Marketing analysis of public catering market in Russia: district, regional, and segment aspects

The market of public catering is an important element of the national economy which has been dynamically developing. As in any other country, Russian citizens spend some part of their income on eating out, however, this part is rather small (for example, according to official statistics as of 2005, the average resident of Russia spent 9.5 times less money on catering than the resident of the US, and 4 times less than the German resident). This gap as well as significant differences in the degree of individual business development in different regions, testify to the enormous prospects of this market both in quantitative and geographic, and qualitative aspect. According to the expert opinion, the current macroeconomic situation unfavorable for many sectors of the economy can become a driver for the growth of the catering market, to be exact - for the fast food segment, which in the previous crisis of 2008- 2009 showed a positive dynamics and opened up new opportunities for business. In this article we investigated the dynamics of the catering market development, and evaluated the contribution of the industry to Russian GDP. We studied the regional market conditions in the context of districts, regions and socio-economic indicators, such as the turnover of catering, the number of enterprises, the number of seats, and the area of cafes. The article describes the method of classifying the catering enterprises, highlights the specific features of the Russian market and the structure of the largest network companies. We studied the expert opinions regarding the medium-term development of the industry, the market trend of eating out and the possible fundamental changes associated with an increase in the quality of business processes, service and marketing communications.