(Photo/Chinanews.com)

 China’s catering industry brought in revenue of 4.3 trillion yuan last year, up 9.5 percent year-on-year, according to a recent restaurant industry survey report, Workers’ Daily reported on July 17.

The report was released by the China Hotel Association. Posts on China's social media platform Weibo hashtagged “annual revenues of catering in four provinces exceed 300 billion”, had been viewed over 100 million times by July 17.

The report disclosed that catering revenue in each of the four provinces—east China’s Shandong and Jiangsu, south China’s Guangdong, and north China’s Hebei—exceeded 300 billion yuan last year. Of them, Shandong took the lead, creating almost 400 billion yuan last year.

Hot pots, wedding banquets, and time-honored brands are well-received among Chinese consumers. Last year, 875.7 billion yuan was spent on hot pot items, seeing a rise of 52 percent compared with the 2014 figure. Hot pot revenue in China is expected to rise to 960 billion yuan this year.

The survey results indicate that the catering industry in China continues to expand, and that Internet Plus has helped bring changes to the profit model.

Taking online food bookings as an example, its market surpassed 250 billion in 2018, a ten-fold increase compared with the 2011 figure. Over 400 million customers ordered food via applications, with more than 110 million new users compared with the 2015 number.

Song Xiaoxi, deputy secretary-general of the association, said that promoting new retail with new technologies and providing online and offline services have been an industry consensus.

The report includes a stream of rankings including revenues, leading companies, business indicators and confidence index. It is based on nearly 200 large-sized enterprises and their restaurants in 25 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions.