中餐被低估的"另一半味觉"：佐餐饮品如何从隐性刚需走向价值兑现？

This article outlines the current development status of China's Chinese meal beverage track and the growth paths of leading brands, with key takeaways as follows:

1. Industry fundamentals: The penetration rate of non-alcoholic beverage with meals in catering channels has exceeded 45%, and the average annual growth rate of per-unit price has hit 5%-8% over the past three years. Carbonated drinks rank first among all categories for meal scenarios with a 48% consumption share, and have evolved from an ancillary business for restaurants into a stable growth driver.

2. Shifting demand logic: Driven by alcohol control and healthy consumption trends, alcoholic beverages are gradually losing market share to non-alcoholic alternatives. Consumers' core demands for meal beverages are relieving spiciness and grease, having a mild taste suitable for all ages, and being shareable to enhance the dining atmosphere—properties that perfectly match carbonated drinks.

3. Lessons from leading brands: Dayao has anchored itself firmly in the meal beverage track, focused on deep cultivation of catering channels to collect first-hand consumer demand, and launched a customized product matrix tailored for different Chinese cuisines and dining occasions, building a differentiated competitive advantage.

The meal beverage track is currently in a high-growth bonus period, offering clear differentiated growth opportunities for beverage brands. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Consumption trends and market space: As the catering industry enters a phase of stock competition, meal beverages have transformed from a nice-to-have add-on to a systematic profit driver for restaurants. Amid the alcohol control and health trend, non-alcoholic meal beverages are filling the market space vacated by alcohol, and have a stable growth logic independent of retail channels.

2. Product R&D direction: Industry competition has shifted from ingredient competition in the retail space to meal scenario adaptability competition. Brands need to abandon the one-size-fits-all blockbuster product strategy, instead working backwards from specific meal scenario demands to refine flavor, packaging and specifications for different cuisines and dining occasions, while meeting consumers' health demands.

3. Channel development priorities: Brands should deeply bind with catering channels, accumulate first-hand user insights, and upgrade from one-way distribution to value coexistence with catering terminals. The user understanding gained from deep cultivation of meal scenarios is a hard-to-replicate moat that other brands cannot easily match.

Meal beverages have become an important source of incremental revenue for catering outlets, bringing clear growth opportunities for restaurant sellers. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Opportunity outlook: As the catering industry enters stock competition, per-store revenue growth increasingly relies on incremental opportunities at the dining table. Meal beverages feature high gross margins, require little operational adjustment, and are easy to integrate into set meals, making them a reliable second growth curve and new profit engine for outlets. With penetration of non-alcoholic meal beverages still rising steadily, the growth outlook is very promising.

2. Product selection logic: Sellers should choose products based on their restaurant's cuisine type. Spicy and heavy-flavor restaurants such as hot pot and barbecue should prioritize carbonated drinks with strong grease and spiciness relief effects, while home-style restaurants and light eateries can opt for varieties with a milder taste. Products that are suitable for sharing across the whole table and meet light health demands are also preferred.

3. Cooperation direction: Restaurants can form deep partnerships with brands focusing on the meal beverage track to jointly optimize the dining experience. This approach delivers stable incremental profit without requiring large operational investments from the restaurant, achieving win-win outcomes for both sides.

The rapid growth of the meal beverage track has brought new business opportunities and development insights for beverage manufacturing factories, with key points as follows:

1. Shifts in product design and manufacturing demand: Demand for meal beverages has shifted from general-purpose products to scenario-customized offerings, moving away from the pursuit of universal blockbuster products. Factories need to adjust flavor, packaging and specifications for different meal scenarios—for example, large packages suitable for group dining, and differentiated flavors tailored to different cuisines—while also meeting consumer demand for light-health options such as zero-sugar and zero-fat formulas.

2. Business opportunities: Driven by alcohol control and health trends, the market size of non-alcoholic meal beverages is expanding rapidly. Carbonated drinks, which naturally fit the flavor profile of Chinese food, currently hold nearly half of the total market share, making them the clearest growth direction in the track at present.

3. Development insights: Factories can form in-depth partnerships with meal beverage brands that have deep penetration in catering channels, and obtain first-hand demand data from actual dining tables to inform product design and manufacturing. Instead of only focusing on ingredient competition in retail channels, focusing on developing products adapted for meal scenarios makes it much easier to build differentiated competitiveness.

The meal beverage track is rising rapidly as a new growth point at the intersection of the beverage and catering industries, opening up new business directions for relevant industry service providers. Key points are as follows:

1. Industry development trends: The overall competitive logic of the beverage industry has shifted from ingredient competition to scenario competition. Meal beverages have broken away from the traditional retail track and become an independent growth pole. Catering operators have growing demand for systematic meal beverage operation, while beverage brands need professional support to adapt their offerings to meal scenario requirements.

2. Core pain points of clients: Most beverage brands have long competed in retail channels, and lack understanding of the actual demands of Chinese meal scenarios—they do not know how to conduct product R&D and channel operation around dining table needs. Meanwhile, most catering businesses lack guidance on product selection and matching to unlock the profit growth potential of meal beverages. Both sides face clear pain points in this area.

3. Solution direction: Service providers can launch professional meal scenario insight services to help beverage brands connect with first-hand demand from catering terminals, and also provide product selection and set menu design services for catering businesses to help them boost per-customer spending and profit, which aligns with current widespread industry demand.

Growth in the meal beverage track has brought new operation and growth opportunities for B2B marketplace platforms, with key points as follows:

1. Market demand: Both catering businesses and beverage brands have demand for in-depth cooperative matching. Caterers need high-margin meal beverages that fit their cuisine to boost store profits, while beverage brands need to deeply penetrate catering terminals to capture user mindshare in meal scenarios. Both sides require platforms to facilitate accurate matching.

2. Strategic directions for platforms: Platforms can launch a dedicated investment and matching section for meal beverages to connect brand distributors with catering merchants, provide accurate product recommendation tailored to the needs of different cuisines, and offer relevant operation training to help catering businesses design meal beverage set menus, boost per-customer spending, and expand the platform's own revenue space.

3. Risk mitigation: Platforms should not blindly push products following ingredient trends from the retail sector. Instead, they should guide merchants to prioritize product adaptability for specific meal scenarios, avoid ineffective product selection disconnected from actual dining table needs, and focus on products that fit Chinese cuisine flavors and meet shared dining requirements, to reduce merchants' product selection risks.

The meal beverage track has emerged as a new growth direction at the intersection of the catering and beverage industries, with many new industry trends and business models worthy of academic and industry research. Key points are as follows:

1. New industry trends: Chinese meal beverages, once an implicit rigid demand as an ancillary business of restaurants, have transformed into an independent, certain growth pole. Amid alcohol control and health trends, non-alcoholic meal beverages are gradually taking over market share from traditional alcoholic beverages, and the entire track's competitive logic has shifted from ingredient competition in traditional retail to scenario adaptability competition, forming a growth logic independent of retail channels.

2. Innovative business model: Leading brand Dayao has built a closed-loop business model of scenario insight → product innovation → channel deep cultivation. By anchoring the meal beverage track, it accumulated user insights from millions of first-hand consumption scenarios in catering channels, fed these insights back into product R&D to build a product matrix adapted for different scenarios, and ultimately formed a value coexistence model with catering terminals, which is significantly different from the traditional retail beverage model.

3. Research implications: In the era of stock competition, unlocking real demand in segmented scenarios is a core direction for industrial growth. Scenario adaptability meets real user demand better than pure ingredient upgrades. The final competitive landscape of the meal beverage track remains to be seen, and it deserves further in-depth research.