Why is it important?, "Cucumber shooting" is no longer claimed
Recently, Shanghai announced the "Shanghai Food Business Licensing and Registration Management Implementation Measures", which stipulates that starting from May 10, 2024, restrictions on many catering companies will be cancelled: "On-site production and sales" business licenses apply to all types of food sales Operators are no longer limited to catering service operators and support mixed operations of different business formats.
The essence of reducing food and catering operations and management is to optimize the business environment. Before this year’s May Day holiday, the Shanghai Consumer Rights Protection Committee’s research team disclosed that the number of occupational claims complaints in Shanghai last year was as high as 246,000, with nearly 8,000 people making more than 10 complaints per year. What’s even more bizarre is that within one year, someone complained about " He filed high claims against 1,372 restaurants on the grounds of "photographing cucumbers without a license".
The home-cooked dish of "Cucumber Shooting" has become the favorite item to be reported by "professional anti-counterfeiters", mainly because it previously belonged to the special category of "cold food and raw food" in food supervision and required restaurants to "handle special procedures". "Food safety license", "Having a special room for making cold dishes of no less than 5 square meters", etc. The newly announced "Measures" simplify the 19 original business catalog restrictions into four categories of business items: hot food, cold food, raw food and homemade beverage production and sales, giving food operators greater operational autonomy. Since then, fines for small shops for "patting cucumbers" will become history, which truly reflects the friendly side of the policy towards restaurants, especially small and medium-sized restaurants.
The "control" and "release" of food safety have long tested the wisdom of managers, and Shanghai has many classic cases in this regard. For example, the Starbucks Reserve Shanghai Roastery opened on Nanjing West Road integrates warehousing, manufacturing, sales, experience and other functions. At that time, there was no precedent for a manufacturing factory to be located in the center of Shanghai. For this reason, relevant functional departments in Jing'an District continued to explore, Actively coordinate in many aspects such as land use, production licensing, talent introduction, etc., and ultimately help the company realize the implementation of the plan.
Another example is Hema Xiansheng, a new retail format that integrates supermarkets and catering, and online and offline. It also encountered "access difficulties" when registering. Pudong New Area did not simply deny it, but made several judgments: First, value Judgment, answering the question of "whether the new business format meets social needs and whether it can satisfy the people's yearning for a better life"; and then technical judgment, studying the institutional, mechanistic and policy blocking points in the new business registration process, and seeking to solve them plan; and then risk judgment, that is, studying the possible food safety risks in the new business format, and providing technical guidance on the company's format layout, store decoration, and personnel use from a professional perspective to ensure that the food is not cross-contaminated.
The popularity of Starbucks Roastery and Hema Xiansheng after they opened their doors has written vivid footnotes for the government to explore the value of regulatory innovation. The commercial success achieved by both has also made the two cases classic examples of optimizing the business environment. However, from the market level, how to make more companies become participants and beneficiaries of regulatory innovation requires an urgent policy change from the "one size fits all" regulatory model. Whether more small cafes and business entities in the market can receive support and thrive when they encounter similar problems is the proper meaning of a high-quality business environment.
In the past two years, many places have introduced many policies to improve the business environment. This time, Shanghai has liberalized the mixed operation of different business types. "Cold food should be operated according to the requirements of cold food, hot food should be operated as hot food", "hot processing in the store" "Zongzi, no need to apply for a new license" is the real demand of many business entities in actual operations. Regulators are guided by the feelings of enterprises, respond to their demands, and solve practical pain points and congestion points for them at the policy level, which is the best safeguard for the development of enterprises. Supporting the mixed operation of different business formats is also a necessary attempt for the market to cultivate consumption hot spots and innovate consumption scenarios, which will help enhance the market's consumption capacity and give full play to the role of consumption in promoting economic growth.
