Summary of the Key Points
This article focuses on the phenomenon of scalping in China's catering market in 2026: starting with minor incidents at milk tea shops and evolving to industrialized operations at mid-to-high-end restaurants. Scalers have transformed into "professional teams" that use various tactics such as hiring people to snatch tickets, distributing them through platforms, and bypassing identity verification to drive up the price of free queue tickets to several hundred or even thousands of yuan. It is not uncommon for scalpers to earn 400,000 yuan in just five days. There are grey areas in legal regulation, and there is a complex "symbiotic" relationship between businesses and scalpers. Ultimately, ordinary consumers, catering brands, and the entire consumer ecosystem are bearing the costs of this lucrative business, which reflects a societal anxiety towards scarcity.
1. The Evolution of Scaling: From Milk Tea to Restaurant Tickets, with Profits Doubling
2016 marked the beginning of the "Catering Scaler 1.0" era: Milk tea shops like Xicha and Chayanyuese saw long queues (up to 7 hours), and scalpers would sell tickets for a small profit, earning two to three hundred yuan a day by profiting from the time difference. However, as milk tea shops became more widespread, queue times decreased in scarcity, and scalpers shifted their focus to mid-to-high-end restaurants.
After 2025, we entered the "Catering Scaler 2.0" era: Popular online-restaurants like Sushilang and Kaojiang became instantly successful, with online reservations leading to queues of up to a month in length. Ticket prices for these restaurants soared to 300-800 yuan. For example, scalpers at Tianbao Brothers in Changsha earned 400,000 yuan in just five days during the May Day holiday, exceeding the restaurant's annual profit. The difference between the two eras is clear: In 1.0, it was about hard work; in 2.0, it's about large-scale profiteering—scalers don't need to queue themselves but hire others or use automated scripts to buy tickets and then resell them at a much higher price.
2. The Scalping Industry Chain: A Well-Organized Money-Making Machine
Scalpers have established a complete "ticket-scalping chain" with three main steps:
1. Ticket Acquisition: Online, they use multiple phones or scripts to snap up tickets in milliseconds; offline, they hire part-time workers (30 yuan/hour) who are dressed like regular customers and use different phone numbers to retrieve tickets. For example, hiring someone to retrieve a ticket for 40 yuan and then selling it for 100 yuan results in a 150% profit margin.
2. Distribution Channels: Offline, scalpers sell tickets around the restaurants; online, they use platforms like Xianyu and REDnote to advertise their services. Some sellers generate over 1,000 sales per month, earning more than 50,000 yuan on a single platform.
3. Profit Realization: They bypass identity verification by either selling both the phone and the ticket to consumers or providing their own accounts for them to use, effectively nullifying the restaurant's "one person, one ticket" policy.
3. Legal Ineffectiveness: Free Tickets Are Difficult to Regulate, and Penalties Are Too Lenient
Current laws are ineffective against catering scalpers:
- Ambiguous Definitions: Queue tickets are considered free and do not fall under the category of "valuable securities," so they are not regulated by laws governing ticket resale. The definition of "disrupting public order" is also controversial (as restaurants are considered commercial venues, not public spaces).
- Meager Penalties: Even if caught, scalpers may only face a few days in detention or a fine of several hundred yuan, which is far less than the profit they make.
- Evidence Collection Challenges: Scalers use encrypted communication and cash transactions, making it difficult for authorities to gather evidence. For instance, despite three reports from Sushilang in Jinan, scalping activities continue unabated.
4. The Relationship Between Businesses and Scalers: Confrontation or Complicity?
Businesses seemingly fight against scalpers but often have a complex relationship with them:
- Businesses' Helplessness: Despite spending hundreds of thousands on ticket systems, businesses still get their tickets stolen by scalpers. Even restrictions like limiting tables to 1000 can be circumvented.
- Scalpers as a Marketing Tool: Queuing is a marketing strategy for businesses; long queue lengths (e.g., 3,200 tables) attract customers and create a cycle of "queueing → popularity → check-ins → profit." Scalers can even help boost business visibility through their activities on social media.
- Experts' Views: Businesses benefit from the phenomenon but shift the blame to consumers and regulators, arguing that they should solve the problem themselves.
5. Who Bears the Cost?
The costs of this business are borne by three parties:
1. Ordinary Consumers: They spend 80-800 yuan on tickets, which accounts for 20% of their daily spending. They also face risks such as invalid tickets and unrecognized purchases, undermining the principle of "first come, first served."
2. Catering Brands: Scalers reduce table turnover rates and increase customer complaints, damaging reputations. For example, after Tianbao Brothers was exposed, queue lengths decreased, leading to a loss of genuine customers.
3. The Entire Consumer Ecosystem: Scalpers use automated scripts and expose personal information, contributing to a range of issues in the market. Part-time workers may unknowingly become part of the illegal chain.
The Root Cause
Eating has become less about taste and more about social status. People are willing to pay for queue tickets to share their experiences on social media platforms like REDnote. This anxiety towards scarcity creates the fertile ground for scalping.
In Conclusion
What we pay 80 yuan for is not just a seat but an illusion of being faster than others. What scalpers sell is our fear of missing out. The real culprits are those who turn public order into a means of profit—yet they themselves never stand in the queues.