financial support for its upstream and downstream companies.

In this plan, Shuhai, as a core enterprise, extend the settlement cycle of upstream suppliers and catering customers, and the bank provides online and downstream enterprises with online supply chain service platforms and financial support. Cooperative food companies can complete business operations such as online account opening, online signing, information submission, financing application, online withdrawal, and other business operations. The average time for the loan process will only take 3 hours, while shortening the supplier's repayment cycle, while the supplier's repayment cycle is shortened. In disguise, the cash flow of downstream catering customers has been lived in the cash flow of the downstream catering customers, and the online service is used to serve to achieve a win -win situation.

"This model is very convenient, unlike the traditional loan requires cumbersome procedures," Wang Jingbo said.

As of now, Bank of Shanghai provided a total of more than 200 million yuan for Shuhai in 2022, serving about 30 small and medium -sized customers. In order to benefit more enterprises, Zheng Han, the person in charge of the Financial Division of Bank of Shanghai's inclusive Finance Division, told First Financial that the bank is currently creating the "pan -core supply chain" service. Enterprises' order volume, performance, and related data of information flow and logistics, as the main support basis for serving the credit of small and medium -sized enterprises.

Different from traditional supply chain finance, this model no longer requires core companies to guarantee or introduce third -party guarantee companies, but more rely on orders such as orders and information flow to judge. Enterprises provide convenience. In Zheng Han's view, compared with the traditional supply chain financial service model that rely on core companies to guarantee the guarantee, the "pan -core supply chain" is still a blue ocean, and it focuses on the downstream customers. battlefield.

From the bailout policy of the ministries and commissions to the financial support of financial institutions, it has given catering companies more confidence. Wang Jingbo believes that there is still much room for development in the domestic catering industry. "At the end of 2019, the entire catering consumption has exceeded 4 trillion yuan. Later, the epidemic declined, and by 2021, it returned to more than 4 trillion yuan. It's. "

Data show that in 2021, the scale of my country's catering market reached 4.7 trillion yuan, and direct practitioners in the domestic catering industry were about 20 million. Affected by the epidemic, the revenue of the catering industry has declined significantly since 2022. According to the latest data of the National Bureau of Statistics, in the first half of this year, catering revenue was 2004 billion yuan, accounting for 9.52%of the total retail sales of social consumer goods, a year -on -year decrease of 7.7%. In June, as the restoration of the catering industry entered a new stage, catering revenue was 376.6 billion yuan, a year -on -year decrease of 4.0%, and the decline has narrowed.

Chen Wen, a large consumer analyst of Wanlian Securities, also believes that due to the new crown epidemic, the market size of the Chinese catering market in 2020 has shrunk to 3.95 trillion yuan. The scale of China's catering market is expected to exceed 6 trillion yuan in 2025, with an average annual growth rate of 9.1%from 2020 to 2025.

"The overall catering industry is a trend of going up, but the consumption confidence of the crowd will take a period of time to recover." Wang Jingbo said, "As the epidemic prevention and control is orderly, we have confidence in the catering industry to recover and gradually reach normal growth status."

(Intern Bao Yunhong also contributed to this article)

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