Shocking! 8,800 Eateries Shut Daily in China! Even a ¥10M Restaurant Lasted Only 4 Months

Anyone here? Anyone? I'm at Hongtang, right next to the main business district in Sushan, Suzhou, near Huaihai Street. It's Sunday afternoon, and there's nobody here. This place opened just six years ago. Friends in Suzhou say coming here at night is scarier than a haunted house. I'll turn around so you can see if there's anyone here. I seem to be the only person in sight. Look out outside of this building. It's falling apart. It looks 26 years old, not six. It's so quiet. Nobody's here. It's hard to believe this is right next to the Xueshan Main Business District. I really don't understand how a shopping complex in such a good location ended up like this. Huaihai Street is about 160 feet away. The Shangri-La is about 650 feet away. It used to be the tallest building in Suzhou. Everyone's gone. There's trash everywhere inside and not a person in sight. From the first through the fourth floor, all you could see are closed shops. I brought my son here once when we were passing by on an electric scooter. I took him inside to look around, and he immediately started crying. He was a little over two. Young children are sensitive. He picked up on the atmosphere and burst into tears. I never brought him back. Instead of counting the closed shops, just try to find a few that are still open. I came today because I was taking my grandmother out for lunch. I thought we could try Hongtang, but there's nothing here. Wow, can you believe it? Wow, this is Shanghai Times Square at Xintiandi. It's 8.30. This whole floor sells sports brands, and there's nobody here. I'm the only customer. Some shops are open, but they're empty. It's hard to reconcile this with how Shanghai Xintiandi used to be. I have no idea where everyone went. People just aren't shopping at malls anymore. This is the fifth floor. The fourth and third floors are all the same. Nobody but employees. There isn't a soul downstairs either. I can't believe the restaurants in Xintiandi are empty at 8.30pm. This is Times Square in Xintiandi, a mall that used to be so busy. Look at this huge barbecue restaurant, not a single customer. Honestly, I wouldn't be here either if a friend hadn't invited me to dinner and offered to pay. I'm saving wherever I can. I really don't understand what's happening. This is the shop my crazy husband spent ten million to open, and today it finally... This is the restaurant my perfectionist husband spent 10 million yuan to open. Today it finally closed. He spent 8 million yuan on renovations and lost about 2 million yuan running it. It never made a profit in any month over two years. This 10,800 square foot restaurant brought in just 2,000 to 3,000 yuan a day. My husband is such a typical Virgo. Obsessed with getting everything perfect. He drove me to Lai Shui County Hebei to see how these hot pots Every bit of the decorative wire work inside was shaped by hand. Each set costs 2,000 yuan. Plenty of other hot pot restaurants use pots costing a little over 100 yuan, and they work just fine. He spent 600,000 yuan on 300 pots. I don't see how they're different from regular pots or why customers would care. This seafood tank was custom made by a high-end supplier. It cost 300,000 yuan. When we opened, it was full of premium seafood, including king crab, spiny lobster, and New Zealand abalone. He always wanted the best high-end products and top quality. But in this economy, I'm not sure people in Qingshan District, Wuhan can afford it. And even though he wanted to go upscale, he sold M9 Wagyu beef for just 88 yuan, while others charged 200 to 300 yuan. He wanted quality and value at the same time. I feel like all those things he wanted customers to appreciate mattered mostly to him. He copied this silver ceiling after seeing a design he liked elsewhere. The ceiling alone cost tens of thousands of yuan, Hardly anyone looks up at it. This restaurant's atmosphere and food were among the best in Qingshan district, but its sales were among the worst. It operated for two years and lost money for two years. Our worst monthly loss was over 300,000 yuan. I remember, I remember sales that month were 220,000 yuan, while payroll alone was 380,000. I honestly don't know how we got through those two years. As the owner's wife, I filled in wherever someone was needed. I did every dirty, exhausting job. He lost all our family savings, 4 million to 5 million yuan. We simply have no money left to lose. Another restaurant on our street moved out today. It's upsetting to watch our neighbors leave one by one. I remember when this street was packed with people and business was booming. Even my little shop, just over 650 square feet, would have brought in 140,000 to 150,000 yuan just for handing over the lease. Landlords had all the power. Rent went up 5% every year and people still fought to rent these places. Now empty storefronts are everywhere. Landlords keep cutting rents and lowering their requirements, but they still struggle to find tenants. Everyone who takes over a shop is anxious. I don't think everyone knows how to participate. Ten stores, nine stores, they're all... I strongly advise people to stay out of the restaurant business. Nine out of 10 shops are just keeping up appearances. None are making money. I've worked in this industry for 17 years. Last year, I worked with 1,000 restaurant chain businesses. Let me be clear, this goes beyond slow business or fierce competition. There's nobody on the street. Great food won't help if nobody's there to smell it. So restaurants have to find customers online. That costs money. So do rent, employees, and wasted ingredients. Online marketing is even worse. It costs 40 yuan to bring in a single Chinese restaurant customer through Dianping, a restaurant review app. However, you work the numbers. You can't make money that way. Business is terrible, so everyone offers discounts. Very few restaurants have customers who actually come back. We end up selling prepared dishes for less than the ingredients cost at the market. 