Whether we analyze the catering industry from the macro or micro perspective of the economy, this industry that can feed hundreds of millions of people can always give people hope. According to the latest data analysis released by the Ministry of Commerce of China on March 29th, 2117, the per capita catering consumption expenditure in China is expected to reach 915 yuan in 2117, the catering market will continue to grow at a high speed of around 17%, and the annual retail sales are expected to reach 1.2 trillion yuan.
in fact, the development of this industry is not satisfactory. with the development of market economy and the continuous improvement of people's living standards, the development of catering industry seems to be not so smooth. Every day in the city, the newspaper advertisements about hotel rental and transfer never stop. Perhaps it is because of the shift of time, people's tastes are becoming more and more picky and their requirements are getting higher and higher, and the catering industry is becoming more and more difficult to do. So, where do the problems in the development of domestic catering industry come from?
when we take the international (large-scale) catering as the standard to evaluate the healthy growth of China catering enterprises and the development bottlenecks involved, domestic catering enterprises do have many shortcomings.
As for the development bottlenecks of China catering enterprises at present, due to different reasons of specific cases, the views of management and academic circles are also different. The views in the marketing industry are basically the same for several main reasons, such as capital chain and financial risk control, business philosophy, business model, management and cost control, brand building, marketing, human resources, etc. The ultimate embodiment of the bottleneck is the slowdown or decline of income, but it is different for each specific enterprise, and the reasons for the bottleneck are various.
first, the instability of the capital chain of private catering.
As if like Matthew effect, the development mode of domestic large-scale catering is more upscale and luxurious. However, behind the hasty listing, we also see that the flag has been changed in a hurry. Among them, the supply weakness of the capital chain is unexpected by investors, who always think that as long as the hotel opens for business, it will be rich.
The bottleneck faced by catering enterprises in China is inseparable from the development time and social environment of market economy in China. Most private catering enterprises started from small catering enterprises, and the source of their capital is mainly the accumulation of their own operations. The probability of obtaining social capital before the scale is formed is low, which leads to the instability of the capital background of enterprises.
combined with some reasons of their own ideology and understanding, some enterprises with development potential also don't know how to integrate capital or how to raise funds.
second, the shortcomings of management
the so-called small enterprises have the management methods of small enterprises, while large enterprises have the management methods of large enterprises. When the catering industry grows up, the management will inevitably change. The result of the change is not only the increase of management categories, but also the refined development of management in the depth direction, because the refined result is to reduce operating costs. On the whole, the standardization and modernization level of the internal management of the catering industry is still not high. The lack of personnel who specialize in research and development, enterprise management, marketing and variety research is mostly a slight adjustment after learning from others. As for whether it conforms to the business philosophy of the enterprise and the business philosophy and operation process of decision makers, it is unknown. Therefore, if management is imperfect, the benefits of operation will naturally not be good, and development will become a problem.
Because the development of catering industry in China started late, there is a considerable factual gap with the international advanced and management level, which is mostly reflected in the management skills and implementation level, such as: how to increase the cooperation efficiency of supply chain to reduce costs, how to effectively increase the efficiency of production process on the premise of quality assurance, how to reduce operating costs, how to increase customer satisfaction, how to effectively motivate employees, how to effectively carry out public relations and how to deal with public relations events, and so on.
in addition, most of the management experience of catering comes from the accumulation of management experience in the early stage of enterprise development, and the culture of enterprises is more boss culture, which will lead to the extension of the adjustment period of enterprises to the new environment and affect the market.
Similarly, the shortcomings of knowledge management and the "chef culture" in the catering industry also implicitly affect the life cycle of enterprises.
Most chefs in China have the idea of "saving one's hand", which is also a hidden rule of the industry. We often hear that the chef of a certain hotel has changed, and the taste of the food has changed.
Although the mass media call foreign fast food such as McDonald's and KFC junk food, its business is still booming. One of the reasons is that it satisfies consumers' fair consumption psychology, that is, the taste and measurement of food consumed every time are unchanged. And this is very difficult to do in Chinese restaurants. Different people do the same dish differently; If the quality of the food is getting better and better, if the consumption is slightly insufficient compared with the last time, consumers will feel that the service is not as good as before and will be treated badly. Although most of them don't say it, it is difficult to have the result of coming again next time.
The above phenomenon shows the lack of knowledge management in China catering industry. Because it's not that Chinese dishes with different patterns can't be as precise as western food, but that enterprises don't add it to the management thought and process, and don't quantify the chef's "feeling" of cooking, because communication with the chef alone can't get its true essence, and everything can only be put in the chef's mind.
Third, about brand building
Whether a catering enterprise pays attention to brand operation is not whether its investment is lavish or not, but whether the value of its investment will become the reason for consumers to spend circularly.
for the catering industry, the connotation of brand includes the most basic product features and quality, hardware environment facilities (such as decoration features, parking environment, sanitary conditions, etc.), service processes and service standards, and of course, its own market promotion. After all, popularity is an important manifestation of brand value.
As satisfied with the present situation of food and clothing, more enterprises would rather make their signboards big than do more detailed work of brand building. It seems that the financial process, supply and procurement are only their own business, but they don't know that the internal management process is also the support of the brand. Enterprises are often satisfied with product development and innovation, but they ignore the satisfaction of consumers.
