Spatial patterns and their influencing factors for China’s catering industry

The catering industry plays an essential role in providing life services. Understanding its spatial patterns offers insights into the economic, cultural and spiritual image of a society. Especially in urban settings, the catering industry is often considered a key element for improving the competitiveness of cities. With rapid urbanization and economic growth in China, the catering industry has become the main driving force to stimulate China’s service sectors. In this study, we conducted a comprehensive spatial analysis to explore the distribution patterns by calculating kernel density and applying the geographically weighted regression (GWR) model with 4.49 million restaurants across 336 cities in China in 2020. The restaurants were categorized into four types: Chinese restaurants (CRs), Western restaurants (WRs), fast-food restaurants (FFRs), and dessert and drink restaurants (DDRs). We incorporated a diverse set of socio-economic indicators to explore potential causal influences, including population size and density, GDP, etc. Our study revealed a gradual decrease in restaurant density from southeast to northwest China, with high density observed in the Pearl River Economic Delta, Yangtze River Economic Delta, Chongqing, and Chengdu regions. In terms of the potential influencing factors, we observed that in west and southwest regions, density appeared to be more affected by GDP per unit area, total tourism revenue, disposable income per capita of urban residents, and total retail sales of social consumption. While in northeast areas, restaurant density was more affected by total retail sales of social consumption, GDP per unit area, number of urban population, and the proportion of tertiary industry in GDP. These insights serve as a direct scientific foundation for informing the strategic planning of different types of restaurants at municipal, provincial, and regional levels.