Technology impact on the catering industry during Covid-19
The year 2020 is a miserable year for the whole world, as covid-19 keeps everyone locked in. All industries are under the shadow, especially in the catering industry, which relies on people to make profits. As we all know, the catering industry is a transaction process between customers and the restaurant owners face to face. However, due to the covid-19, people’s consumption ability and desire to go out to consume have been in a straight line. In view of this situation, which leads to our theme today — using live commerce, which is the most typical feature of live stream economy. I will explore the opportunities and challenges the catering sector is facing.
Opportunities
A new media marketing channel for enterprises to expand sales
Chain catering enterprises have the ability to guarantee the live delivery of goods to achieve a good shopping experience. Chain catering enterprises have a relatively high level of information technology and have the ability to quickly realize the data interface docking with the e-commerce platform. During the Chinese blockade in April 2020, McDonald’s and KFC attracted more than 100 million followers online during a weeklong live broadcast in China. Live broadcast with goods can become a new media marketing channel for enterprises to expand sales. This can also achieve brand marketing and achieve a certain amount of sales.
High efficiency of information transmission
The difference between live broadcast and traditional catering industry lies in the high efficiency of information transmission through the construction of scene. First of all, Livestream provides a kind of food information. The host helpes users to complete the selection of commodities, multi-dimensional comparison of food, trial experience, etc., providing abundant consumption decision-making information. Furthermore, rationality, sensibility and influence. In information communication, the host not only use considerable data and subjective experience, but also make full use of friendly, familiar and authoritative influence principles to achieve good communication effect.
Increase consumers’ trust in food safety
Live streaming has a very high conversion rate. In the gloomy economic situation at home and abroad, the sales volume of e-commerce live streaming is increasing day by day. In Zhaojia Town, China, oranges are a special agricultural product here. Affected by the epidemic, Xiao ’s home is also unsalable 2000 kg of oranges. However, after they start broadcasting, Xiao sold out all of oranges, bringing a total of 6,000 kg of goods to the village. Due to the reason that the location of the live broadcast was in the orange field. At the same time, the assistant picked from the trees to ensure that what the netizens saw was fresh. This practice captured the attention of the audience and attracted more popularity for Xiao ’s live broadcast.
Challenges
The impact of scandal
In the process of personnel’s boardcastng of catering , if the degree is not properly grasped, brand advertising will be emphasized, which will easily lead to user disgust and lead to the negative consequences of user decline. What’s more, live broadcasting is a real-time operation, in which every element will be unreservedly presented to the audience. If there is something wrong in the process, live broadcast mistakes can also have a negative impact.
The durability of the hot style product need to be tested
A live broadcast is usually limited in time and users’ attention is also limited. It will definitely focus on a few hot style commodities and prompt users to quickly make a deal. However, it takes time to test whether hot style food can continue to become the favorite product of the audience. If a food becomes hot style overnight and merchant increases the production quantity, as time goes by, the user will no longer like it, then food waste will be caused.
Ways of broadcasting effectively on the catering section
Food and beverage live selling is mainly based on coupons
Drinks like Starbucks are sold with e-coupons. After all, drinks and dishes need to be eaten online, not directly sold online. The content of this e-coupon can be food coupon, voucher or discount coupon. Of course, the lower the price, the better the effect will be. Therefore, it is the best choice for restaurants to sell overlord meal coupon at a low price on the live-streaming platform.
Integrate resources for live streaming and taking goods
Integration of resources live with goods, coupons — based live with goods on the scale of food enterprises have great restrictions. Starbucks’ success lies in its scale. Coupons purchased online can be used in any direct-sale store. It can be said that Starbucks almost covers all audiences on the live-streaming platform without regional restrictions. And the scale of many food enterprises is not so large, which means that these restaurants can only look for potential customers in the audience near their own stores, the audience shrank substantially. Therefore, for small food enterprises, they can integrate other brands of goods or services, sell goods for merchants through their own platforms, and provide guarantee for customers through catering platforms, which not only serves customers, but also creates profits for themselves.
Taking use of the effect of stars and influencers
During this pandemic in China, Hubei province has been hit hardest and its economy has also been hit hard. On April 12, CCTV famous host Guangquan Zhu and influencer Jiaqi Li helped companies in Hubei province to sell products that have been hit hard by the epidemic including Yulu tea in Hubei province. Thanks to a strong collaboration between the product Jiaqi and the central comedian Zhu Guangquan, products of Yulu tea were snapped up in the broadcast room as soon as they hit the shelves, with sales soaring 6.6 times to more than 100 tons.
Conclusion
Live broadcast economy has obvious development advantages, broad space and promising prospects. From the perspective of demand, live broadcast economy can effectively stimulate consumption. From the supply side, live streaming economy can optimize the structure of e-commerce and innovate the form of sales and service. From the perspective of industrial chain, live-streaming economy can penetrate the production end, circulation end and supply chain, and empower the industry and enterprises with wisdom. The live broadcast of food is just a microcosm of the epidemic era. Under the impact of the epidemic, the live broadcast helps people find their way out of difficulties and becomes a “life-saving straw” for people to break out of the epidemic.
