Catering E-business Gaining Momentum

In 2005, Ye Chunfeng came to Beijing for work from Guangdong by himself. Three years later, he saved some money and opened his first restaurant in Beijing Eating Street. "At the beginning, only several customers came to eat each day and even nobody came in case of windy or rainy day." Ye Chunfeng looked around when saying so; only two tables were available where there were fifteen tables in total.

"I have tried sending out advertisements and leaflets, but business turned down days later." Feeling helpless, he thought of Internet. "I registered an online shop for free on dianping.com and put up coupon. I never imagined that after two months, there were more than fifty pieces of comments from the customers, including praise and correction." Ye Chunfeng smiled, "For right I did better and for wrong I corrected. Soon more customers came to my restaurant."
With the continuous popularization of Internet, catering e-business is gathering momentum. Traditional restaurants realized fast growth by internet sales platform.

It's known that in 2007 investment in domestic food e-business exceeded RMB100 million yuan for the first time and is still increasing fast. At present there are mainly two types of catering e-business patterns in China. One is catering portals like fantong.com and fanju365.com. Consumers can learn local restaurant information through the internet and businesses can post news about restaurants and favorable terms. The other is interactive food community like koubei.com and dianping.com. Businesses can register online shops for free and collect consumers' comments so as to attract more customers.

There are 298 million internet users in China and over 100 million phone-online users. By combining web2.0 technology application, internet is an ideal platform to find restaurants and make reservation. As founder of fantong.com, Zang Li discovered huge business opportunity in catering e-business. "Because of big popularization cost and severe and diverted competition in catering industry, serious unbalance of information needs to be solved through internet; therefore catering e-business will have a bright future." Fantong.com established in 2003 have owned over 70 thousand business members in China now; more than 10 thousand person-times of book reservation online and more than 1.2 million person-trips visited the network each day. It's the biggest catering service network.

The combination of catering industry and internet is of necessity instead of only by chance. The network brings to consumers convenient, clear and all-round consumption experience. It's the real reason of this combination.

Online sales will help target consumers to learn restaurants and brands, besides it is also a kind of direct promotional sales and popularization tool. Consumers can book reservation with convenience on professional catering portals, enjoy favorable discount and also experience various special services.

"Many restaurants publish promotions through fantong.com. Online users are also customers to downloading and printing coupon and enjoying this discount in restaurants." Wang Jing, general manager of strategic cooperation department of fantong.com said, one of the commonest promotion way of restaurants was the coupon. When consumers are learning the restaurant information, coupon will push consumers to try the food for the first time.

In Purple Bodhi Restaurant located at Zhongguancun in Beijing, Mr. Wang showed the printed coupon when paying the bill and got a 12 percent discount. "It was not easy to find a good restaurant before. I often had to make many phones to ask friends. Now through fantong.com, koubei.com and dianping.com, I can not only check for food quality and taste and also make reservation directly and enjoy discount."

In the past restaurants were operated based on public praise. Now the online praise will publicize good food more quickly and more widely. A group of local life community websites, represented by dianping.com, have developed fast and set up an effective sales platform by utilizing internet and wireless website technology and members' contribution.

Online praise not only brings short-lived hot point but also heritages transmissibility of public praise. Currently besides the professional catering service websites, large-mid-size chain companies also build reservation channel on their own portals. On the portal of South Beauty, there is a reservation channel through which customers can book reservation online at any time.

Besides internet, catering information service through cell phone platform is also rising quickly. Users can browse online the restaurant information by cell phone. Its special GPS function also acts accordingly. On the basis of map search, users can find surrounding restaurants precisely by the positioning function.

Online catering sales still stays at a fundamental stage. Higher level of online sales sectors are also growing into maturity gradually. The prospect of catering e-business is huge in future. The online reservation of fantong.com has maintained an increasing rate of 300 percent for four years.

Experts pointed out that future online sales of catering industry will operate in way of total brand, including online reservation, e-business, logistics and personnel management. The revolution of sales innovation and brand expansion will bring catering industry into a new era and express the real value of Chinese food and beverage.