Young people who don’t know how to cook and want to cook have cultivated a billion-dollar market for lazy condiments
Author: Liu Xiaojie, Editor: Le Yan
Whether it's because of health or saving money, or driven by food bloggers, more and more young people are starting to cook for themselves.
This also brings business opportunities to "lazy seasoning".
There are more and more young people who love to cook.
Gulu has been learning to cook by herself since she graduated, and posted the cooking process and results in Xiaohongshu. At present, she belongs to the head food blogger in Xiaohongshu. Within a year, her account is "Gulu Kids". The fans of Xiaohongshu have reached 370,000, with nearly 800,000 likes and collections.
The content of Gulu Xiaohongshu is basically a food graphic with the theme of "refusal to take out".
Gulu mentioned that he often ordered takeaways when he was in college, but the choice of takeaways was not great. "After eating for a long time, I get tired, and social news often exposes some unsanitary content of takeaways, so I learned to cook by myself." "Refusal to take out" has insisted on cooking for a year.
The best content of Gulu's data has been praised and collected by more than 50,000. In this graphic, Gulu compiled a collection of foods that he "refused to take out for 36 days" and calculated the average cost of cooking by himself. A meal is only 9.35 yuan. .
Under this comment, some netizens asked for tableware and tutorials, and some netizens commented to learn from Gulu, "Maybe takeout is healthy and save money."
Under the call of gourmet bloggers like Gulu, more and more young people are beginning to try cooking.
Xiao Yuan, who has always focused on ordering food, mentioned that the idea of cooking has been germinated because of the pictures and videos of various food bloggers.
Whether it's because of health or saving money, or driven by food bloggers, more and more young people are starting to cook for themselves.
Lazy seasoning ushered in rapid growth
According to the latest industry statistics from iResearch, the market size of China's condiment industry will grow by 18% in 2020, which is much higher than the growth rate of the past 6 years.
Young people are falling in love with the kitchen, but as a kitchen novice, there is a conflict between their stretched skills and actual needs.
As a result, hot pot base ingredients, spicy fragrant pot ingredients, boiled fish ingredients and other "one-click copy taste" lazy seasonings have a larger market.
As a busy office worker, Rose doesn't have much time to cook, but as a novice mother, for the sake of health, she rarely orders takeaways like before. Currently, she mainly cooks with her mother, but is slowly learning to cook by herself.
Rose likes to use cooking methods to decompress. "When I'm free, follow the recipe and learn an easy-to-make dish, and I will be very happy after it is finished."
Just last week, Rose just learned a cooked drunk big head shrimp, using the "cooked drunk cold soaked sauce" on the fresh distribution platform. "The whole process is very simple, just boil the water, put the big head prawns in, and cook. After it's cooked, soak it in cold water for a while, then soak it in the juice and put it in the refrigerator to chill... This seasoning makes this dish easy to make."
Rose believes that the lazy seasoning is suitable for busy office workers and is a faster and more convenient choice. "If you order takeaway, this dish is hard to find. If you go out to find such a restaurant to eat this dish, the time will be paid. There are many, but at home you can place an order for condiments and ingredients on the APP, and it takes ten minutes to make it, which is very convenient."
In addition, the advantage of lazy seasoning is that the quality of the dishes is more stable, and the price is good. “It’s a good deal for only 9.9 yuan.” Rose said: “I hope that there will be more and more convenient lazy seasonings so that more people can enjoy cooking. The joy of food."
Young people who don't know how to cook have contributed to the development of lazy condiments.
It not only reduces the difficulty of cooking but also saves time, the compound seasoning is welcomed by novices and ushered in the opportunity for rapid growth.
According to Frost&Sullivan's statistics, the penetration rate of compound seasonings in my country has been rapidly increasing in recent years, reaching a level of 25.97% in 2018, but there is still a big gap compared with the penetration rate of over 50% in countries such as Japan, South Korea and the United States.
Therefore, what the market needs to consider is, what kind of compound seasoning do young people like?
According to my country's condiment classification standards, seasonings prepared with two or more condiments and specially processed can be called compound condiments.
According to the division, chicken essence and sauce and vinegar are also suitable for seasonings, but their distinction is not very large. Therefore, this article discusses compound seasonings that are closer to "lazy people" and can be customized with one click. Young people buy these seasonings. What to consider when making materials?
Zhiwan is an experienced user of Lazy Seasoning. There is a drawer of various types of seasonings in the kitchen.
Since she followed her husband to settle in Northern Europe, in order to satisfy her Chinese stomach, Zhiwan bought a lot of Chinese lazy condiments before going abroad.
According to Zhiwan, she uses lazy seasoning once or twice a week, usually when cooking hard dishes, such as boiled beef, steamed pork, pickled fish and so on.
She often uses Mapo tofu, large plate chicken, hot pot base, mixed fabrics, spicy fragrant pot, mao cai, boiled fish, etc., which are some of the popular dishes that have been verified by the offline catering market.
For Zhiwan, the lazy seasoning is that it tastes authentic, not easy to make mistakes, and is simple and convenient, even for foreigners. It is not complicated even for foreigners. Face." Zhiwan said with a smile.
In the local Super League, lazy seasoning is twice as expensive as in China, but compared to the expensive takeaways in Northern Europe, Zhiwan believes that cooking with lazy seasoning is more cost-effective.
