Annual seafood peak season is coming. Seafood market once again showed it extraordinary popularity. Hailunge, one seafood buffet restaurant in Beijing, would open a new branch in Beijing and increase its seafood proportion in its menu. And we noted that Hailunge was not the only catering enterprise which showed its favor to seafood. With its fair price towards mass consumers, seafood heated up the whole market, but the supply chain was still the key factor hauling the market development.
Catering enterprises show its favor to fair price seafood
Haolunge’s sefood category became richer than that of three months before. According to its COO, Haolunge would adjust its product structure and bring in more seafood species in its new branch.
Actually, there is a large number of catering companies who shift to seafood product. Apart from the seafood buffet restaurants, Wangshunge, Jindingxuan and other enterprises all have their own branches which exclusively operate seafood products.
Flat high-end seafood market heated up the fair price market
In many consumers’ mind, seafood belongs to the field of high-end consumption, and many restaurants regard the high price as their symbol of high-end restaurants. But after eight-point code, a series of regulations to restrain government extravagance, was pushed forward by central government, high-end catering market dropped into depression. The farmers and distributors who once benefited a lot from the upstream supply chain now have to cut the cost to cater for mass consumption, which also provided the restaurants with the possibility to promote fair price seafood product.
Haolunge’s COO also stated that given the present statistics analysis, young consumers were more inclined to seafood product, which was the main reason why they improved the seafood proportion in its products. Besides that, the upgraded consumption ability of consumers also made them realize that consumers’ needs had already shifted from low-price product to high-quality and high cost-effective product. Therefore, adding more seafood products was also their strategy to cater consumer’s changed demand.
Supply Chain is still the biggest obstacle
Product structure adjustment means the reform of business operation and supply chain. An industry insider who asked not to be named told that present catering business adjustment or transform all concentrated on restaurant operation and supply chain. For single entity restaurants, they were inclined to hot products or remodel business, but for chain restaurants, they emphasized the transformation of supply chain. Because product freshness was the particularity of seafood, so the product quality would decline or procurement cost would rise sharply if the supply chain was too long.
Different from the crop planting, seafood farming faces more uncertainty. Besides that, there is big loss and wastage for seafood during transport, the quality can’t be guaranteed same, and its price would change according to the weather and season. So, the sold seafood species of many chain catering enterprises were limited only to usual and easy-farmed categories with a mature supply chain. And with the continuously heated up seafood popularity and relatively single processing method towards seafood, homogeneous competition is hard to avoid between similar enterprises.
What’s worse is that catering enterprises in non-coastal city have more difficulties in operation, especially in creating a matched consumption scene, which enhances the difficulty in brand recognition because the consumers would consider the seafood much fresher in coastal cities than that in inner cities.
