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21st Century Business Herald reporter He Hongyuan reports from Beijing

The growth pressure on the catering industry has clearly increased.

According to the data from the National Bureau of Statistics, in the first half of 2024, the catering industry's revenue was 2624.3 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7.9%. Among them, the growth rate of catering revenue above the limit was 5.6%. The growth rates of catering revenue in the first and second quarters of this year were 10.8% and 5.0% respectively, with a significant month-on-month decline.

Looking at key first-tier cities, the pressure on the catering industry is even greater.

According to data from the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics, in the first half of this year, the city's total retail sales of consumer goods amounted to 698.24 billion yuan, down 0.3% year-on-year, of which catering revenue was 63.71 billion yuan, down 3.5% year-on-year.

According to the Shanghai Statistics Bureau, in the first half of this year, the city's total retail sales of consumer goods reached 916.571 billion yuan, down 2.3% year-on-year. Among them, the accommodation and catering industry achieved retail sales of 72.511 billion yuan, down 3.6% year-on-year.

Looking back at the enterprises, we can also feel the pressure of growth.

Jiu Mao Jiu, the parent company of Tai Er Pickled Fish, announced that it expects revenue of 3.064 billion yuan in the first half of the year, a year-on-year increase of 6.4%; net profit is no less than 67 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of no more than 69.8%. Nayuki's Tea expects revenue of about 2.4 billion yuan to 2.7 billion yuan in the first half of the year, and an adjusted net loss of about 420 million yuan to 490 million yuan. In the same period of 2023, Nayuki's Tea's revenue was about 2.594 billion yuan, and its adjusted net profit was 70.2 million yuan.

The entire market is expecting more support.

New policy introduced

The good news is that relevant policies are on the way.

On July 30, the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held a meeting to analyze and study the current economic situation and deploy economic work in the second half of the year. From the perspective of policies in various fields, one of the most noteworthy statements is that "domestic demand should be expanded with a focus on boosting consumption, and the focus of economic policies should be shifted more to benefiting people's livelihood and promoting consumption."

It is worth noting that the July 2023 meeting stated that "giving play to the fundamental role of consumption in driving economic growth" and the December 2022 meeting stated that "giving priority to restoring and expanding consumption", but this meeting was the first in recent years to systematically focus on consumption issues from the perspective of residents.

In fact, the conference has already proposed directions for expanding domestic demand. Among them, service consumption has become an important tool for expanding and upgrading consumption. The conference mentioned that it would support service consumption such as cultural tourism, elderly care, childcare, and housekeeping.

Soon, relevant details were released.

On August 3, the State Council issued the "Opinions on Promoting the High-Quality Development of Service Consumption" (hereinafter referred to as the "Opinions"). The "Opinions" proposed to tap the potential of basic consumption such as catering and accommodation, domestic services, and elderly care, stimulate the vitality of improved consumption such as entertainment, tourism, sports, education and training, and residential services, cultivate and expand new types of consumption such as digital, green, and healthy, and require enhancing the momentum of service consumption, optimizing the service consumption environment, and strengthening policy guarantees.

The catering market is an important part of the "Opinions".

The Opinions mentioned that it is necessary to improve the quality of catering services, cultivate famous dishes, famous snacks, famous chefs, and famous restaurants. Localities are encouraged to inherit and carry forward traditional cooking skills and catering culture, cultivate characteristic snack industry clusters, and create "famous food towns" and "famous food villages". The "Chinese Food Festival" series of activities should be well organized, and localities should be supported to carry out characteristic catering consumption promotion activities. Internationally renowned catering brands are encouraged to open first stores and flagship stores in China.

In addition, the "Opinions" mentioned the need to strengthen policy guarantees and strengthen financial and taxation support for related industries.

Specifically, regions with conditions are encouraged to use existing funding channels and actively guide social investment to support the digital empowerment of life services, the cultivation of industrial clusters and agglomeration areas, the construction of public service platforms and standardization. Government financing guarantee institutions are encouraged to provide financing and credit enhancement support for qualified small and micro enterprises and individual industrial and commercial households in the service industry. Financial institutions are guided to optimize credit products and provide differentiated services. In accordance with the principles of controllable risks and commercial sustainability, credit support for key service consumption areas is increased, and the supply of financial products that meet the development needs of new consumption formats such as the sharing economy is increased.

This will directly help the financing of the catering industry.

Subsidies are coming

In fact, the most direct help for catering companies is subsidies.

For example, the Opinions mentioned that it supports localities to carry out special catering consumption promotion activities. One of the symbols of this activity is subsidies.

For example, Haikou recently issued the "Ten Measures to Promote the High-Quality Development of Haikou's Catering Industry", which clearly stated that catering companies should be supported to carry out consumption promotion activities, and enterprises that achieve a commercial retail sales growth of more than 10% during the activity period will be given a maximum of 500,000 yuan in financial support.

Guangxi also invested 180 million yuan in fiscal funds and leveraged 200 million yuan in social funds during the summer consumption season, launching more than 300 themed activities around summer entertainment and tourism, automobiles and home appliances, catering and food, and nighttime consumption.

On July 10, the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Commerce disclosed that Shanghai has formulated "Several Measures to Promote the High-Quality Development of the City's Catering Industry". It clearly stated that it supports the launch of catering consumption promotion activities. It supports the holding of catering consumption promotion activities such as the Shanghai Global Food Festival. During large-scale theme events such as the "May 5 Shopping Festival" and the "Shanghai Summer International Consumption Season", the organizers of the event who actively organize catering and food consumption promotion activities and have significant market results will be subject to the city's policy of promoting the linkage of business, travel, culture, sports and exhibitions to attract and expand consumption and will be supported.

In addition, the "Opinions" mentioned that internationally renowned catering brands are encouraged to open their first stores and flagship stores in China.

There are also many subsidy opportunities behind it.

Shanghai emphasizes that it supports catering companies to optimize their outlet layout. It supports well-known domestic and foreign catering companies to open their first brand stores in Shanghai, and provides a one-time reward for the first brand stores of national level and above opened in Shanghai since 2024. It supports catering companies to open new catering stores in public places such as graded scenic spots, public sports stadiums, performance venues, and transportation hubs, and provides a one-time reward for each store.

The 2024 wholesale, retail and catering enterprise support policy and the application guide for encouraging the development of commercial brand first store launch projects released by the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Commerce show that eligible wholesale enterprises, retail enterprises, and catering enterprises can receive up to 10 million yuan, 5 million yuan, and 2 million yuan in financial support, respectively.

At the beginning of this year, Guangzhou City issued "Several Measures to Encourage the Development of First-Store and First-Launch Economy in Guangzhou", providing support of up to 3 million yuan to qualified domestic and foreign brands.

Overall, with the release of the "Opinions", various regions are expected to introduce a series of policy "combination punches" in the future to promote the implementation of various tasks.

This brings certain opportunities for cash flow improvement to the catering industry. At present, leading brands are more likely to benefit.