For most consumers, there is no opportunity for Zhiwan to try various types of seasonings, but they have used hot pot base and boiled fish/sauerkraut fish more or less. The market size of seasonings also ranks among the top three in the compound seasoning industry.
According to Frost&Sullivan's forecast, the scale of hot pot bottom materials will reach 33.2 billion yuan in 2021. The Industrial Securities Research Report shows that the market size of pickled cabbage fish will reach 24.3 billion yuan, which is similar to the size of hot pot materials.
As a food blogger, Gulu has used lazy seasonings in stewed dishes, including hot pot ingredients and boiled fish ingredients.
As an experienced food lover, Jiajia has also used hot pot ingredients and boiled fish ingredients. She believes that some dishes are indeed inseparable from seasonings. "Like dry pot hot pot, it is impossible to use only salt and Soy sauce can be fried and delicious, but you need to prepare a lot of ingredients for your own frying. You may not be able to finish it in an hour or two. "If you cook everything by yourself, it will be very troublesome to cook. "Think of so many steps. , Just gave up."
For most consumers, cost performance and brand are factors that will be taken into consideration when choosing lazy condiments.
Gulu has tried all kinds of hot pot ingredients, but the frequency of using good people is relatively high, which is "high cost performance." Jiajia favors Dahongpao. It and Haoren hot pot ingredients belong to Sichuan Tianwei Foods' brands, and they are also "cheap and cost-effective." good to eat".
The reporter compared the prices of e-commerce flagship stores of various hot pot base brands and found that the actual price of Haorenjia and Dahongpao hot pot base for a pound of about 19-26 yuan, while Mingyang hot pot ingredients and Li Ziqi hot pot base ingredients , The same weight, the price will rise more than ten yuan.
In addition to the brands mentioned above, according to Zhiwan, in local supermarkets, the brands she often buys include Qiaotou, Baijia and Haidilao, which are often seen on the shelves.
At present, the competitive landscape of the compound seasoning industry is still relatively scattered, and there is no obvious first echelon.
Relying on social media and e-commerce to break through
In addition to competition between traditional brands, with the help of social media and e-commerce channels, more new brands also want to take a share in the compound seasoning market.
For example, the compound seasoning brand that won two rounds of financing in half a year adds a bit of flavor, and Xiaoxiong, which was established in 2017, arrives.
At the same time, lifestyle supermarkets such as Hema and Sam also use existing channels to develop their own composite seasoning brands, and use social media platforms to plant grass and promote them to achieve the final transaction conversion.
The way to make cooked drunk shrimp with Rose cold soaking sauce comes from the recipes of the netizens on the kitchen app. "I just want to make cooked drunken prawns. Open the kitchen app and prepare to learn it. It is very convenient to see a recipe. I used a cold cannon. Juice, the method is very simple."
In the same kitchen, I searched for spicy pot recipes and recommended the top one. The main seasoning used is Haidilao’s spicy pot seasoning. This recipe has been collected by 260,000, showing that more than 1,000 people have followed it.
In addition to the kitchen platform, many interviewees also mentioned Xiaohongshu's guidance on buying condiments.
Xiao Yuan said that when she was visiting Xiaohongshu, she saw someone recommending the "Sam Must Buy" series and planting spicy marinade.
The reporter searched for spicy marinade on Xiaohongshu and found that Sam’s spicy marinade had many recommendations, one of which was liked and collected over 2500.
Lily studying abroad often cooks herself. She is also a user of lazy condiments. She mentioned that she would also refer to bloggers’ recommendations when buying condiments. In the video of self-cooking, some seasoning packs will be mentioned, and Amway will be accepted."
In addition, Internet celebrity Li Ziqi, food writer Wang Gang and other video bloggers have also launched their own hot pot base products after accumulating fans.
Zhiwan often watched Wang Gang’s videos while cooking. Food writer Wang Gang will show the whole process of making hot pot sauce in the video. After watching it, he felt very curious. Zhiwan said that he wanted to try Wang Gang's sauce pack recently.
Not all young people will pay
Young people will not fully accept compound spices.
Considering cost and health issues, precise users of lazy seasonings are still young people who are not good at cooking or have little time.
As an experienced food lover, Jia Jia only uses compound seasonings for a few stews.
She believes that compound seasonings are not easy to store and clean up. “Many seasonings are sauce-packed and cannot be used up at a time. It is difficult to clean up.” On the other hand, the cost is too high. If you buy a bag of ingredients for yuan, it’s gone for a meal. Add meat and vegetables, and you have to cook it yourself, so the cost is high."
Part of it will take into account health issues.
Gulu doesn’t use lazy seasoning too much. “Although it is convenient and fast and saves time and cost, it is still processed after all, so occasionally there is still a little worry about the ingredients.” So Gulu is mostly the case. Prepare your own materials.
Lily also controls the amount of lazy seasoning.
"I always think that the lazy seasoning is not healthy. The recipe is made according to the method of high oil, high salt, and high sugar. Although it tastes particularly good, it cannot be eaten often."
For condiment companies, in addition to considering large-scale cost reductions and making more dishes and flavors suitable for different regions, they also need to consider how to make healthier condiments and gain consumer recognition.
(In the text, Gulu, Xiao Yuan, Rose, Jiajia, and Lili are all pseudonyms)