What’s happening to Chinese Restaurants in the age of COVID?

The Covid-19 pandemic has impacted virtually every industry and put millions of American lives on hold. However, the Chinese restaurant industry has been especially hard hit. Pre-pandemic Chinese restaurants had already been struggling and many had begun to close for good. According to an article by New York Times, the number of Chinese restaurants has been declining, citing a 7% drop nationwide between 2014 to 2018. Now, the economic impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic made 2020 a particularly challenging year to be a small business owner and in conjunction with the wave of xenophobia accompanying global hysteria, Chinese restaurant owners are feeling the pain.

By analyzing Chinese restaurant review data, we will explore the following research questions:

1. Did the Covid-19 pandemic significantly impact the number of people eating at Chinese restaurants across the US?
2. What can reviews of Chinese restaurants tell us about where people find value in their pandemic dining experience?

Methodology and Data

To conduct our analysis, we collected over 88,000 reviews of both Chinese and American restaurants across the United States. The specifics of each of these categories is as follows:

To compare the two different restaurant types, our analysis used percentages of categories to account for the difference in review volume between the two categories.

Did the Covid-19 pandemic significantly impact the number of people eating at Chinese restaurants vs American restaurants across the US?

From our initial analysis of the data, we see a dramatic decrease in both the number of reviews of Chinese restaurants (shown in blue) and the number of reviews of American restaurants (shown in purple). As expected, the decrease in review volume is directly associated with the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic and the low review volume persists throughout the rest of the 2020 calendar year as the pandemic continues. This was an interesting observation as Chinese and American restaurants were seemingly reviewed at comparable rates; however, it is of note that reviews for Chinese restaurants were more likely to be submitted without a description than their American restaurant counterparts.

Based on this information, Chinese and American Restaurants both suffered immensely from the pandemic and saw a roughly 90% drop in reviews correlating with the start of the pandemic.

What can reviews of Chinese restaurants tell us about where people find value in their pandemic dining experience?

With indoor dining heavily impacted by many state’s lockdown measures, only ~2% of all Chinese restaurant reviews and ~5% of all American restaurant reviews discussed service/customer experience.

In the age of pandemic dining, the customer experience was deemed less important in a customer’s pandemic dining experience than food quality and price.

Chinese restaurants were also more likely to be positively reviewed on their price; customers were generally most appreciative of the “generous servings.” Interestingly, although service/customer experience was not commonly discussed, Chinese restaurants were still more positively discussed than American restaurants.

A reflection of the shift towards carry-out dining, Chinese restaurant patrons were most appreciative of restaurants’ fast service.

In general, reviewers reviewed the price of a restaurant by the perceived “value” of the meal. However, the “value” of a meal, specifically in Chinese restaurants, seemed to differ depending on the kind of restaurant being reviewed.

In many Chinese restaurants, reviewers assessed the “value” of the meal on the amount of food relative to the price. Chinese restaurants were more commonly reviewed on “specials” and the amount of food in the order. Lunch specials were seen as “fairly priced” and encouraged patrons to visit back soon to try different dishes.

In specialty Chinese restaurants (for example, those that specialized in Szechuan, Taiwanese, or Shanghainese dishes), reviews were most commonly made on the perceived “authenticity” of the dishes. In both time periods, it was not uncommon to see reviews reflecting customer’s love for authentic dishes, one reviewed, “I drove almost an hour for authentic Szechuan food”, while another raved that they loved that dishes “taste like home”.

The pandemic did not do much to change the positive sentiment surrounding the price of Chinese restaurants; however, comparing pre-Pandemic and pandemic reviews illustrates the shift towards a greater emphasis on “value” when examining Chinese restaurants. Within Chinese restaurants, “value” in the select few specialty restaurants often came from authentic ethnic dishes while patrons of the majority of Chinese restaurants found “value” in a restaurant’s larger quantities and lower prices.

This was a phenomenon starkly different from price reviews in American restaurants, which more often included references to prices relative to prestige. For example, one reviewer wrote that while a restaurant was “Michelin star-worthy” the “Michelin prices” were well worth it for the once in a lifetime experience. Another noted that they didn’t mind paying a high price for the “fine dining experience” offered at an American restaurant.

This is a particularly concerning finding considering the persistent stereotyping and false narrative associated with Chinese food as “cheap” food for the masses, while western foods are considered higher-class. It seems as if this drive towards higher “value” dining (primarily, in the form of more food for a lower price), brought on by the pandemic, has seemingly only further reinforced this harmful narrative towards Chinese food.

While there is no set guidebook to dismantling this stereotype, it is important to start making steps towards bridging this gap and understanding that surface-level interpretations of any data (in this case, reviews data) without regard to social context is dangerous. Additionally, this most certainly does not mean that western food is more high class; this is merely a reflection of persistent racial stereotypes and narratives that must be addressed.