This document discusses opportunities for innovation in the foodservice sector. It notes that foodservice encompasses a wide range of establishments from street vendors to high-end hotels. The foodservice industry is changing as different categories adapt to new trends, requiring constant innovation. Some key factors that can help foodservice businesses improve competitive advantage include focusing on food quality, developing a clear business identity, and maintaining a clean and attractive environment. The document also examines trends in the Chinese foodservice market and opportunities to better meet consumer demands around food safety, customization, and health. Overall, it argues that digitization, changing consumer preferences, and a focus on sustainability present many possibilities for innovative new approaches in foodservice.

1. Foodservice Sector: A Catalyst for Innovation
——Marie-Pierre Membrives, Foodservice Innovation Consultant, Aden
Services/Tastebuds Consulting
What is foodservice? It involves a lot of different areas. It ranges from the
service on streets to the high-end service in five-star hotels. You can find
it in a restaurant, a canteen and a noshery, even in a virtual restaurant.
The high-end foodservice is trying to provide quick-service when
convenience stores are providing hot meal for the consumers. Every
category is changing and food interaction is influencing every market
segment, which requires us to keep innovating and do some
trans-boundary cooperation and competitions. And this is a

2. responsibility shared by every one of us present here, by you and me, to
improve customer experience.
What are the differences between foodservice and retailing? Maybe you
know retailing very well, but I think foodservice is not the same. There
are many opportunities to improve customer experience because the
way of foodservice is not the same as retailing's selling goods on the
shelves. Some key factors can help you improve competitive advantage.
The first one is food itself. The food should be safe, tasty, convenient,
affordable and quick. Then you should find a good idea and story for
your business. The story should be simple, credible and consistent. The
last one is store environment. As the consumers are pickier, the
environment should be clean and attractive. In short, we should provide
a comprehensive service for consumers.
What is Chinese foodservice like? There is no doubt that Chinese
catering industry is the biggest in the world. About 7.5 million different
restaurants are providing their services for people who like to go out for
meal almost everyday. Comparing the other markets in the world,

3. Chinese market is further enlarging as it grew by 6% last year. In this
situation, there’s going to be more opportunities for suppliers.
In Chinese market, the new supervision policy influenced many of us.
With its pressure, some restaurants are closed. An integration trend is
appearing, it shows that we need to be more innovated and cooperative
with each other to meet consumers' demands. The consumers will be
satisfied if they are able to customize the services as they like.
I have been working in McDonald's for 15 years before working in ADEN
Services and learned my lesson of catering industry's self-renovating.
15 years ago, McDonald's first launched personalized packing in the UK.
It requires suppliers to provide the personalized product by special
production chain. Besides, the local food and seasonal product are also
important. Kiwi fruit is a specialty of Australia, so McDonald's launched
product based on kiwi fruit. What I learned in 15 years' working in
McDonald's is that McDonald's did make the effort to improve customer
experience. We considered nutrition, then we digitized our services. And

4. as a result of this, consumers can order food we listed on our web by
using APP, then the food would be sent to the offices.
The opportunities are so plentiful that the new companies can also get a
lot of opportunities like large company do. You can regard your company
as a large lab. The employees are the testers who can give you many
advises and ideas.
Some macroscopical trends are affecting the world, such as digitization,
urbanization and globalization. On the one hand, the new generation
wants services to be digital. On the other hand, the increased demand of

5. old people is also a reality. In the meantime, people are increasingly
paying attention to environmental issues under government's impetus,
they want to be more responsible.
These are influencing the food industry. It is particularly true in China as
Chinese consumers want food to be completely safe and the food
production chain to be environment friendly.
To respond to food safety issues, we can make consumers feel safe by
science. There are about seventy to eighty percent of consumers
concerned about food safety issues. Fifty percent of consumers would
put safety as the first element. And for us, we have to give out some
evidence to prove that the food production chain is safe. The blockchain
is a good example. It can prove the safety by supervising cold chain, food
safety system, humidity, temperature and so on. We can also traced back
to the pollution sources and the pest sources, because these points are
also where the consumers focus on.

6. The consumers hope food to be authentic, natural, fresh and clean. To
satisfy them, some restaurant like Din Tai Fung changes the kitchen to be
visible. The consumers also like to find the spirit of craftsman in food, just
like the biscuits made by your grandma. The organic food is poplar, too.
Because the consumers prefer the seasonal foods rather than GM foods.
So we should try our best to meet their demand by cooperating with
right suppliers and providing more choices.
There are still something we can do in farming. Such as using hay to feed
beeves rather than fodder and growing pollution-free vegetables. We
have used energy saving system in many restaurants. By recovering

7. waste heat of refrigerators, the electricity bills can be cut down in a green
way. About thirty percent of foods become kitchen waste every day. But
if we recycle them by energy saving system, they can turn into something
useful like farm chemical and energy source.
Safety is an important issue for consumers. As the food safety problems
in China is more and more serious, we'd better to take steps to provide
safe food sources and healthy eating environment in restaurants to the
consumers. It's very important. Besides, we should also reduce noises to
give consumers a pleasant eating environment.

8. We can provide customized services like many some companies have
already done. Besides, we can help the consumers to reduce their intake
of sugar. There are about 28% of people in China are overweight
now. The French retailers started the activities of sugar-reduction in just
several weeks. So I think we can also do something useful to help
Chinese people improve health conditions and compose a balanced diet.
We should take some innovative actions to put into use in different
situations.
Although French are not very fond of vegetable diet, it is still a good try.
Because the trend of world is to eat less meat. Foodservice is an
important lab of food industry where we can do some bold attempts.
When Chinese food is spreading everywhere in the world, many new
foods occurred in China. Imagine to mix different food cultures together.
For example, we can try to put burger patty into Chinese baozi. Is it
pretty or funny?
There are also a lot of work in delivery. China is the first country to try
meal ordering. McDonald’s started meal ordering in China before a
long time, but it takes just 1% of meal delivery service in USA now.

9. The digitization means, in a way, the appearance of robots. We can use
robots to cook and deliver. WeChat Pay is also an evidence of digitization.
Big Data gave us better choices.
The digitization also brought us better personalization. Let me take a
cocktail maker as an example. Through the cocktail maker, you can make
many different kinds of cocktail and customize your salad. A bartender
can never meet all of your demands, but a robot can. In conclusion, there
are many innovations to do in foodservice. Food, package, devices,
services and so on are all the missions those are waiting us.