Summary of Key Points
The convenience store industry is facing a dilemma where there are more and more stores, yet fewer customers. In the past, convenience stores thrived on their proximity and speed, but snack vending shops (which offer affordable and diverse products) and instant retail services (delivering goods within 30 minutes) have stolen a significant portion of their customer base, leading to a continuous decline in both sales per store and foot traffic. To attract customers again, convenience stores are turning to a "catering" approach by bringing cooking facilities into their small spaces of around ten square meters and using freshly prepared food to entice customers. Different brands are adopting various strategies (localization, standardization, light operations, or focus on the supply chain), but catering is not just about installing equipment; it requires proficiency in managing the supply chain, controlling losses, and making efficient use of space. Small and medium-sized chains need to leverage external resources rather than trying to do everything on their own, as this has become a critical challenge for the industry's success.
Detailed Analysis
1. Why are convenience stores suddenly starting to offer cooking services?
The core advantages of convenience stores used to be their proximity and quick service—buying a bottle of water or snacks could be done right outside the store, while online shopping, no matter how fast, still requires waiting. However, the situation has changed:
- Snack vending shops: With 63,000 snack shops nationwide (such as Snack Very Busy and Zhao Yiming), offering a wide range of affordable products, young people now go there directly instead of convenience stores.
- Instant retail: Online orders are delivered within 30 minutes, and staple items like drinks and daily necessities are easily accessible, reducing the importance of convenience stores' proximity.
- Decline in sales and foot traffic: In 2025, the average daily sales per store dropped to 4,453 yuan (a 3.9% decrease), with 8.7% fewer customers visiting each day.
Catering has become the only differentiating factor that convenience stores can leverage. Freshly prepared meals like hot rice, grilled sausages, and wontons are not available through instant retail services, nor do snack shops offer them, which encourages customers to enter the stores.
2. Different approaches to catering
There are no standard solutions for how convenience stores should approach catering:
- Suguo: They have localized offerings covering different times of day (steamed buns and soy milk in the morning, rice bowls and wontons at noon and evening, egg tarts and fruit cuts in the afternoon, grilled sausages and katsu in the late night), as well as local flavors like duck blood vermicelli. They have also expanded their delivery service range from 300 meters to 3 kilometers.
- Meiyijia: With 40,000 stores, they aim for a standardized model where fresh food accounts for 40% of the menu, with six meals a day (including coffee and afternoon tea). They use semi-finished ingredients for noodles that can be reheated, and they offer local dishes like spicy soup in Henan and crayfish mixed noodles in Hubei.
- Shizhu: They adopt a light operation model and partner with JD Qixian to use cooking robots. Without chefs, employees simply load the ingredients into the robots, which can prepare 260 servings of rice per day for an average price of 10 yuan, generating 2,000-3,000 yuan in revenue, thus lowering the barriers to providing freshly prepared food.
- Tangjiu: They focus on their supply chain by building six factories and three logistics centers, delivering fresh products three times a day. Their menu includes chicken patties, baked goods, and vinegar coffee, with a strong emphasis on local flavors from Shanxi. While others can copy their stores, they cannot replicate their manufacturing and logistics capabilities.
3. The entire retail industry is moving towards catering
Convenience stores are not the first in this trend; the entire retail sector is shifting towards a more "canteen-like" experience:
- Pangdonglai: Their prepared food section operates like a canteen, with customers eating on-site.
- Tangshan Zhengzaofeng: With a 9,000-square-meter store, 4,000 square meters are dedicated to catering, accounting for 60% of sales. They claim that their menu never repeats in a month.
- Hema: Customers can buy seafood and have it prepared on the spot, with food preparation areas integrated into the shelves, combining dining with shopping.
Convenience stores are more urgent to adopt this trend than large supermarkets, as they have limited space (around ten square meters) and fewer employees (two or three). Therefore, they need to find innovative ways to serve customers in these confined spaces.
4. The challenges of offering catering
While setting up cooking facilities is relatively simple (installing steamers and fryers), preparing a good meal involves many challenges:
- Supply chain and loss control: Fresh food has a short shelf life, and the loss rate can be as high as 8%-15%. Only leading companies with sophisticated supply chains can make a profit.
- Space and manpower: Limited space requires efficient organization of shelves, preparation areas, and delivery services. Heavy tasks like hot dishes and quick cooking often overwhelm staff.
- High investment costs: Building factories and maintaining cold chain logistics are beyond the budget of small and medium-sized chains. While AI-powered inventory management can help reduce losses, only larger companies can afford it.
5. Avoiding pitfalls
The key to success in catering is to adopt a lightweight and resource-efficient approach:
- Light operations: Use technology like cooking robots to minimize the need for chefs and back-of-house facilities.
- Leveraging resources: Small chains can outsource manufacturing or share supply chains with larger companies (e.g., using the same systems as Guanjia and Jianfu in Chengdu).
The real challenge is not whether to try catering, but whether they can manage the underlying aspects effectively—supply chain management, loss control, and standardized operations.
In conclusion
Integrating catering into convenience stores is neither a fleeting trend nor a daunting obstacle; it's a necessary path to take. Success depends not on how advanced the equipment is, but on whether they can consistently provide high-quality meals that encourage customers to visit their stores for a warm meal.