According to Tmall data, the turnover of pre-made vegetables during Double 11 this year has increased by approximately 2 times year-on-year
Pre-made dishes, the next trillion catering market?
Text/Guangzhou Daily All-Media Reporter Zeng Fanying Picture/Provided by Interviewee
The pre-made dishes are so fragrant!
In the past two years, pre-prepared dishes have become the "sweet pastry" for consumers in first- and second-tier cities.
In the "Double 11" not long in the past, prefabricated dishes have become "popular" on all major platforms.
Convenience, speed, variety, and taste are not bad, so that it quickly caught the "pain points" of busy urbanites, thus opening the door to the blue ocean market.
Some institutions predict that the scale of China's prefabricated vegetable industry in 2021 is estimated to be 345.9 billion yuan, an increase of 18.1% year-on-year. In the next 6 to 7 years, my country's prefabricated vegetable industry is expected to achieve a scale of more than 3 trillion yuan and become the "next trillion catering market." .
Behind the rapid development is a series of problems.
Industry insiders pointed out that in order to go further, pre-made vegetables must also solve the problems of supply chain and food preservation technology.
Market observation: Pre-made vegetable hot pot sold 200,000 pots a day
"I often buy ten quick menu items and put them in the refrigerator. The week's'big dishes' are basically solved. And there are many types of choices, and there are all kinds of dishes." Ms. Weng, who is engaged in design work, is very busy. When she returns home from get off work every day at least 7 o'clock in the evening, Kuaishou cuisine allows her to quickly eat a warm "home" dinner, which can be eaten as soon as it is hot, saving half an hour compared to cooking.
The reporter found in the interview that there are not a few urban white-collar workers like Ms. Weng. Busy work and too late to make dinner have made "fast food" a consumer trend and catalyzed the booming development of prepared dishes.
Kuaishou dishes, instant dishes, lazy dishes, semi-finished dishes... these various names belong to the "prefabricated dishes".
The reporter learned that prepared vegetable products can be subdivided into four categories, which can be divided into four categories according to the degree of processing: ready-to-eat food, instant hot food, ready-to-cook food, and ready-to-serve food.
Ready-to-eat foods can be eaten directly after opening, while ready-to-eat foods need to be garnished, seasoned, and cooked by themselves. It is the pre-made dish with the most operations in the four categories.
The reporter visited the market and saw that there were quite a variety of pre-prepared dishes, such as braised horseshoe lion head, Buddha jumped over the wall, braised peanut pork knuckle, braised sirloin, spicy crayfish, chopped pepper fish head and other complicated and difficult dishes have been made into pre-prepared dishes. .
This year's "Double 11", pre-made dishes are among the "10 trending single products" released by Tmall New Life Research Institute.
According to data from Tmall, during this year's "Double 11" period, the sales of pre-made vegetables, including semi-finished dishes and instant dishes, were booming, and the turnover increased by about 2 times year-on-year.
Cantonese cuisine, Sichuan cuisine, Hunan cuisine, Northwest cuisine and other classic cuisines have launched semi-finished dishes.
Hema has both online channels and physical stores. According to its introduction, Kuaishoucai’s online sales account for more than 60%.
Ms. Chen, the head of Dingdong Shopping South China, told reporters that the total turnover of Kuaishou dishes this year accounted for 10% of the entire Dingdong Shopping Market, which is one of the fastest growing categories.
"'Dingdong Damanguan' Kuaishou vegetable hot pot has become the most popular product in autumn and winter, and has set a record of 200,000 pot bottoms sold in a single day."
According to iiMedia Consulting's data, the scale of China's prepared vegetable market in 2019 is about 244.5 billion yuan.
The scale of China’s prepared vegetable industry in 2021 is estimated to be 345.9 billion yuan, an increase of 18.1% year-on-year. It is expected that China’s prepared vegetable market will maintain a rapid growth rate of about 20% in the future. The size of the prepared vegetable market will reach 516.5 billion yuan in 2023. In 7 years, my country's prepared vegetable industry is expected to achieve a scale of more than 3 trillion yuan, becoming the "next trillion catering market."
Reasons for the rise: the dual role of the "home economy" and the fast pace of life
The reporter has observed that pre-made dishes are quite useful in the mass consumer market at the C-end and enterprise use at the B-end.
Compared with foreign countries, my country's prefabricated dishes started late. After 2000, deep-processed semi-finished dishes enterprises began to emerge, and the curtain on prefabricated dishes began.
However, due to the immature conditions, the overall development of the industry is relatively slow.
