Think Tank View Xia Jiechang Li Luanghao
In recent years, with the development of the Internet and other digital technology penetration, new technologies, new models continue to emerge, the development of China's food and beverage industry from factor-driven to innovation-driven changes in the promotion of economic growth, optimize the quality of the industry, absorbing labor employment, to protect people's livelihoods and enhance the convenience of life, etc., played a more important role, the governments of various regions. In the industry supervision, innovation and integration and cultural heritage and other aspects have also achieved remarkable results, explored a rich Chinese characteristics of the catering industry high-quality development road.
The digital transformation of the catering industry has begun to show results
(a) The scale of the industry has continued to expand, supporting stable economic growth
Since the reform and opening up, China's catering industry has entered the trillion yuan mark in just 30 years, and continues to maintain high growth. In recent years, through digital penetration, the catering industry has even maintained a good momentum of rapid growth and the international advantage of China's second largest catering market in the world, and its contribution to the national economy has become increasingly prominent. On the one hand, digital technology reduces the time and space constraints of the service industry by creating new consumption scenarios and constructing online business channels, and the catering industry forms a virtuous cycle of online and offline development. On the other hand, digitalization has led to the application of intelligent robots, big data, and SaaS systems in the catering industry, which has improved the production and service efficiency of the catering industry, and effectively boosted the willingness of enterprises to invest in the catering industry. the scale of China's catering industry in 2021 was 46,895 billion yuan, an increase of 18.6% year-on-year. The proportion of online takeaway revenue in the national catering revenue has been accelerating, rising by 1.9, 4.1 and 4.5 percentage points in the past three years to reach 21.4% in 2021, indicating that more merchants are relying on the takeaway channel for their operations. As an online form, takeaway has "liberated" a large number of users from the "cooking at home" catering model, promoting the shift of catering activities from home production to social provision and providing net incremental growth for the catering industry, which not only brings convenience to consumers and expands the catering consumption radius, but also dilutes the catering consumption radius. Consumption radius, but also dilute the restaurant rent and other fixed costs, is conducive to small and micro-merchants entrepreneurship and expand the scale of total income.
(ii) The efficiency of the catering industry has been continuously optimized, promoting the high-quality development of the industry
The catering service platformization brought about by digitalization also effectively reduces information asymmetry, strengthens the openness and transparency of the quality of service, and incentivizes the merchants in the catering industry to take the initiative to improve their service level, promoting the high-quality development of the catering industry. After accessing the digital takeout platform, the spatial and temporal scope of operation of catering merchants has been expanded. With the convenient online ordering system and mature fulfillment and delivery system, the geographical scope of catering services breaks through the dine-in restrictions, and is able to avoid the core areas with high rents, and the takeout also extends the operating hours of the stores, which effectively adjusts the contradiction between the reception capacity and the dining crowd during the peak and trough periods of dine-in and makes a due contribution to the coordination of the prevention and control of epidemics and the development of the economic and social environment. The company has made a due contribution to the prevention and control of the epidemic and the economic and social development.
(C) absorb employment role is obvious, improve the level of livelihood protection
The digitization of the catering industry to create new jobs, new occupations, to the community to increase new employment opportunities, driven by small and micro-restaurant businesses constitute the active component of the takeaway platform. Based on Internet technology, the digitalization of the catering industry promotes the flow of talents and the matching of people and posts, realizes the full utilization of people, maximizes the role of human resources, adopts the flexible employment mode for low-frequency and non-core posts, provides practitioners with short-term and flexible employment positions such as "takeaway riders" and the corresponding source of income, and also boosts a large number of indirect employment in the upstream and downstream of the catering industry. It has also boosted a large number of indirect jobs in the upstream and downstream of the catering industry. Taking online delivery workers as an example, the number of riders (single riders) earning income through a platform will increase from 3,987,000 to 5,270,000 in 2019-2021, with an average annual growth of 645,000, accounting for about 5% of the country's new urban employment, which is higher than the average annual increase of more than 200,000 people's employment in the express delivery industry during the same period. The digitalization of the catering industry can also empower workers, using the advantages of big data and artificial intelligence to reduce the burden and loss of energy in the work of online marketing, ordering and cashiering, billing and invoicing, adding food and passing food, and scheduling, helping catering workers to create a more efficient and smarter working environment.
(D) inheritance and innovation of food culture, enhance cultural confidence in the tongue of the underlying
"People eat for heaven", the Chinese national food culture has a long history, extensive and profound, strong regional characteristics, heavy cultural deposits and huge market demand formed a good environment for the development of China's catering industry. With the increasing efforts of the state to protect traditional culture and innovation, a large number of old catering brands have actively carried out online orders and optimized the consumption experience of network users with the help of digital channels, so as to innovatively integrate the traditional Chinese food culture with the digital business model, and form the new competitiveness of traditional brands. The online and digitalization of the catering industry has also given rise to food lists that are more in line with Chinese taste buds, such as the "Dianping Must Eat List" and the "Black Pearl Restaurant Guide", and has promoted catering as an important way of spreading the excellent traditional Chinese culture and building Chinese national identity. These lists, combined with the massive consumer evaluation on online platforms and specialized Chinese food reviews, are conducive to adapting to the new situation of consumption upgrading, and are more conducive to the dissemination of the profound Chinese culinary culture, as well as to the overall enhancement of the city's attractiveness, affinity, creativity and competitiveness.
