- Contents
- *Overview
- What you need to know
- Covered in this Report
- Definitions
- Figure 1: Definition of low/mid/high MHI groups, by city tier
What you need to know
By 2016, the total revenue of casual dining restaurants reached RMB 624 billion, with a CAGR of 12.0% since 2011. Mintel forecasts that the casual dining market will see a CAGR of 8.6% in value sales between 2016 and 2021, and will reach a total of RMB 944.4 billion by the end of 2021.
China’s casual dining restaurant market is highly diversified. Apart from the leading players in each cuisine category, there are often a number of medium-sized chains, followed by numerous small-sized chains and independent operators. They have been establishing and introducing sub-brands and fun dish names in order to stay competitive in the market.
From the consumer side, meals/dishes made from fresh ingredients are trending in casual dining. Moreover, people are most attracted to casual dining restaurants where meals/dishes taste good and the in-store ambience is enjoyable. They are also most likely to try out a new restaurant under recommendation from a trusted person.
Covered in this Report
This Report looks at Chinese consumers' usage habits of casual dining restaurants and their attitudes towards casual dining brands and their products and services. ‘Casual dining restaurant’ is not yet a clearly defined concept amongst Chinese consumers. For the purpose of this Report, Mintel defines the ‘casual dining market’ as full service restaurants that cost RMB 60-120 per person and are normally used for non-business purposes. Fast food restaurants and coffee shops are excluded.
By this definition, casual dining restaurants include restaurants of all types of cuisines, such as Sichuan food (and other Chinese food), Western food (and other foreign food), hot pot, barbecue etc, as long as they provide a casual store ambience and are mildly priced. It is also noteworthy that casual dining restaurants are in fact more premium than the majority of full service restaurants in the market, and are still rare in lower tier cities where per-capita spending in restaurants is quite low when compared to developed markets.
