Wulin Night Market
A cafe with outdoor seating in Hangzhou Photo: Jiang Yue
By Zhu Jingning
On Mar 13, Hangzhou issued its latest measures of boosting street businesses. It marks an adjustment to Hangzhou's outdoor business policy issued in 2020.
The outdoor business refers to allowing entertaining stores lay out stands in the assigned outdoor spaces so that customers can enjoy their food or beverages in the nice breeze and the sunshine. Meanwhile, hopefully, the outdoor leisure areas may attract more clients.
Aiming at facilitating the city vitality, creating private business opportunities, and encouraging consumption, the outdoor business has the potential to make a significant difference.
Survive or thrive
Street stalls, which used to be dirty, chaotic and shabby, were previously thought to be contradictory to a clean, modern, and even advanced urban look. In the past decade, in many Chinese cities street vendors were strictly banned. Hangzhou also renewed many of its streets.
However, a recent experiment with street stalls in Chengdu has been a success. The government found that reintroduction of street stalls in Chengdu since 2020 has created 100,000 new jobs and increased considerably people's interests in entrepreneurship. Since then, Shanghai, Beijing, Kunming and other major cities have rolled out polices one by one to moderately open public areas and streets to businesses.
A similar attempt was unveiled in Hangzhou. Shihuqiao Road is home to more than 50 different businesses and brands, including vintage clothing botiques, cafes, designer jewelry shops, fashion shoe shops, second-handed book stores and bistros. In last May, a block market was held from 4:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. through the month, with most of the shops displaying their elaborate products at street stalls, giving a rise to the year-on-year sales in three days up to 3 times.
Even the outdoor tables and chairs pay a clear dividend for merchants. A Western restaurant called Alimentari Grande on the ground floor of Kerry Center is also popular for its alfresco tables. Liu Yingying, the person in charge of the restaurant, said that there are more than 30 tables and chairs inside the store and more than 20 outside. "To some extent, it increases our turnover by about a third."
According to the statistics from Hangzhou Tower, the unique dining experience in the outdoor area can boost the reception volume by about 50 to 60 percent in spring and fall, the best seasons in the city.
New times and new trends
As an upgraded version of the "street stall economy", outdoor businesses have more scientific, refined and intelligent standards.
The current measures introduced, on the basis of the original trial, are to support the standardized development of business activities in more business districts and commercial streets, from the optimization of examination and approval services, measures innovation, supporting facilities improvement to different aspects of detailed provisions.
The scope of implementation of the latest measures includes 52 municipal smart business districts, high-quality pedestrian streets, characteristic commercial streets, and night economy cluster demonstration areas, mainly to strengthen supports for outdoor businesses and outdoor cultural and commercial activities. For example, Yan'an Road links up the Wulin Business Circle, Hubin Business Circle and Wushan Business Circle from the north to the south, so that the shops along this loop can have their stands out on the street.
An open area set up by a store on the ground floor is to some extent allowed to take up some public spaces, as long as it does not affect pedestrians walking, nor does it have a fire safety issue or use any public facilities or green spaces.
The outdoor business hour is spanned round the clock, except for those close to residential buildings and other noise-sensitive establishments, the business hour of which should not be later than 10:00 p.m. Meanwhile, the city has made further efforts to clean roads, public toilets and other areas in the operation zone, as well as to regulate with a grading system that shop owners should keep their places clean. Anyone who has lost enough points will be fined for their violations to the regulation.
Innovation and permanence
Even if outdoor business is only a small part of innovative urban management, it has witnessed the city's growth, has been part of its history, and has become part of its ethos.
Outdoor dining has a long history in the world. In the Middle Ages, the lords who hunted for sports in their leisure hours would take part in hunting meals. It was only in the Victorian era that picnics became a more common activity across class boundaries. Yet in those days you generally had to bring your own food.
That was changed in the early 1900s, when a beachfront restaurant in Coney Island started the trend of buying food and eating it outdoors, and thus the invention of hot dogs. Soon, more food vendors started offering outdoor seating, especially in popular tourist areas like Coney Island.
There are even lists recommending the best places to eat outdoors in particular cities and the top cities in the world. For instance, numerous street cafes in Paris, the Grove shopping district in Los Angeles, the flash-mob beach themed street at the EM district shopping mall in Bangkok, and the famous Italian restaurant Alto at the rooftop of Selfridges shopping center in London.
Hangzhou strives to provide precise and refined guidance services to business entities, and to build personalized, distinctive and high-quality outdoor businesses in commercial characteristic blocks that can meet the needs of customers and present an attractive image of the city, while people can plan their holidays and events around highly rated outdoor experiences.