Small restaurants across mainland China have taken a beating as budget-conscious consumers refrain from dining out because of prevailing pessimism about their income amid a shaky economy.<\/p>\n
Some establishments are already at a make-or-break point after posting losses for several straight months.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy family used to live on the restaurant, which generated strong cash flow for us,\u201d said Zhang Hongbin, owner of a canteen serving noodles and dumplings on Lancun Road in Shanghai\u2019s Pudong New Area. \u201cBut all of a sudden, fewer clients showed up, and the revenue failed to offset costs such as rent, salaries and food.\u201d<\/p>\n
The downward spiral that began in July was unlikely to reverse because winter was normally a low season for the restaurant, he added.<\/p>\n
The plight facing Zhang and his family provides a vivid example of how persistent deflationary pressure is wreaking havoc on mainland China\u2019s catering sector, which provides more than 20 million jobs, according to the Ministry of Commerce.<\/p>\n
Data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed that restaurant takings in the first 11 months of 2025 rose by 3.3 per cent from a year earlier to 5.2 trillion yuan (US$744 billion) \u2013 slower than retail sales growth of 4.1 per cent during the same period.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Small restaurants across mainland China have taken a beating as budget-conscious consumers refrain from dining out because of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":346326,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[134004,134010,84,69326,5807,5472,15239,134003,1294,134009,23427,134011,134005,36476,92332,134007,5752,134002,56,54,55,134006,134008],"class_list":["post-346325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-a-property-slump","tag-beijings-zero-covid-policy","tag-business","tag-catering-sector","tag-communist-party","tag-consumer-spending","tag-deflationary-pressure","tag-dining-out","tag-economy","tag-kantar-worldpanel","tag-kfc","tag-lancun-road-in-shanghai","tag-middle-income-consumers","tag-ministry-of-commerce","tag-pizza-hut","tag-property-slump","tag-shanghai","tag-small-restaurants","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-yum-china","tag-yum-china-holdings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346325\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}