Hua Ding Cold Chain Technology General Manager Wang Jun: Optimizing supply chain efficiency is the key to crossing the "kill line" for restaurant and catering companies.

Ask AI · How can supply chain collaboration help restaurant companies cross the killing line?

On March 24, the 2026 China Catering Industry Festival and the 35th HCC Global Catering Industry Expo, co-hosted by the World Federation of Chinese Catering Industry and Hongcan Network, opened at the Hangzhou International Expo Center. At the “2026 China Catering Industry Conference,” Wang Jun, General Manager of Huading Cold Chain Technology, stated that the current flow dividend has peaked, and the industry is shifting from management competition to survival competition.

For companies to survive, they must adjust their operational logic to cope with the “killing line.” He summarized the four characteristics behind the restaurant industry’s “killing line”: excessive reliance on a single cost advantage, low entry barriers leading to widespread homogeneity, lack of core barriers after the flow recedes, and a weak food supply chain foundation. To cross the “killing line,” optimizing the supply chain is key, especially for chain enterprises of a certain scale. If they can build a national warehousing network, they can break through the expansion dilemma. At the same time, the supply chain helps brands operate more finely, minimizing losses as much as possible, thereby uncovering profits from the details.

△Wang Jun, General Manager of Huading Cold Chain Technology

Wang Jun pointed out from the perspective of a supply chain service provider that the deep collaboration between restaurant enterprises and supply chain companies is specifically reflected in three aspects: establishing a trusting cooperative relationship, achieving tacit operational coordination, and empowering through technological tools. Among them, for supply chain companies to earn the trust of restaurant enterprises, the following two points must be achieved:

First, truly be customer-centric. Taking Huading as an example, the KPI indicators for its after-sales and customer manager teams are not assessed based on Huading’s own revenue and profit but on the performance of the customers served after supply chain optimization. Trust can only be maintained when all parties have aligned goals.

Second, completely transparentize the costs and processes of each operational link to help customers improve supply chain efficiency and shorten delivery times with actual actions. Huading has gained nearly 30 strategic partnerships in less than three years due to this advantage.

Wang Jun also stated that nowadays, improving supply chain efficiency also relies on the support of technological tools, especially with the rapid development of technologies such as unmanned vehicles, drones, and smart devices in the past two years. For example, Huading currently plans to apply unmanned vehicles in urban distribution, expecting that the cost per item can decrease by 30% and achieve T+1 delivery for all orders, basically controlling completion within 12 hours, all supported by intelligent devices.

Author: Hongcan Editorial Department