10 years in this business can wear anyone down. You have to do everything yourself. Restaurant workers over 40 all seem to have herniated discs and they don't even dare to go to the hospital. When I visited Nanchong Sichuan, I spoke with the head of the local restaurant association, an older colleague of ours. I told him he was sacrificing his health to keep cooking. He said he was putting his life into it. In summer, temperatures above 104 Fahrenheit, he stands beside a stove for 10 hours with no air conditioning, just a little fan. These hardships come with the job. In recent years, we've heard about restaurant closures, shops up for transfer and empty malls all over the country. It's hard to endure. Please don't go into this business. Only one in 10 restaurants makes money. You're always fighting to survive. Chinese media recently published internal restaurant industry figures showing that 1.61 million restaurants closed in the first half of 2026. That works out to about six closures every minute, or 8,800 restaurant owners leaving this extremely difficult business every day. Wave after wave of closure figures has caught restaurant operators off guard. 1.61 million closures is a sign of more than a normal business cycle. It points to a sweeping restructuring of the industry. Competition alone no longer explains the pressure on China's restaurant industry. The entire consumer market is shrinking fast. Restaurants made famous online once had two-hour waits. Now they're nearly empty. Shopping streets where space was once impossible to find are covered with for rent signs. Many people blame fierce competition, high rents, and steep platform commissions. All of those play a role. But the underlying problem is simple. Customers have run Run out of money. They invested 5 million yuan. Operated for a little over 4 months and lost 7 million yuan. Now they've closed. This place covers about 32,000 square feet in the Children's Clothing Market in Foshan, Guangdong. Look how huge it is. 32,000 square feet. There's an elevator at the entrance and a tank here for live fish. This whole row is a kitchen with all kinds of pots, equipment, and utensils. In Foshan, every Hunan-style restaurant seems bigger and fancier than the next. This one spent 5 million yuan on renovations. These are all high-end rice cookers. They cost several hundred yuan each. There are wine glasses and shot glasses too. These tables are solid wood or marble. There are square tables and round marble tables, all well made. Seeing a restaurant close after so much hard work is heartbreaking for the owner. The equipment can only be sold off cheaply. It's a loss of money and all the effort that went into it. Look at this once busy commercial street. Nobody's even coming out of the entrances. Everything's closed. Here's what business looks like this year. Three people sharing one bowl of wontons. They used to order drinks. Now they don't even do that. Three people share one bottle of water. It's hard to know what to do. went bankrupt, went bankrupt. We're closed! Closed! I spent 360,000 yuan opening this shop. After one year, there's nothing left except a pile of scrap metal. This whole mall is shut down. This entire complex has decades of success. The street used to be packed with traffic. Now the wind blows through it. A building this big must have supported so many workers. Storefront businesses are struggling because ordinary people are struggling to get by. It's closed, closed. I lasted 60 days in the food business. Before I started, I thought I could take on anything. Afterward, I realized how little I could handle. Some people were right. My braised food store didn't even make it to three months. I came to Hai Di Lao today. Apart from Hai Di Lao, just about every other business here has closed. Business is really tough now. These shops were all doing fine before the new year. I passed by today and they're all closed. Many had only been open for a few months. These are the businesses around In Time department store in Hangzhou. It's actually a good location. In Time is about 650 feet up ahead. Even shops in a place like this can't stay open. Many lasted only a few months before closing. Empty storefronts are everywhere in Haikou, on main roads and side streets alike. With an economy like this, I really don't know what comes next. Look at the shops behind me, three on this side and two over there. Those five storefronts have been empty for almost five years. The restaurant has been closed for 100% this year. 80% of restaurants have closed this year. The remaining 20% are barely hanging on, unable to make a living or find a way out. This is Wanlong Plaza in Wuchang. I'm here to collect equipment from a hotpot restaurant. Across two floors, hundreds of businesses have all closed. Not a single one survived. Actually, that's not right. There's still one Hai Di Lao struggling to stay open. Publicly released official figures show that more than 3.39 million restaurants across China closed or canceled their business registration in 2025, up 9.4% from a year earlier. Nearly a quarter failed to last six months. Restaurants might seem protected from online shopping, and delivery services even generate substantial demand for their food. Yet the industry is facing a survival crisis without that kind of online retail competition. Four factors help explain why. First, there are too many restaurants offering much the same thing. Many