Can doubling the sales of semi-finished New Year’s Eve dinner keep the taste of happy reunion？

　　Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, February 14th Question: Can doubling the sales of semi-finished New Year’s Eve dinner keep the taste of happiness and reunion?

　　Xinhua News Agency reporters Yu Jiaxin and Jiang Zhiqiang

　　Move your fingertips and place an order easily. As the Spring Festival approaches, the reporter’s investigation found that compared with previous years, the New Year’s Eve dinner in many restaurants is "hard to find a table", and the sales of semi-finished New Year’s Eve dinners have doubled. For the most ceremonial New Year’s Eve dinner in a year, orders have changed the production mode of New Year’s Eve dinner to some extent. Can this keep the taste of happy reunion?

　　"One table is hard to find" for the New Year’s Eve dinner, and the sales of semi-finished take-out products doubled.

　　Three meals a day, 365 days a year, can’t match the New Year’s Eve dinner. This Chinese’s most important reunion dinner in a year is full of happiness, lasting for thousands of years.

　　Zhang Fang, a "post-80s" lady who lives in Fengtai District, Beijing, is usually a "takeaway", and this year’s New Year’s Eve dinner also chose semi-finished takeout. "Every Spring Festival, I always look at my parents working hard in the kitchen, hoping that they can be liberated from the kitchen and the family can enjoy more warmth and happiness of reunion."

　　Zhang Fang’s words may be the reason why New Year’s Eve takeout is booming. The reporter visited and found that many restaurants increased the service of New Year’s Eve takeaway in response to the surge in passenger flow, and the sales volume increased significantly year-on-year. Zhang Yingge, service director of Tongheju, a time-honored restaurant, told reporters that nearly a thousand copies of the semi-finished New Year’s Eve dinner have been sold, and the sales volume is twice that of last year.

　　The reporter searched some e-commerce websites for "semi-finished dinner packages", with thousands of varieties and more than 7,000 transactions in the past half month. Among them, the Buddha jumps over the wall, Sichuan style pork, eight-treasure rice and other dishes are favored by many consumers.

　　Behind the double sales of semi-finished New Year’s Eve dinner, it is "a table is hard to find". Xuan Junxiu, resident general manager of Huifengtang, a time-honored restaurant, said that this year’s restaurant dinner reservation was even more popular than in previous years, and the dinner had been booked before the "Eleventh". In order to divert the passenger flow, the restaurant also launched the sales of "annual lunch", and the booking volume was over 90%.

　　Meituan’s take-out data shows that from 2015 to 2017, the number of people ordering food for the Spring Festival is increasing every year, and the average cost of each take-out order on New Year’s Eve is twice as high as that on weekdays. It is expected that the take-out order for the Spring Festival in 2018 will reach a new level.

　　N demands behind a New Year’s Eve takeaway.

　　From doing it yourself in the past to the increase of "eating out" and "taking out" of New Year’s Eve, the changes of New Year’s Eve have witnessed the development of the times.

　　Mr. Zhao, whose hometown is Jilin, works outside all the year round and booked a semi-finished dinner before going home. He feels that this will not make his parents too tired, but also satisfy his desire to learn and show his cooking skills, and the dishes are rich and more "tasteful".

　　Make a good New Year’s Eve dinner according to the semi-finished recipe and send it to a circle of friends to share with friends … … For many people, the New Year’s Eve dinner is not only as simple as having a meal with family, but also increases the interaction between people besides diet.

　　New Year’s Eve takeaway is giving birth to more consumer demand and promoting the transformation and upgrading of the supply side of catering enterprises.

　　The reporter visited a number of catering enterprises and found that in order to better meet consumers’ demand for semi-finished New Year’s Eve dinner, the restaurant increased the types of semi-finished New Year’s Eve dinner packages. In Tongheju, the store launched six kinds of semi-finished and finished New Year’s Eve dinner packages, with prices ranging from 400 yuan to 1,600 yuan. And different sauces are prepared for the same dish to meet the diverse tastes of consumers.

　　In order to make it easier for consumers to go home and cook semi-finished products, some restaurants have specially established a WeChat group for chefs to communicate with customers. Chefs can guide customers in real time, and different consumers can also exchange ideas, share and interact with each other.

　　Zhao Ping, director of the International Trade Research Department of the Research Institute of the Council for the Promotion of International Trade, said that the increase in take-out of New Year’s Eve is not only related to the improvement of people’s income level, but also a manifestation of people’s shift from material consumption to spiritual consumption. Through consumer services, they can save time, experience cooking fun and enjoy reunion with their families.

　　"New Year’s Eve" is the same, reunion is more important than consumption experience.

　　Corresponding to the booming "New Year’s Eve" economy, the dual factors of service and quality challenge the New Year’s Eve market.

　　"Compared with eating in a hotel, the New Year’s Eve takeaway is more annual." Zhang Fang said that some hotels stipulated the dinner time of the New Year’s Eve, and the service quality was discounted. Eating the New Year’s Eve was like completing a task and lost the happiness of the New Year’s Eve.

　　Insiders pointed out that whether it is eating out, inviting a chef to your home, or buying semi-finished products for take-away, behind the change of New Year’s Eve is the unchanging connotation of reunion. Strengthening the experience of reunion and affection, and providing better service and quality can make the people’s New Year’s Eve dinner more delicious.

　　"As the most important meal, everyone pays special attention to the safety of the New Year’s Eve dinner and the protection of consumer rights." Mr. Zhao said that it is necessary to strengthen the review of the menu and price of the hotel’s New Year’s Eve dinner, do a good job in risk assessment of food safety, and never let consumers "bad heart" during the New Year.

　　Zhao Ping said that with more and more people eating out on New Year’s Eve, as an extension and supplement of traditional catering services, New Year’s Eve takeaway will usher in a more popular market. In the future, with the theme of "reunion consumption", the New Year’s Eve dinner with specialized packaging, complete services and enhanced cultural added value will be more popular.

　　"The Spring Festival catering consumption is hot and the turnover rate is high, which often becomes a key node to test the service ability of restaurants." Jiang Junxian, president of the China Cuisine Association, said that building a central kitchen, carrying out factory production, developing semi-finished gift boxes and new year gift boxes suitable for the public’s tastes, or becoming a way for catering enterprises to deal with large-scale New Year’s Eve takeout, is also a way to innovate catering services during the Spring Festival.

　　The love of life is to have a New Year’s Eve dinner with you. It will be New Year’s Eve in a blink of an eye. Are businesses and consumers ready?