Talking about the modest artisanalization of dining

Talking about the modest artisanalization of catering

Will modest artisanalization be a trend in catering? Zee has some thoughts on this.

Moderate artisanalization is a kind of "redevelopment"

In the first stage, in the era of industrialization of food and insufficient division of labor in the industry, a restaurant may be a complete chain of production, roughing, refining, making and selling.

Most of the husband and wife stores, restaurants and big pubs exist in the form of front store + back factory. We can understand that the front room to entertain diners, the back kitchen is a miniature centralized kitchen that does not need to have a distribution function. You can still see many of these restaurants, such as Lanzhou beef noodle restaurants, handmade dumpling stores, and so on.

The second stage, the machine replaced manual labor, breaking through the efficiency bottleneck, along with the development of restaurant chain, the restaurant from the processing, production of handmade links to free up to efficiency first.

Some restaurants even retain only sales, using cooking packages, instant instant food, and a variety of functional terminals (e.g., ramen machine). This has dramatically increased consumer dining convenience, lowered dining costs, and met new demands.

Today it is like coming to the third stage, facing China's wave of consumer upgrading, the rise of the middle class, the overall willingness to consume and ability to change, the restaurant began to re-examine the value of dining for consumers.

One of the changes is the moderate manualization of dining. That is to say, part of the production and processing process, back to the store, in many parts of the human involvement, and will be openly displayed. Doesn't this seem like a "regressive" behavior? It's like taking something that's already simple and making it complicated again.

But Zee feels that this is a kind of "redevelopment", which is brought about by the external market demand and the characteristics of catering. In the value of catering, manual work is a module that can not be eliminated, and weighted heavily, because it is an industry that can not be completely replaced by machines.

What is "manualization"?

There are two main aspects of manualization: ready-made and ready-to-do, both of which are related to timeliness.

Freshly made is mainly reflected in the processing of raw materials, which is also done in the store, rather than uniform delivery of finished products. Typically, many flour/noodle stores have moved their machines to their stores and completed the process of grinding, steaming and cutting by hand.

The ready-made then look at the final production link, is it the day of the ready-made, is it ready-made? At a time when production is transparent, it may seem that everyone is freshly made, but in fact there are still differences - such as the visible pot of freshly boiled bone broth soup, such as the on-the-spot production of meat bun cakes.

So why add the cost of doing all these processes that could be done manually?

The reason behind the modest manualization?

Ze thinks there are a few factors worth paying attention to:

1, the difference in quality

Previously in the article Ze mentioned that catering has a relationship with time and space. The longer the time, the longer the distance, the quality of the finished product attenuation, the greater. And a moderate degree of handmade, can somewhat compensate for the lack of quality. For many categories, whether Chinese or Western, this difference is very obvious: as a simple example, the brewed prune juice, and boiled prune juice, frozen meat burgers, and handmade burgers, extremely obvious difference. There's quality, and it's more worth buying.

2, the sense of value is different

Dining is not only to meet the physiological satiety, more mapped on the psychological level. In a variety of industrialized, convenient products filled with life at the moment, handmade products have become a scarce resource, handmade and value began to link, which is a bit like in the minds of some foodies, chain brands without food, the street side of the old raggedy little but more God store, a reason. Because less, so good.

Value, more willing to buy.

3, the ability to premium

Can accumulate more value of the product, you can enjoy a certain degree of premium, this is more prominent in the simple, fast-food business, high degree of handmade products are more able to sell the price. Because whether it is labor or time, there is a cost, and these costs translate into deliciousness that naturally comes with a premium.

There is a premium and it is acceptable.

4, the production process

For some categories or products, the machine is still unable to complete a specific processing link, because the operation can not be standardized and quantified, and there are differences in the final presentation. For example, the pulling and tugging of the noodles, and the size of the fire.

Handmade, it just feels better than machine.

Who's better, industrial or handmade?

Industrialization can effectively solve the problem of efficiency and stability, handmade more reflect the value of the product and difference. Some old caterers will criticize the factory out of how to eat, product taste loss is too much; at the same time, some new caterers will question the development potential of handmade stores, may not even be able to do the standard of the two stores are not the same.