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Strategies & Market Trends : China Warehouse- More Than Crockery -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RealMuLan who wrote (2565)	1/26/2004 10:50:09 PM
From: RealMuLan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6370

Eating out booms even more as China opens up (BEIJING) When the world's most populous nation decides to go out to eat, the results can be prodigious. Chomp chomp: Chinese spent over 600 billion yuan dining out last year, 11.5 per cent more than in 2002 The people of China, a culture whose culinary obsession is renowned worldwide, spent more than 600 billion yuan (S$123 billion) dining out last year, the official Xinhua News Agency said yesterday. That figure was an 11.5 per cent increase over 2002. The statistics were part of what the government calls 13 straight years of annual double-digit growth in the restaurant industry. And government analysts say they expect 2004 to be even better, with more than 700 billion yuan spent dining out. The figures coincide with an increase in living standards among many Chinese, especially on the more affluent east coast, as economic reforms begun a generation ago gain momentum. Xinhua also attributed part of the success to the country's efforts at expanding homegrown franchises. It said 79 of China's top 100 restaurant groups have started franchising and opened chain stores, including the well-known Peking duck brand Quanjude. Forty-three of the top 100 were considered fast food - another market on the rise in an increasingly fast-paced society - and 42 others 'try to woo customers with special regional or ethnic cuisine', Xinhua said. Restaurants in China are in the midst of a golden age of sorts. During earlier years of communist rule, in the 1960s and 1970s, restaurants were scorned as bourgeois and many were closed. - AP business-times.asia1.com.sg