Speaking of informal street food, they could be considered as the soul of a city, “yanhuoqi(烟火气)” preserved in the fast pace of life. Many people keep coming because of the low prices, while others would search for good food in street food stalls because they would keep some of their local cuisines, which are the secret recipes.
Nowadays, there are lots of street food stalls that have been transferred into formal food trucks. They sell the food that comes from the companies that signed agreements with the government and their menus are fixed. This would lead to a problem that if the food trucks sell the same things that could be bought at convenience stores, how would they survive in the competition with the ever-increasing convenience stores in the big cities?
Firstly, the food categories of the convenience stores are much more than the food trucks on the street. Baozi, mantou and jianbing could also be found in convenience stores. In the meantime, the food in the convenience stores actually looks more formal and clean than the food sold in the food trucks. The food price of formal food trucks would not be as cheap as the price of informal street food. This would make the competitiveness of the price would loose during the battle between the food trucks and the convenience stores.
Secondly, as convenience stores become more common, there is even a new breed of convenience store aficionados. They don’t just think of convenience stores as little canteens to solve their eating problems, they think of exploring convenience stores as a fun activity. It’s not that different from clocking in hot spots and web celebrity restaurants. On Weibo, there are even a lot of high-quality strategies made by consumers, which are specialized in punching convenience stores and checking the delicious food in convenience stores. However, those formalized street food trucks are not that attractive to the consumers, because the food there is not attractive enough for young people to post photos on their social media.
Moreover, young people who are born after the strict city management would no longer experience the culture of informal street food, they are the loyal consumers of the convenience stores, which means there would not be any nostalgia if the street food is completely formalized or disappear eventually.
In conclusion, if the government considers city management is a one-size-fits-all approach, that would be completely lazy. It is of great significance to protect the diversity of street food and help the urban poor to solve the problems of finding clean food sources and provide them with suitable places to set up a street food stall. So that the urban poor will survive from the trend of the convenience stores.
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