The transformation and development of the catering industry is faced with new and old contradictions superimposed on the predicament
At the same time that the new form of the catering industry is booming, there are also many development difficulties. 2020 since the outbreak of the new Crown Pneumonia epidemic, the catering industry has suffered a serious impact on the catering merchants dine-in traffic has decreased dramatically, and the industry's supply of the level of consumption has shown a significant decline in the digital level of the various segments of the gap between the upstream and downstream industry chain enterprises synergistic linkage obstacles. The gap in the digitalization level of each link has led to the obstruction of upstream and downstream industry chain enterprises' synergistic linkage. At present, the catering industry presents new contradictions and the superposition of the original predicament, resulting in the formation of constraints on the high-quality development of the catering industry.
(a) The high cost of the industry squeezes profit margins and increases the operating pressure on traders
The operating costs of the catering industry mainly include fixed costs such as labor, rent, utilities, and elastic costs such as raw materials, takeaway commissions, and platform fees. The higher operating costs, especially the fixed costs, have long been a source of operating pressure for food and beverage merchants. 2020, since the outbreak of the epidemic, the overall revenue growth rate of the food and beverage industry has been significantly lower than the rate of increase in costs, coupled with the lower elasticity of the fixed costs, such as rent, further squeezing the industry's profitability, which is less branded, the operation of the relatively traditional way of small and medium-sized merchants of the low service level of the impact of the more drastic.
(B) digital penetration level there are differences in the industry transformation potential but fierce competition
Currently, the catering industry digital penetration level in the upstream and downstream industry chain links and different volumes of catering subject to the existence of differences. On the one hand, the catering industry has a long supply chain and value chain, involving raw material production, sales, logistics, procurement to restaurant operations, marketing, distribution, information technology and other industries and production links, covering the agricultural and industrial industrial system in many areas. At present, the catering industry has a high degree of digitization of network marketing, online orders and takeaway delivery, but the penetration rate of other digital services is relatively low, resulting in merchants not completely free from the traditional business mindset, and it is difficult for the catering industry to scientifically and rationally formulate strategies or optimize the operation process through the analysis of data on purchases, inventories, orders, settlements and other data in order to increase the operating efficiency of merchants, which, to a certain extent, has constrained the high-quality development and comprehensive competitiveness of the catering industry in the digital era. High-quality development and comprehensive competitiveness in the digital era.
(3) The effective coverage and facilitation level of government incentives is low, affecting the business expectations of merchants
For a long time, governments around the world have been issuing corresponding policy documents to help the living services industry. 2020, since the outbreak of the epidemic, various departments have been frequently applying policies, and relief programs around the world have been intensively implemented. 2022, in February, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and other ministries and commissions issued a report on "Promoting the recovery and development of difficult industries in the service sector". Promote the restoration and development of a number of policies in the field of service industry difficult industry", put forward universal support relief measures, targeted support relief measures, precise implementation of the epidemic prevention and control measures in three aspects *** 43 relief measures, further accelerated for the catering industry, such as the service industry, the rhythm and pace of the relief of the market main body. However, the related policy release lacks a unified, widely known, convenient and fast platform or channel, the applicability and gold content of preferential policies is relatively low, part of the financial and tax support policy approval of the excessive preconditions, cumbersome procedures, the application of the time cost is too high, resulting in the catering industry merchants generally present business expectations are not high, the policy information is less familiar with the phenomenon of lesser beneficiary surface.
The digital economy empowers the high-quality development of the catering industry
Therefore, how to promote the catering industry to absorb the huge potential energy of digitalization in a more diversified way is the key to realize the catalytic catering industry merchants in the epidemic expected to turn good, and to promote the catering industry to recover in an orderly manner and the transformation and upgrading of the key.
(I) Strengthen the top-level design of the catering industry's digitalization, and create a good policy environment
The digitalization of the catering industry is conducive to promoting consumption, boosting employment and enhancing the efficiency of the industry. The government has issued guidelines and policy measures to promote the digitalization of the catering industry in response to the development problems and bottlenecks encountered by the catering industry. First, we should objectively explore and position the significance of catering digitization in promoting high-quality development, clarify the direction, focus and path of the digital transformation of the catering industry, and solve the problem of "not wanting to turn", "not daring to turn" and "not being able to turn" in the catering industry. "The second is to effectively improve the policy support system of the catering industry digitalization, the policy initiatives between various departments, central and local to form a linkage and **** vibration effect, to promote the digitalization of the catering industry in a coordinated manner, and to formulate a strong reach, high concessions, effective and convenient relief and assistance programs. Make full use of the platform's data and publicity functions to improve the accuracy and efficiency of the implementation of the policy, help more small and medium-sized micro-merchants to understand the details of the policy, promote the simplification of the policy preferential online reporting procedures, set up a digital complaint relief channels, to ensure that the relief policy is fast, efficient and accurate landing.
