December 6, "Beijing release" said that, from now on, into the super, commercial buildings and all kinds of public **** place, may not check the nucleic acid test negative proof, sweeping code to enter the can; into the Internet cafes, bars, chess and card rooms, KTV, scripts to kill, saunas and other confined places, as well as catering, indoor fitness, etc., must sweep and check the 48-hour nucleic acid test negative proof. Must sweep the code and check the 48-hour nucleic acid test negative proof.
Subsequently, a number of malls in Beijing, including the Chaoyang Hopscotch, Huaxi Live, Raffles, and Longhu Daxing Tianjie, announced that they would no longer check negative nucleic acid certificates, and that some of the malls would resume dine-in.
On the same day, China News Weekly visited the malls and found that many restaurants had opened their doors and even had long lines. One catering company said its employees were thrilled to hear the news of the resumption of dine-in, as it meant "having classes, earning money and having a head start".
A 40-minute line at a hot pot restaurant
Haidilao Xizhimen on the first day of the resumption of dine-in. Photo/Yuyuan
At 7 p.m. on Dec. 6, a long line formed again at the Xizhimen store of Haidilao after a half-month hiatus.
"2 people? You are the 150th table, it is estimated to wait for more than 40 minutes."
Mrs. Jia, who was waiting for a table, rushed in as soon as she got off work to clock her first meal at the dine-in. "Winter is the season for hot pot, and eating at the restaurant is more ceremonial and atmospheric."
More than consumers, caterers are several times happier. Chen Jian, manager of the Xizhimen store of Haijilao, told China Newsweek that everyone was very excited to hear the news of the resumption of dine-in, and their working condition was very positive, because it meant "having shifts, earning money, and having a head start".
According to him, the store closed three times off and on throughout November because of the epidemic. The first two times were 8-10 & 21-23, and the third time was from the 25th through yesterday. "The service industry is an emotional process, and since the dine-in closures, it's inevitable that people are a little anxious."
After being notified of the resumption of dine-in, Chen Jian organized his staff to thoroughly clean and disinfect the store, and even invited a professional extermination company to carry out a more comprehensive extermination. In addition, the store also took stock of its inventory, checked for leaks and made up for gaps, and stocked up in a timely manner to ensure an adequate supply.
Haidilao said, the company's employees in Beijing stores, the return to work, are in accordance with the requirements of the epidemic prevention one day a check, with 24 hours of nucleic acid negative certificate to the post. At present, the store employees have completed the resumption of work before the food safety training, examination; waiting for the return of employees, the company has also arranged online job skills training, ready to work.
Dec. 6, 2 p.m., ___ hot pot Hesheng Hui store is also grasping the various dine-in recovery work. The staff said, the store is close to noon to receive the notice of the opening of the canteen, followed by the kitchen staff immediately on duty, checking the preparation, cutting vegetables and washing vegetables and other work is carried out in an orderly manner; canteen area is also cleaned and disinfected one by one, scrubbing tables and chairs and other facade. At 4:00 p.m., the store ushered in the first table of dine-in guests, 5:30 p.m. when ushered in a small peak, the store at the same time seated more than a dozen tables of guests.
The above staff said that last night the store dine-in a **** received 72 tables of guests, about 160 people,___ milk tea sales of nearly 300 cups, the overall sales situation is basically restored, with the suspension of dine-in before the same. "Store employees are pretty excited, it's been more than half a month since we've been this close to serving consumers."
In the past few days, many places across the country have announced the resumption of restaurant dine-in.
November 29, Zhengzhou announced from 24:00 lifting mobility management, transferred to the normalization of epidemic prevention and control, superstores, food markets, catering and other places in an orderly manner open; November 30, Guangzhou, a number of districts have announced the lifting of the temporary control area, in addition to high-risk areas other than the gradual resumption of the dine-in area; December 5, Jinan City, Jiyang District, Pingyin County, Shanghe County, and other three districts issued a notice. All food service units within the jurisdiction resumed dine-in service in an orderly manner.
Being stimulated by the rebound of the catering industry, the recent catering stocks continued to rise market. the morning of December 7, sip feed up about 7% of the best performance, the bottom of the sea fish rose 4.6%, Helen Division rose about 3%.
Revenge spending will come back
Tang food is open one after another, so that many catering people see the light, but in the view of the industry Qin Wei, bottoming out is not equal to the return to normalcy, the immediate distance from the dining full-blooded state is still a gap. "The recovery of dine-in is like boiling water, after cooling down for so long, it is impossible to reboil overnight."
China News Weekly found during its visit that the recovery varies greatly between different locations, brands and formats.
Another hot pot restaurant in the same shopping mall as Haidilao Xizhimen remained empty during the evening rush; the downstairs Xicha store was also devoid of consumers, replaced by a crowd of take-out workers picking up food.
Huaxi Live in the West Fourth Ring Road was one of the first shopping malls to announce the resumption of dine-in on Dec. 6, but during the evening's peak, almost none of the restaurants were full of customers, and many had significantly more waiters than consumers.
Gui Street, Beijing's most prestigious food street. However, less than 20 percent of the restaurants have resumed dine-in, and even the prestigious Huda was only open for takeout that day.
Hu Da did not open for dine-in on the first day of the resumption of dine-in.
A businessman said that due to the hasty notification of the policy, the store's stock and staff were not ready to receive dine-in customers for the time being, but only take-out or packing.
An Shaoning, secretary-general of the Beijing Catering Industry Association, told China News Weekly that the recovery of dine-in at catering companies varies, depending on two factors, one of which is the preparation of stocks, and the other is the people, or the state of the staff.
