Opponents believe that we are now in an era of consumption degradation, while centrists believe that we are experiencing an era of consumption upgrading and consumption degradation. They wondered: Did the consumption upgrade really happen?
The reporter learned that the formulation of consumption upgrading originated from a set of data, that is, the contribution of consumption demand to the overall GDP rose from 45% in 200 1-2008 to about 65% in 2009-20 16. This set of data shows that the status of consumption has risen. From then to now, it is consumption, not investment and export, that dominates China's economic growth.
From this point of view, consumption upgrading has indeed occurred, and the formulation of consumption downgrade is not unreasonable. It means that consumers are unwilling to pay for brand premium, and low-priced and high-quality products are more popular with consumers.
Chopsticks Playing Thinking (www.kwthink.cn) believes that this kind of consumption degradation itself is an upgrade, because what it does is to make profits for consumers and let them buy better products at the same price or even lower price, which is itself an improvement.
Therefore, this is an era of consumption upgrading, and catering is also experiencing consumption upgrading. For example, consumers began to pursue quality and health, attach importance to the consumption experience, cherish the value of time, and even the capital that did not favor catering originally entered the market.
The first manifestation of the upgrade of catering consumption: information is more transparent, and consumers have more autonomy in purchasing health, experience and cost performance.
Let's think about a problem first. As a consumer, how to judge whether a restaurant is worth a try? Generally speaking, there are two ways: 1), try and make mistakes by yourself; 2) Ask a friend. However, a person's time, energy and social circle are limited. Good products and new products in restaurants can't reach consumers well, and the information is asymmetric.
In the case of asymmetric information, the restaurant only needs to maintain the status quo, so the upgrading of the whole restaurant is relatively slow. With the rise of the Internet and the emergence of comment platforms, living communities and WeChat circle of friends, consumers can find good products more conveniently through the evaluation of others, and the interaction between consumers will force the restaurant reform.
Information becomes smooth, and catering becomes flowing water.
In addition, consumers' wallets are bulging and their spending power is enhanced. They have more autonomy, they can spend money to eat healthier and better quality, they can pay for the experience alone, and they can also eat an unexpected meal with the same money.
1), spend money on health
In the field of food consumption, the price of carbonated drinks has been around 3 yuan for a long time, while many new teas and juices have reached 15-30 yuan, but the sales volume of the latter has the fastest growth, while the former is declining rapidly. Among the fast food products of Taobao, the price of Funiutang beef powder is around 30 yuan, but it can also compete with many 5-6 yuan instant noodles.
Some catering brands specialize in providing high-quality fast food for white-collar workers, and the unit price is around 40 yuan. Although it is almost twice as expensive as ordinary fast food, online shopping malls can sell 14000- 15000 lunches every day, which shows consumers' pursuit of quality, and the popularity of salads and other light foods also confirms this.
2) Spend money on experience
Consumers are willing to pay for a better lifestyle, such as better food packaging, more comfortable and fashionable restaurant environment, and even queue up to buy some online celebrity food.
Chopsticks think that consumers consume not only food itself, but typical experience consumption, which is a kind of small happiness, to please themselves or to flaunt their identity in social circles.
3) Spend the same money on better products and better experiences.
A typical case is that the potential energy of China's "high-cold" MUJI declined, and the growth rate of its performance slowed down. It seems difficult to hide the trend of continuous price reduction. However, Netease YEATION's products, which share some supply chains with it, are more popular. With the slogan "10 yuan enjoys quality life", famous and excellent products have entered the market with annual sales of nearly 20 billion.
Grandma's house is a typical example of opening the market with low-priced and high-quality products. Consumers can not only taste delicious food with the same money, but also dine in such a fashionable environment as "gorgeous chandeliers, rattan wooden chairs, blue brick walls and decorative paintings". "Low price is not fall in price", and the overall experience greatly exceeds consumers' expectations.
Chopsticks play thinking believes that the core of this wave of consumption upgrading is the smooth flow of information, and the needs of consumers are more real. More high-quality products are beginning to appear, and some low-priced and high-quality products are also rising and developing. The next wave of consumption upgrading is to return to the source of catering, that is, to completely ensure the quality of food.
The second manifestation of the upgrading of catering consumption: consumers change from material consumption to "time consumption"
Luo Zhenyu of Luo Ji Thinking once said that there are two things in doing business now: one is to help users save time, and the other is to let users waste their time on beautiful things.