people see restaurants as easy to enter and quick to generate cash. They pour years of savings into the business without enough planning. The result can be eight bubble tea shops, six noodle shops, and five small restaurants crowded into the same shopping district, within about 1,600 feet of one another. Figures show that 3.6 million food service businesses registered in China in 2024. The total approached 16.8 million, a five-year high. With supply exceeding demand and so many restaurants offering similar food, operators fall into endless price wars. Many lose to that intense competition and eventually close. Second, three major costs are squeezing restaurant profits even further. Rent, labor, and ingredients typically account for 71.9% to 83% of restaurant revenue. In shopping districts, rent alone takes up 25% to 30% of sales. Labor could take another 25%. Ingredient costs have risen an average of 15% over the past two years, pushing profit margins into the single digits. Many restaurants appear to bring in healthy daily sales, but after rent, wages, spoiled food, utilities, and other expenses, their net profit is close to zero, or they're losing money. Opening the doors each day means taking another unavoidable loss. Third, consumers keep trading down, and demand keeps falling. As income growth has slowed or incomes have fallen in recent years, people in China have cut spending. Figures show that average restaurant spending per person fell from 43.2 yuan in 2023 to 39.8 yuan in 2024, a decline of 6.6%. Customers used to choose food they liked, and they compared prices. Now they look for the cheapest option first and decide whether the quality is acceptable. High-end banquets and traditional banquet restaurants also face face a sharp drop in demand. Business entertaining has declined, and young people have slashed wedding banquet budgets. This has pushed many restaurant businesses into bankruptcy liquidation. Fourth, franchise schemes are exploiting inexperienced newcomers. The restaurant industry has many franchise traps. Some entrepreneurs mistakenly believe that partnering with a brand makes success easy. They expect the brand's store design, regular ingredient deliveries, and staff training to give them a much better chance than starting independently. But after spending hundreds of thousands of yuan on franchise fees, some find that the company suddenly stops responding. Others discover the trap only after signing up, as their shops keep losing money. Inexperienced newcomers often lose decades of savings within six months. Restaurants were once seen as a relatively safe way to start a business. Every cost seemed manageable, cash came in quickly, and demand was steady. Hard work appeared to offer a reliable path to making money. So whenever the economy weakened and unemployment rose, people turned to restaurants, bubble tea shops, and snack stalls as a last resort. That reality has changed completely. Today's restaurant industry carries high risks and an extremely high failure rate. Many entrepreneurs invest hundreds of thousands or even millions of yuan in savings and lose it within a few months. As one frustrated restaurant owner put it, opening a shop now feels like gambling with your life. Many people whose investment failed offer the same advice. Newcomers with no industry experience should think very carefully before entering the restaurant business. The wave of restaurant closures is the first domino in China's consumer downturn. Restaurants have always been a sensitive gauge of consumer spending. People can put off buying a home or a car, but they still need to eat. Widespread contraction in dining suggests that households are counting the cost of every meal. People who once spent 30 yuan on delivery now want to spend just 10. Weekend restaurant meals have given way to cooking at home. Starbucks has been replaced with convenience store coffee. Meals for guests that once cost 1,000 to 2,000 yuan have been replaced with discount group packages. These are clear signs of consumers trading down. Officials highlight that China's GDP per person has passed 10,000 US dollars. They say consumers are moving beyond basic needs and spending more on quality. Meanwhile, closed malls, quiet restaurants, and empty office buildings tell a different story. An increasingly difficult cycle is emerging. People lack money to spend, while officials keep promoting higher quality consumption. Businesses grow weaker even as the statistics look better. Streets are quieter. Unemployment is rising. Young people are more reluctant to spend. Their caution reflects incomes that have stopped growing or have fallen. Consumer spending depends on the ability to pay. For most people, the immediate concerns are their wages, job security, mortgage payments, children's education costs, and whether anything is left at the end of the month. GDP growth and the Chinese Communist Party's sweeping narratives do little to answer for those concerns. Meanwhile, controls on speech keep tightening. Online posts about consumers trading down, mall closures, unemployment, and layoffs are often deleted. Sometimes the accounts posting them are shut down too. Silencing discussion leaves the economic problems unresolved. Much of China's growth has relied on real estate, infrastructure, and expanding debt. Now the property sector has stalled, local governments are short of money, and young people face worsening job prospects. Consumer spending is shrinking as a result. That decline then weakens the economy further. The wave of restaurant closures is an early warning of this period of shrinking consumption. When ordinary people hesitate over the cost of a decent meal, The slowdown is spreading from the dinner table to the wider economy.