The Putian Cuisine Association in southeast China’s Fujian province has introduced mobile canteen vans to help boost the catering industry, a sector being hit hard amid the novel coronavirus epidemic.

The association had purchased 15 mobile canteen vans for the Lantern Festival, an important part of the Chinese Spring Festival, said Guan Yubiao, president of the association, adding that the epidemic changed the plan.

Then the association used these vans to provide catering services for workers who returned to work and local residents in front of industrial parks, residential areas and office buildings.

The move has also helped several restaurants resume business, and created hundreds of jobs.

These restaurants offer dishes for the mobile canteen vans, while customers, after making orders online, can fetch their meals in person or wait for their dishes to be delivered by a deliveryman.

Custom-tailored catering services is a salient feature, said Guo Wenhui, secretary general of the association, adding that the vans provide different types of dishes for workers in industrial parks and white-collar workers, as well as semi-finished food for residential areas where people prefer to cook for themselves.

The new model was so popular that the association decided to organize catering enterprises to provide more service stations for residential areas, industrial parks and office buildings in the whole city, Guo added.