Driven by an extended Spring Festival holiday and various promotional campaigns, Beijing's in-person consumption has shown signs of recovery. Data released by the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics on March 17 revealed that from January to February, catering revenue in the city increased by 1% year-on-year. Notably, revenue from the above-scale café service sector grew by 11.2%.
During the first two months, Beijing's total retail sales of consumer goods reached 240.27 billion yuan, reflecting a year-on-year decline of 0.3%. However, this decline narrowed by 2.6 percentage points compared to the full-year figure from the previous year, indicating a continued recovery trend in the city's consumer market.
Boosted by a series of consumption promotion activities and the Spring Festival holiday, physical retail in Beijing showed improvement. In the first two months, retail sales of above-scale store-based retail formats increased by 14.6%. Among these, specialty stores and department stores/shopping malls grew by 21.8% and 4.4%, respectively, demonstrating relatively fast growth in physical retail formats.
Meanwhile, catering consumption continued its recovery, with catering revenue totaling 20.92 billion yuan in the first two months, up 1% year-on-year. It is worth noting that catering formats that align with consumers' demand for efficiency, convenience, high quality-to-price ratio, and emotional satisfaction performed well. Revenue from above-scale café services, other beverage and cold drink services, and fast-food services increased by 11.2%, 4%, and 3.1%, respectively.
Full-service dining also improved, with well-known local Beijing catering brands performing strongly. Additionally, emerging consumption trends such as on-demand consumption, emotional consumption, and green smart consumption remained active. Sales of trendy toys and cultural creative products saw significant popularity, with combined retail sales of key monitored companies in this category nearly doubling in the first two months. Retail sales of new energy vehicles in the above-scale segment grew by 3%.
In contrast, traditional strongholds like the fuel vehicle market continued to contract. Retail sales of above-scale automotive products and petroleum-related products maintained a downward trend.
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