Qin Wei analyzed to China News Weekly, in the state of rotation, the staff income is certainly not as high as before, and now close to the end of the year, many people have already applied for home in advance, and there are even employees directly mention the departure, want to change a city or industry development.
This Qin Wei is also very helpless, catering is facing a long time difficult to recruit, difficult to retain the plight of the staff at this juncture to leave, although it is understandable, but the enterprise will again be faced with the re-recruitment, re-training on the job, and many other pressures.
On the other hand, after the reopening of dine-in, the pressure on the operating costs of catering companies may further increase.
After the dine-in liberalization, the store's utilities and staff expenses will certainly be less, and many restaurant companies in order to restore customer flow, but also launched a variety of promotional activities. Behind these activities, are the enterprise hard earned real money, once the expectations are not met, profits are bound to fall again.
And fundamentally, the lack of customer confidence and willingness to consume is the biggest factor affecting the recovery of the restaurant industry.
Xue Hongyan, vice president of the Xingtu Financial Research Institute, pointed out that, in general, the decline in consumption caused by the disappearance of the consumption scene will recover with the recovery of the consumption scene, typical of such as catering consumption. As dine-in resumes, restaurant revenue will improve significantly, as will travel trips and other offline aggregated consumption scenarios. However, it will be difficult to return to the normal level of improvement, as the recovery of consumer confidence is difficult to achieve overnight.
Veteran chain management expert Wen Zhihong pointed out to China News Weekly that consumer confidence consists of two aspects, one of which is the confidence to dare to spend, as consumers are holding their purse strings tighter due to the uncertainty of future income expectations.
The other is the confidence to consume with confidence. The epidemic, which lasted for three years, created fear among many consumers, and it will take time to eliminate it. Even if the restaurant resumes dine-in, consumers will be less likely to visit the store for their own health reasons.
According to a survey conducted by the Jinan Social and Economic Survey Center in July this year, the persistence of the epidemic has led to changes in people's consumer attitudes, and consumption has become more conservative and cautious. Of the 181 units surveyed, 77.9% believe that since the city's resumption of dine-in, consumers' willingness to consume declined, the amount of consumption decreased, more than 40% of the number of restaurants dine-in decreased, accounting for 46.4%, of which 40%-60% of the reduction accounted for 34.5%.
Multiple factors are superimposed, counting on catering to appear vengeful consumption is almost impossible.
Restoration of catering requires a multi-pronged approach
Nearly 5 trillion yuan of economic output and 30 million people's employment, which is the catering industry in China's great value, its boom or bust is not only related to the growth of GDP, but also related to the livelihood of countless families.
Zhao Jingqiao, executive director of the Research Center for Service Economy and Catering Industry of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, pointed out that as a traditional service industry, the catering industry is labor-intensive, and it has a huge scale of employment, playing a big role in absorbing employment.
"At present, China's entire catering industry directly employs nearly 30 million people. It is also the main employment channel for low-income groups in society, rural labor force and laid-off workers and other people, so the catering industry is affected, the overall social stability will also have an impact. At the same time, we should also see that many catering enterprises are mainly small and micro enterprises, many of which are family husband and wife catering outlets, and their income will also have a huge impact on the stability of the whole family. So the stability of the catering industry plays an important role in the employment and livelihood of the whole society." Zhao Jingqiao explained.
Hua Xi Live dining area. Photo/Yuyuan photo
For now, the recurrence of the epidemic is still hanging over the catering industry's sword of Damocles, to make the flow of customers back to normal, restore vitality, still need to be multiple **** with efforts.
In this regard, Wen Zhihong suggested that the government can introduce measures to stimulate consumption, such as consumption coupons. From the practice of all over the world, the issuance of food and beverage consumption vouchers, can quickly pull the residents of food and beverage consumption willingness to stimulate the vitality of the main body of the food and beverage market.
Taking Beijing as an example, in July this year, Beijing for the city's consumers to issue "reunion good" catering vouchers, by the government and provide catering services platform enterprises **** with the funding, the launch of takeaway class, to the store class, the elderly and disabled class three kinds of consumption vouchers totaling 100 million yuan.
From the data, the issuance of consumption vouchers has stimulated the public's enthusiasm for consumption. In the first three quarters, Beijing realized catering revenue of 75.24 billion yuan, down 11.6 percent year-on-year, a decline of 4.8 percentage points narrower than in the first half of the year.
In terms of businesses, they also need to act proactively. Wen Zhihong said, dine-in recovery, takeaway still can not give up. Practice has proved that the dine-in + takeaway double home mode can significantly enhance the anti-risk ability of the restaurant enterprises.
The "14th Five-Year Plan" for the development of the digital economy pointed out that digital services are an important way to meet the people's needs for a better life. For catering companies, the digitization of channels can help the catering industry to further expand the transaction scene, and constantly break through the time and space limitations of catering consumption, to help the industry to expand the effective supply, and enhance the income of merchants.
Meituan Research Institute survey shows that 82.97% and 83.4% of the merchants surveyed said that the opening of the takeaway has helped them expand their service radius and increase their income.
In addition, the prevention and control of the epidemic should not be relaxed. The Beijing Catering Industry Association prompted catering enterprises to strictly implement good epidemic prevention and control measures for catering business units, resume dine-in in an orderly manner, and do a good job of preventing and controlling epidemics in the catering industry as well as guaranteeing safe production services.
Three feet of ice is not a day's cold, the catering industry back to blood is destined to be a long war. But even so, the catering people also think they must grit their teeth and persevere. "It doesn't matter how much we sell anymore, in order to feed our employees, keep the business alive and keep consumers from forgetting about us."
Reference:
How can caterers save themselves under the recurring epidemic? , FarmVision.com, 2022-07-12
By Yu Yuan