Enterprises often have good development intentions, but due to the influence of irrational human environment in China, it is difficult to make the implementation a rational and solid process. For catering in service industry, it is some service details that often affect the establishment of customer loyalty. Usually, for small catering enterprises, we don't pay much attention to it. However, for strong and large restaurants, there will be big shops bullying customers, etc. The root cause of service dissatisfaction is the occurrence and accumulation in small places.
even some famous catering brands will have some service deficiencies. The author has done research on the service process of KFC and found that the hygiene of KFC is not impeccable. For example, the waiter also packages and delivers food to you and takes paper towels, etc. In this simple process, there is a hygiene detail that most people may forget, that is, the waiter not only takes the cashier, but also takes the paper towels used to wipe his mouth with his hands that are frequently in contact with money! The bacteria on money are well known to us!
iv. human resources
it is a fact that the turnover of people in the catering service industry is large.
The human resource ability of enterprises in China always appears in the form of an inverted pyramid, which is contrary to the idea that top talents in the catering industry in developed countries do first-line sales. For example, it is normal for foreign university graduates to work as waiters in restaurants, but at least the current social concept in China is not fully acceptable. People who have deep contact with customers in the front line of domestic catering are often people with low cultural knowledge and academic qualifications, and they are often the embodiment of enterprise rules and regulations and corporate cultural management concepts. This difference between quality and understanding will lead to the difference in implementation and increase the cost of enterprise and management training.
The low quality of catering employees is due to the problems in catering education in the whole society, which we haven't realized yet, or are indifferent when we are aware of, although we believe that with the development of market economy, more and more changes will be brought about in employment concepts.
The employment crisis in the catering industry is serious, especially the recruitment of grass-roots and front-line personnel is very difficult. Nowadays, with the improvement of education and culture in the whole society, people are yearning for good and respected jobs, and the catering service industry is just weak here, and it is not competitive enough to win talents, so it is difficult to recruit workers and the quality of the people recruited is not high.
This is the case with one of my clients who caters in a medium-sized city in the mainland. The boss told me that when the business is a little bad, I will panic psychologically. Why? Because it is difficult to recruit people, mainland people want to go to big cities in other places or big catering enterprises in the same city. For a restaurant that is medium-sized in the local area, it is afraid that employees will quit. However, this situation is in contradiction with the large number of unemployment and difficult employment in the mainland. Therefore, the author solved his worries only after making appropriate adjustments to his recruitment channels.
v. the lack of strategic vision
strategy is the maintenance of competitive advantage of enterprises, which determines the source of profits of enterprises. At present, most small and medium-sized catering enterprises have not refined their own competitive advantages, and they are still in the same place (scale, geographical location, service, etc.). Once they jump out, they will be acclimatized immediately, let alone how to continue to maintain their competitive advantages.
after many enterprises have developed to a certain extent, they still don't really have a clear strategic positioning suitable for their future development. Apart from the expansion of the existing model of capital-based replication, it is difficult to do anything else, that is, I don't know how far I can develop in the future and what kind of environment I will encounter in the future. Without considering the infiltration of foreign capital and the development trend of catering industry, it is not clear what to do next, that is, it has lost its strategy and can only be busy with routine business every day.
Especially the small and medium-sized catering enterprises in some areas are hard to resist the trend of "popularity". For example, in Hefei two years ago, when spicy crabs became popular, some restaurants immediately changed their house numbers to "XX spicy crabs". Later, when the sauce skeleton was popular, it was a uniform "XX sauce skeleton" store signboard and so on, which also reflected that these catering enterprises did not know how to deal with the market contradiction between enterprise positioning and short-term popularity.
VI. Business Model
When someone asked the president of Wal-Mart in the United States, the world's largest retail chain supermarket, how he came up with the idea of being a chain supermarket, his answer at least shocked all China people: he was inspired by opening a branch in Tongrentang drugstore in China. However, now students have far surpassed teachers, because students have learned the way of business and found a suitable business model.
the catering industry's * * * same wish is to be big, but how to be big? Now the domestic catering industry has a * * * nature, that is, when the development momentum of the first store is slightly improved, it will immediately develop a chain or even join. This reflects a question, that is, in what mode do enterprises become stronger and bigger? It seems that the development of franchise chain is an inevitable trend. At present, modern management methods such as chain operation, network marketing, centralized procurement and unified distribution in the domestic catering industry are being effectively used in the catering industry. Chain operation has the advantages of cost, price, service and brand, and has strong competitiveness, which should also be the main development direction of China's catering business model.
but it is not easy to achieve a business model that is suitable for your own control.
I have experienced a case. A domestic catering enterprise that has opened nearly 111 chain stores, with the continuous growth of the enterprise, the president of the enterprise decided not to use the existing branch to operate independently and take the road of modern company management; Just after the two stores were transformed into companies, they fell into great confusion because of the working mode of financial management. Because the management of corporate system has more standardized requirements for its financial process and supply chain process.
in addition, for large-scale Chinese hotels, it is more prudent to develop the chain business model. The fast-growing chain restaurants we see in the market are nothing more than small and medium-sized shops similar to western food and easy to copy product standards, such as all kinds of hot pot restaurants, etc., and it is also the reason why the product characteristics and management of large Chinese restaurants are difficult to form cultural scale effect. In addition, the essence of the head office of a large Chinese restaurant is the research and development base of management and product service process. Only when the head office is strong, the brand will be valuable and it will be possible to develop a chain.
to sum up, if catering enterprises want to get out of their own development bottlenecks, they should look at the problems rationally from the perspective of market economy. The environment has changed, and time has shifted people. Only when enterprises keep pace with the times and take the market seriously is the foundation of steady development.