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":261597,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174],"tags":[134598,134604,79,51857,13947,11902,46953,134597,179,18,19,17,134603,35428,134605,134599,1488,134601,57286,2792,134596,134600,134602],"class_list":{"0":"post-261596","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-a-property-slump","9":"tag-beijings-zero-covid-policy","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-catering-sector","12":"tag-communist-party","13":"tag-consumer-spending","14":"tag-deflationary-pressure","15":"tag-dining-out","16":"tag-economy","17":"tag-eire","18":"tag-ie","19":"tag-ireland","20":"tag-kantar-worldpanel","21":"tag-kfc","22":"tag-lancun-road-in-shanghai","23":"tag-middle-income-consumers","24":"tag-ministry-of-commerce","25":"tag-pizza-hut","26":"tag-property-slump","27":"tag-shanghai","28":"tag-small-restaurants","29":"tag-yum-china","30":"tag-yum-china-holdings"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115819805008622475","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}