China’s pursuit of new quality productive forces, which are characterized by innovation, digitalization and high-end technology, is injecting new momentum into the country’s catering industry. On a recent morning at the entrance/exit of Niujie subway station in Beijing, a pancake vending machine busily made and served jianbing – a kind of Chinese pancake. Passengers, passersby and local residents lined up to place orders using the machine’s screen and scanned the QR code to pay. After the payment, a pancake-making robot at the back of the vending machine automatically spread the pancake, added a fried egg, turned the pancake over, dabbed the sauce using a brush, and added the seasoning. Some three minutes later, the hot pancake was packed into a bag and delivered to the consumer. The entire process is automated. “The pancake tastes fine, almost like the handmade ones,” said a consumer. “But there are places where the sauce is not evenly spread.” By 11 am, the pancakes were all sold out and a staff member appeared on the scene to carry out maintenance work on the machine. “The pancake vending machine is still in trial operations, and the daily yield rate is limited. The pancake-making robot can analyze and learn from existing data after work every day. When the vending machine is officially put into full-fledged use, it should be capable of making 400 pancakes a day,” said the staff member.
Restaurants in the city are also applying cutting-edge technologies to increase efficiency and cut costs. For example, around noon on weekdays, Yummy Health, a restaurant that has digitalized most of its operations, located in the Galaxy Soho area of Beijing, employs a robot to stir-fry certain foods. Yummy Health mainly serves light meals, most of which are delivered to white-collar workers in the area. Chen Yun, its founder, said the robot is bringing real benefits. “The simplest quick dish can be cooked in about 90 seconds, while chicken curry, which is the most time-consuming dish that our restaurant prepares, now takes only five minutes. A stir-fry robot costs about CNY50,000, but if you recruit a chef, the cost will be nearly CNY100,000 per year. The robot is still far from reaching its full capacity,” Chen said. The robot has already replaced two cooks and one delivery-man. With only three staff members and two temporary workers, the restaurant is now capable of producing over 100 dishes every noon.
The beverage sector is also further integrating high-end technology and automated devices into its operations. During the 4th China International Consumer Products Expo held in Haikou, Hainan province, a wide range of smart tea making devices were on display. Chinese drink chain Heytea showcased a split-type intelligent tea machine capable of producing a bottle of new-style milk tea in three seconds. The device is Heytea’s latest effort to automate milk tea production. Other smart devices include intelligent scales, smart tea dispensers, automatic peeling machines, corers, lemon squeezers, dicers, and intelligent steaming and boiling machines. From raw material preparation and management to tea blending, the production efficiency has improved a great deal, said Heytea. To enable corporate workers to better coordinate with intelligent tea-making machines, tea beverage makers have even established professional teams, recruiting mechanical and electrical engineers to design and develop in-house smart devices. This has allayed concerns that new-age automation technology could increase unemployment.
According to a report published by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on April 16, in the first quarter of this year, total sales revenue of China’s catering industry totaled CNY1.34 trillion, up 10.8% year-on-year. Sales revenue of larger catering enterprises jumped 9.2% year-on-year to CNY355.1 billion. “In the first quarter, sales revenue of China’s catering industry accounted for 11.2% of the total retail sales of consumer goods. The growth rate of the industry outpaced that of the latter by 6.1 percentage points. Given the recovery of normal production and life, and supportive policies, the catering industry has been rapidly reviving, demonstrating strong resilience and great vitality,” said Yang Liu, Director of the China Cuisine Association. According to a report from the Association, with the further improvement of digital infrastructure, the trend of smart devices and appliances is ubiquitous, including in supply chains, corporate management, marketing and customer service. China’s digitalization-empowered service consumption is now entering the 2.0 phase, with technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality and augmented reality.
The total income of the industry reached CNY5.3 trillion last year, and the figure was estimated to surpass CNY6.2 trillion this year, and reach a size of CNY10 trillion in three years. During the May Day holiday from April 29 to May 3, the catering industry continued its growth. “While enterprises are placing emphasis on boosting consumption and innovating consumption scenarios, they would do well to pay attention to potential problems that may arise in areas like the safety of production, food quality, clear pricing and wastage,” Yang from the CCA said, as reported by the China Daily.