(2) give full play to the role of the catering industry digital platform, expanding the scale and scope of catering services consumption
To solve this problem, it is necessary to start from the following five aspects: First, improve the "Internet +" catering industry marketing ecosystem, the formation of catering industry online and offline integration and interaction, two-way prosperity of the The first is to improve the "Internet +" catering marketing ecosystem, forming the catering industry online and offline integration and interaction, two-way prosperity of the development of the situation, and further improve the business capacity of merchants and business income. The second is to make good use of the effect of the digital platform to promote service consumption through the issuance of e-coupons and other activities on the platform, so as to realize the precise docking of policies to promote consumption and effectively release the potential of emerging consumption. Third, through the Internet and other digital platforms, we will encourage catering merchants to develop services such as reservation system and no-touch service, so as to improve the technological and intelligent level of the industry, and to maintain the good development of the catering industry's online order and takeaway delivery business. Fourthly, using the data mining analysis and other functions of the digital platform to guide the development of the catering industry in terms of layered classification, promote differentiated competition in the catering industry, reduce the internal consumption of the industry caused by excessive homogeneous competition among merchants, strengthen the design and layout of medical rehabilitation catering, catering for the elderly and infants and toddlers, transportation catering, ethnic specialty catering, new retail catering and health catering, etc., and push the catering and takeaway industry to form a layered and classified differentiated competition pattern. Fifth, digital technology helps catering merchants visualize and automate service orders, service processes, service results, etc., effectively alleviating the trust barriers between supply and demand caused by information asymmetry, enhancing the efficiency of customer management in the catering industry, and improving consumers' trust and satisfaction in the catering industry.
(C) to promote the catering industry upstream and downstream chain digital synergies, improve the digital penetration rate of catering merchants
Digital catering industry involves a wide range of direct links to the supplier, platform, delivery personnel and consumers, the lack of one is indispensable. To this end, we need to focus on cracking the following three issues: First, pay attention to the digital transformation of the traditional catering industry, help catering segmentation of the full cultivation of the catering industry, and give full play to the catering industry's digital platform long-tail effect to meet the new needs of diversified social consumption. The second is to further improve the policy system to promote the development of the takeaway industry, give full play to the role of takeaway platforms in the upgrading and transformation of the catering industry, solve the problem of the digital divide among small and medium-sized merchants, and provide small and medium-sized merchants with supportive digital operations, intelligent meal delivery treasure, takeaway printers and other cost-effective products and services. In terms of hardware facilities, we will vigorously develop intelligent distribution facilities, support the development of unmanned vehicle delivery, drone delivery, takeaway cabinets and other intelligent delivery methods, develop more affordable digital products and services for small and medium-sized merchants, and accelerate the introduction of corresponding laws, regulations and standards to encourage catering enterprises to make good use of the private flow, build a digital system, enhance the "self-blood-forming" ability, and break the digital divide in catering operations. "The company will break the boundaries of catering operation and realize the value of data and digital industrialization. The third is to strengthen the upstream and downstream digital penetration of the catering industry, pay attention to the digital construction of the procurement side and decision-making side, based on big data analysis to predict changes in orders, reasonable distribution of dine-in and takeaway resources, promote the catering supply chain system upstream, downstream and upstream integration, enhance the catering industry digital wisdom decision-making and preventive against various types of risks, reduce the small and medium-sized catering enterprises hoarding and the risk of cash flow breaks.
(D) improve the catering industry digital development infrastructure, enhance the popularity of the digital system
"Digital new infrastructure" is the foundation of the catering industry digitalization, digital system and the promotion of the platform to promote the related policy landing efficiency, enhance the catering industry digital penetration. First, from the R & D side to improve the technical support guarantee, strengthen the forward-looking basic research and source technology supply, strong support for 5G, cloud computing, edge computing, big data, blockchain, artificial intelligence, SaaS software service platforms and other technology systems in the catering industry landing application, the formation of cloud-based low-cost digital solutions, effectively alleviate the barriers to enterprise transformation and upgrading. Second, through tax incentives, financial subsidies, government purchase of services and other means to guide and support platform enterprises to provide targeted, convenient to use, reasonable cost catering industry digital infrastructure, to increase the catering industry enterprises and merchants "on the cloud" support, to accelerate the digitalization of such as instant delivery systems and smart catering and other overall solutions to the ground. Third, accelerate the cultivation of digital talents in the catering industry, strengthen the digital empowerment of grass-roots community workers, improve the digital skills of catering industry employees, and enhance the efficiency of the utilization of the digital infrastructure and the ability of digital transformation of the entire industry.
(The authors' units are the Institute of Finance and Economics Strategy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the School of Applied Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences University)