Everyone has only 24 hours a day, not more than one minute. And with the accelerated pace of people's lives, no one wants to waste time on worthless things. If you don't want to wait for the bus, you can call Didi, sprint in the last mile, and ride a bike. You can buy the same products online and offline, so why go offline? Therefore, online shopping and take-away are popular.
After 20 17, convenience shelves became the outlet, and this project cut into the field of "time consumption".
It's too far to go to the convenience store and online shopping is too slow, so convenient shelves are put in the office and elevator. From the first snack to the last snack, move the refrigerator directly to pack healthier foods such as yogurt and fruit. Some convenience shelf merchants also innovate in retail, combining several snacks into a snack bag to meet the needs of diversified customers and early adopters.
It is understood that the gross profit of this model product is 30%-40%, the monthly running water is at least 2000-3000 yuan, and the customer unit price is generally 4-5 yuan. This model meets the demand of white-collar workers for ready-to-eat snacks.
In recent years, the catering industry has seen smart cabinets, code scanning, self-help lunch machines, take-out and other ways to save customers' time.
Of course, customers have to waste their time on beautiful things, such as getting together with friends or family on weekends and relaxing in restaurants with suitable environment. The most typical ones are various theme restaurants, such as music restaurants and cat cafes. Merchants use the environment to create different cultural atmosphere, giving consumers a sense of immersion.
Chopsticks thinking holds that consumers' transition from material consumption to time consumption is a typical consumption upgrade. People used to make money with time, but now people use money to "buy time". Although they can't buy immortality, they can better control it in a limited time, which is the progress of the times.
The third manifestation of the upgrading of catering consumption: catering has never been exposed to capital, and capital has accelerated the expansion of catering.
In the troika of "investment, export and consumption" that promotes economic development, the consumer industry is least affected by economic fluctuations, while food is what people need, and catering is naturally less affected by economic fluctuations, so catering is a stable and sustainable industry.
But in the past, capital didn't like to invest in catering for the simple reason that what capital wanted was fast-growing and stable catering, but it might not make quick money for capital, and there were many problems in large-scale expansion.
For example, restaurants have high requirements for site selection. If they choose the wrong restaurant, they may become migrant workers in commercial real estate. Moreover, the financial norms of traditional catering are not clear, and the relationship between consumers is not clear. More importantly, its category and taste can be easily copied, and the conversion cost is very low. For example, if there are too many people in the target restaurant, consumers can immediately move to the store next door for consumption.
In addition, catering itself is a heavy asset model, and the threshold for large-scale expansion is high. Therefore, even if catering is just needed and cash flow is sufficient, it is impossible to gain the heart of capital.
However, with the penetration of the Internet into all walks of life and the arrival of the third wave of consumption upgrading, many changes have taken place in the catering industry. For example, electronic payment makes the financial revenue and expenditure of restaurants clear and transparent, SaaS system of catering can reduce costs and improve efficiency, and industrialized production replaces small workshops to make large-scale replication possible, all of which seem to imply that giant catering enterprises will be born in China.
So many capitals began to pay attention to catering, forming a wave of catering investment upsurge, such as hot pot take-away market in early years, new tea market and crayfish market in recent years, as well as take-away, new retail and supply chain markets.
Capital is not a prophet, some projects will fail, but there are also many catering projects that have developed well after catching the express train of capital.
Chopsticks thinking believes that compared with the traditional growth mode of making money to open a shop, opening a shop to earn money, and opening a shop after making money, the capital-boosted catering enterprises expand faster, which is an upgrade for the catering itself. Capital is beginning to spoil the situation, and the iteration of catering will be faster, and capital is promoting the upgrading of the entire catering industry.
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The consumption upgrade of catering is taking place. From the C side, consumers tend to pay for quality and health, and pay for self-satisfaction and good experience. From the B side, with the help of capital, catering enterprises can also realize good ideas and good models and tap more consumer demand.
Consumers' demand for food quality and health is actually not an upgrade in a strict sense, because this demand has always been there. Under the upsurge of consumption upgrading, if catering enterprises can build higher-standard food processing plants with the help of capital, realize the unification of standardization and taste, and thus realize the real upgrading of catering consumption, then the catering industry will run out of a number of giants.