2026 Spring Festival Catering Market Booms with 9-Day Holiday, Boosting Consumption

As the "longest Spring Festival holiday", the 2026 Spring Festival featured a 9-day consecutive break, with catering markets across China ushering in a booming start and achieving remarkable consumption promotion effects. According to a survey on catering enterprises' operation during the Year of the Horse Spring Festival holiday conducted by the China Cuisine Association, during this year's holiday (February 16-23), the operating income and takeaway income of surveyed catering enterprises increased by 3.84% and 6.02% year-on-year respectively. Customer flow and table turnover rate rose significantly during the holiday, with family dinners, friend gatherings and tourist visits becoming the main consumption drivers. Time-honored brands, characteristic catering and Internet-famous restaurants were highly popular, marking a fiery start for the catering market and injecting strong momentum into annual catering consumption.

Catering Markets Flourish Across Regions in the Year of the Horse

During the Year of the Horse Spring Festival holiday, catering markets across China witnessed robust consumption, with the turnover of key monitored catering enterprises in many regions achieving steady growth and showing a sound momentum of balanced supply and demand. In Tianjin, 250 key catering enterprises monitored by the local commerce bureau recorded a total turnover of nearly 45 million yuan in the first five days. In Hebei Province, the total sales of key monitored retail and catering enterprises reached 2.578 billion yuan, an increase of 9.3% compared with the 2025 Spring Festival holiday. Jiangsu Province's catering income exceeded 18.3 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 11.9%. In Shandong Province, the sales volume of key retail and catering enterprises rose by 15% compared with the 2025 Spring Festival. The operating income of key monitored catering enterprises in Henan Province reached 45.725 million yuan, an increase of 23.4% year-on-year. From February 15 to 21, the first 7 days of the holiday, the total turnover of retail and catering industries in Hubei Province reached 30.55 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 11.57% compared with the same period in 2025. In Shaanxi Province, the income of catering sample enterprises was 210 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 10.76%, including 9.44% growth in dine-in income and 27.47% growth in takeaway income. In Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, the turnover of key monitored catering enterprises across the region reached 67.969 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.2%.

Happy Shopping for Spring Festival: Tasting New Flavors and Celebrating the Festival

During the Spring Festival holiday, the China Cuisine Association actively implemented the "2026 'Happy Shopping for Spring Festival' Special Spring Festival Activity Plan" issued by 9 units, organizing the "Happy Shopping for Spring Festival" special activity. Driven by both policies and activities, the plan continuously released holiday consumption potential. The association, together with relevant platforms, departments and local catering associations, launched the "Heartwarming Reunion Dinner" special Spring Festival activity, issuing over 10 million yuan of Spring Festival red envelopes for catering. The topic of "Heartwarming Reunion Dinner" received over 1 billion views, attracting more than 90,000 catering merchants to participate and 76.35 million users to place orders, injecting strong vitality into the Spring Festival catering market.

Under the guidance of the association, various local characteristic consumption promotion activities were brilliant. Linqing City in Shandong Province held the 2026 "Winter Tour Linqing" New Year Celebration and "Canal Grand Market" activity. The New Year goods market gathered 300 stalls, covering grain, oil, intangible cultural heritage (ICH) cultural and creative products, Internet-famous snacks and parent-child activities, meeting the "one-stop" New Year needs of tourists of all ages. The activity lasted from the 20th day of the twelfth lunar month to the 16th day of the first lunar month, effectively activating holiday consumption. Yibin City held the 2026 Spring Festival High-quality Consumption Expo and Snack Food Festival from February 14 to March 3, integrating concerts and other consumption promotion contents, leveraging 200,000 yuan of consumption promotion funds and driving hundreds of thousands of person-times of visitors.

Catering Enterprises Take Multiple Measures to Boost Consumption

During the 2026 Year of the Horse Spring Festival holiday, catering enterprises across China carried out various and rich consumption promotion activities through product innovation, scene expansion and interesting marketing, striving to stimulate consumption potential.

Zodiac culture empowerment and interesting interaction drove consumption. In the Bingwu Year of the Horse, zodiac culture was deeply integrated with catering consumption, becoming a new highlight of Spring Festival consumption. Some catering brands launched Year of the Horse themed activities, including co-branded desserts, themed children's meals and interactive games to enrich the dining experience. Others offered free gifts for in-store consumption and on-site Spring Festival couplet writing activities to enhance the festive cultural atmosphere .

Diversified supply of New Year's Eve dinners met diverse needs. Many catering enterprises launched a variety of packages, including take-out New Year's Eve dinner boxes, allowing consumers to enjoy professional banquets at home. Some international and local characteristic catering brands released new products and promotional holiday packages, catering to consumers' diversified and personalized needs.

Enhanced emotional value and interactive experience improved consumers' sense of gain. A number of catering enterprises launched interesting activities such as lucky chopsticks and free meal activities, as well as promotions like free drinks for check-in, free drinks with banquets, buy-one-get-one-free offers and gift-giving for recharge, effectively enhancing consumers' consumption experience and sense of gain.

"Catering +" cross-border integration enriched consumption experience. Models such as "catering + ICH" and "catering + opera" became new highlights of Spring Festival consumption. Some catering enterprises invited consumers to experience the production of ICH-themed dishes, launched innovative combinations of food and ICH crafts, and held activities such as folk performances and opera singing, making the traditional festival atmosphere more intense.

Innovative business scenarios achieved remarkable results in online traffic acquisition. Many catering enterprises carried out live streaming on online platforms, launched Spring Festival discount packages and coupons, and set up customer groups. Some launched take-out packages of various sizes to meet the needs of different families, while others carried out online-offline integrated promotion through multiple platforms, achieving significant results in attracting customers.

During the 2026 Year of the Horse Spring Festival, driven by policy guidance, activity promotion and enterprise innovation, China's catering market fully released consumption vitality with steady growth in operating data, showing distinct characteristics of "cultural empowerment, diversified supply, experience upgrading and online-offline integration". The China Cuisine Association will continue to play its leading role in the industry, closely track market dynamics, reflect industry demands, promote the high-quality development of the catering industry, and contribute to a good start for the annual consumption market.