Summary

With the growth of the economy and the improvement of people's living standard, F&B consumption becomes one of the major forces in the consumer goods market. In the past decade, with the rise of many new patterns of F&B business, tremendous changes have been observed in the Chinese catering market. As with continuous development and innovation, a more diversified catering market is taking shape.

As an essential element of commerce, catering is one of the most important business patterns in retail consultancy, planning and leasing. Therefore, in this report, we attempt to make a comprehensive study on the catering market so as to provide retail property practitioners some useful information on the existing status, major features and market trends of the catering industry, helping them conduct more appropriate positioning, more rational planning and more productive leasing services.

This report consists of five sections, which are:

Section A: A general introduction to the catering industry, including the definition, classification, general characteristics and market environment in which the catering industry is situated.

Section B: An in-depth analysis of the Chinese catering industry based on the informative statistics.

Section C: Analysis on the catering market of four major Chinese cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, and a brief introduction to major catering brands of local significance in these four big cities.

Section D: An in-depth analysis on the development features, brand mix, business development strategy and promotion scheme for some selected catering groups active and well-known in mainland China and Hong Kong.

Section E: The overall situation and market trends of the Chinese catering industry.

Based on this report, the major characteristics of the Chinese catering industry can be summarized as:

• The catering industry continues to expand and diversify.
• An apparent regional disparity for the catering industry can be observed, and the concentration rate for this industry is relatively low.
• Domestic catering enterprises have been improving rapidly in the course of market competition with foreign-invested enterprises.
• Franchised Stores develop rapidly, the earning power of which is getting closer to that of those Directly Operated Stores.
• Brand nurturing and scale development have been the major trends for catering business in China. “Better Quality” makes “Faster Expansion”.

—— Nov 2006