The Invisible Giant: Group Catering
Earlier, I explained why Meituan and Douyin succeeded in the internet space—they focused on college students (a demographic with a very clear geolocation-based profile). A parallel market is group meals (corporate cafeterias, campus dining halls), estimated at a 2 trillion RMB market size. The university segment accounts for about 30%, or 600 billion RMB. Zhi Shu Wei Ya — the company behind the "mouse head duck neck" incident — is the invisible leader in this space. They operate about 700 university cafeterias (~25% of the university market). Their annual revenue matches Haidilao's, and their profit exceeds Haidilao's (37 billion RMB). After all, their comprehensive costs are nearly 20% lower than regular university centralized procurement. Even with labor and other costs included, expenses are only 30% of selling price—far below the industry average.