The people regard food as their heaven. With the in-depth advancement of supply-side structural reforms, the market size of the catering industry continued to expand in 2018. At the same time, Internet information technology has provided solid technical support for the intelligentization of the catering industry. More and more catering companies are using new technologies, new technologies and new concepts to start to touch the business model of full coverage of takeout, delivery and packaging brands. It not only brings greater business opportunities for catering companies, but also brings different catering consumption experiences for consumers.

　　As the economy develops and people's living standards continue to improve, and the trend of consumption upgrades is further strengthened, what new opportunities and challenges are facing the development of the catering industry in 2019?
　　
　　The market scale continues to expand
　　
"The catering industry seems to have a low threshold, but it is not that difficult to do it. It involves supply chain, dish research and development, quality control, service training, etc., not only must persevere in fine management, but also timely adapt to the trend of mass catering consumption. The change.” Pu Xiaohua, general manager of a healthy lifestyle restaurant in Sichuan, said with emotion. Pu Xiaohua started as a waiter in the catering department of a star hotel, and has been a buyer, foreman, and catering manager. In the end, he chose to resign and set up his own restaurant.
　　
　　 As the national economy is operating steadily and improving, the catering industry has entered a stage of stable development. According to the statistics of the China Cuisine Association, in 2017, the market size of my country's catering industry reached 3,964.44 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 10.7%, which was 0.5% faster than the growth rate of total social retail sales in the same period. It is expected that the annual growth rate of the catering industry in 2018 will remain at about 10%, and the overall scale will reach 4.3 trillion yuan.
　　
　　 At the same time, the number of employees in the catering industry continues to rise. The "2018 China Catering Industry Development Report White Paper" recently published by the China Cuisine Association shows that as of 2017, my country's catering industry service outlets have grown from 120,000 in 1978 to 4.654 million in 2017, involving more than 8 million stores. .
　　
　　 In addition, the vocational education of catering and culinary art inheritance and management has also developed rapidly. According to the results of the filing of higher vocational education majors of the Ministry of Education, in 2013, there were 85 colleges and universities in the country that opened culinary technology and nutrition; from 2016, the professional name was changed to cooking technology and nutrition, and 121 colleges and universities were opened, in 2018 The number increased to 176, a sharp increase of 107.1% from 2013.
　　
"Every year we select outstanding'seeds' among our employees, carry out three-level skill inheritance classes, replace the traditional mentoring model with'collective apprenticeship, collective apprenticeship', and strengthen the comprehensive inheritance of traditional dishes, brand culture and professional ethics." Jia Feiyue, general manager of Beijing Huatian Catering Group, said that catering companies should provide employees with a broad space for development, so that ordinary employees can see the hope of rising.
　　
　　 New catering quietly rises
　　
　　 Every holiday, the catering market will usher in a peak of consumption, and this year’s New Year’s Day holiday is no exception. At noon on January 1, 2019, there was a long queue in front of the cashier counter in the seafood processing area of ​​the Beijing Fangzhuang Store, and the dining area was full.
　　
Ms. Zhang, who was dining, told reporters that her parents came to Beijing from their hometown of Guangxi to visit relatives on New Year’s Day. It's complete, and you can buy something for your parents to take back after you eat it.
　　
　　 Nowadays, "supermarket + catering" has almost become the standard configuration of new retail format innovation, which can meet consumers' catering and shopping needs in one stop. But every holiday, due to the large passenger flow, consumers often have to wait in line to eat.
　　
Meng Qinggang, the manager of the Beijing Fangzhuang Store of Little Elephant, introduced that in order to meet the diversified needs of consumers for dining, Little Elephant has launched a series of semi-finished products of "Xiang Chef’s Quick Hand Dishes", no washing, no cutting, no seasoning, fastest You can eat restaurant-level food in 8 minutes. In addition to dine-in and semi-finished dishes, Xiaoxiang Fresh also provides a free delivery service within 3 kilometers. It only takes 30 minutes from ordering to receiving, to maximize consumer demand.
　　
　　It can be said that the catering industry has developed to a stage of diversified operations and diversified income. With the help of the Internet and big data to improve operational efficiency and marketing conversion rates, catering companies have begun to show the attributes of "full retail", that is, multi-core driven by "dining-in + take-out + delivery + circulating food", exploring new profitability through new technologies and new tools model.
　　
Huang Li, the founder of Wedome, believes that the new generation of consumer shopping channels has changed, from traditional in-store consumption, to O2O ordering, and B2C platform services, with more and more diverse forms. "If you stick to offline physical stores, customers will become more The less come".
　　
"Online catering is the general trend, and it continues to deepen." said Bai Xiufeng, Dean of Meituan School of Catering. Invoices, etc., all meals are completed online.
　　
　　Smart technology gradually penetrates
　　
　　 With the gradual deepening of the application of information technology in the catering industry, with the help of the development of the mobile Internet, food delivery has become the third conventional dining mode for consumers besides “cooking by themselves” and “dining out”.

　　The data shows that the scale of the online food delivery market exceeded 300 billion yuan in 2017, which is an increase of 13.6 times compared with 20.37 billion yuan in 2011. Takeaway residential area orders accounted for 50% of the transaction volume. From this perspective, takeaway instead of dine-in instead of home cooking.
　　
Nowadays, from food group buying, takeout, delivery, to the use of high-tech instead of labor, including intelligent systems instead of orderers and cashiers, including welcoming robots, service robots, smart cooking machines, facial payment, and even unmanned restaurants , Technological innovation is leading the development of the catering industry.
　　
　　 Following KFC and Dicos, smart restaurants of many catering companies have appeared one after another in 2018. The long-established brand Wufangzhai teamed up with Ali Koubei App to create its first "unmanned smart restaurant" in Hangzhou; Zhou Heiya and WeChat jointly created a "smart store" in Shenzhen, where you can enter the door with a face and pay likes; Alibaba and Weiduomei jointly created The "Unmanned Smart Bakery" was unveiled in Beijing, where customers can place orders and pick up goods 24 hours a day; JD.com's first "Future Restaurant" was unveiled in Tianjin, providing robot services and dish production. Jiang Junxian, president of the China Culinary Association, said that it is expected that in the next three to five years, smart technology will penetrate the catering industry on a large scale, thereby affecting the entire catering industry.
　　
"The future development of the catering industry can be summarized as the three major trends of online and offline integration, supply chain vertical integration, and catering retail." Modernization, digitization, and technology. In the future, restaurants can turn every customer into a user and every user into a member. The store manager can use big data to understand every customer and provide a wide range of services. This is the catering industry. An innovation that is bound to face.
　　
　　 At present, the diversification, personalization and segmentation of the Chinese catering industry have become more diversified. Jiang Junxian believes that in the future, the trend of consumption upgrading will be further strengthened. Catering companies must actively adjust the structure of business formats, in-depth exploration of differentiated services, innovate business formats, avoid homogeneity of business formats, and further intensively cultivate in the aspects of personalization, intelligence, and experience.