Until 2014, the pre-prepared vegetable industry entered a period of heavy volume at the B side.
The C-end ushered in a period of accelerated consumption last year.
There are reasons behind the prosperousness of pre-made dishes.
Food industry analyst Zhu Danpeng analyzed that from the perspective of the development of the B-end, it is mainly due to the increase in the demand for pre-prepared dishes by the catering companies at the B-end. Stability, "The most important thing is that prefabricated dishes can reduce the number of staff in the kitchen, increase the speed of meals, reduce production costs, and avoid waste of ingredients in production." Under the dual effect of the "home economy" and the fast pace of life, prefabricated Cai "made its debut" in the C-end market last year and ushered in rapid development.
"House culture, lazy economy, and the continuous expansion of cooking Xiaobai all provide prerequisites for the development of prefabricated dishes. Now the C-end prefabricated dishes are mainly for mass consumption, and the ingredients are also popular. In the future, with the upgrading of prefabricated dishes, Do not rule out the emergence of high-end pre-made dishes." However, from the current market share, the B-end still occupies the largest proportion, reaching 80%.
Market demand has prompted many listed companies to deploy a prefabricated vegetable market.
The catering company Guangzhou Restaurant entered the pre-prepared dish track as early as the beginning of last year. The person in charge told reporters that it has launched 20 single products for the C-end market, including beef fried rice, cheese baked rice and other lazy bento boxes, as well as Guangzhou Soy sauce chicken and other home-cooked dishes and traditional sweet and sour pork, Hakka Mei Cai Kourou and other flavor dishes.
The first "weizhixiang" products of prefabricated dishes are more abundant, with more than 200 varieties of prefabricated dishes.
Shengnong Development, China's largest white feather chicken production company, sells over 50 varieties of pre-products.
According to data from Tianyan Check, as of January 2021, there are more than 69,000 pre-made vegetable related enterprises in China, compared with only 4,000 in 2015.
So, which dishes are suitable for pre-made dishes?
The person in charge of the Guangzhou restaurant said that first, the raw materials are difficult to handle, or the dishes with high cooking technology requirements; the second is the dishes that are in line with the lazy economy, simple and quick to operate, convenient to package, and low-cost.
Li Zhong, chairman of Guolian Aquatic Products, believes that foods that are difficult to handle are more suitable.
For example, tuna that is difficult to handle at home.
At present, it has developed nearly 100 kinds of dishes independently.
There are many problems: Is it difficult to personalize taste? Doubt about the shelf life?
The rapid development of prefabricated dishes is also accompanied by a series of problems.
The reporter learned from an interview that the pre-prepared vegetable industry is in the early stage of development, and the difficulty of personalization of taste, shelf life issues and regional development have all become "problems" that urgently need to be resolved.
The reporter's investigation found that the deliciousness of the pre-products was better than expected, approaching the fresh dishes that are being made.
But "personalization" is a headache for the supply side.
The person in charge of the Guangzhou restaurant said that large-scale production requires a reserve of dishes in advance, and it is difficult to fully satisfy everyone’s tastes. Furthermore, the types of dishes have certain local characteristics, while the tastes of Chinese food are regionally different. Large, they are more inclined to regional development at present.
Zhu Danpeng said that for regional pre-prepared dishes to grow nationally, the core thing is to build a nationalized supply chain and a strong cold chain system.
Some enterprises that do pre-prepared vegetables do not have the ability to build channels for national promotion, and enterprises with strong competitiveness have more advantages.
Consumers are concerned about the nutrition and shelf life of prepared dishes.
The reporter saw that the pre-products on the market have a short shelf life and a long shelf life.
Wu Bin, a citizen of Guangzhou, told reporters that he values the freshness of food more. Some frozen pre-prepared vegetables have a shelf life of up to 12 months. Can safety be guaranteed?” The reporter found out that there is no national standard for pre-made dishes.
Hema said that from the perspective of actual consumption, consumers prefer fast-handed dishes with a shorter shelf life, which have a shelf life of only 8-12 days.
The Guangzhou restaurant adopts the quick freezing method in terms of quality preservation, first quickly pass through the -30°C freezing tunnel, and reduce the food center temperature to -18°C within half an hour, which locks the fresh flavor of the product and inhibits the growth of microorganisms.
Zhu Danpeng suggested that in conjunction with the development of terminal dishes, it is necessary to establish product standard operating procedures, build a food safety production inspection system, and continuously iteratively update the production technology of pre-products.
He believes that the iterative update of pre-prepared dishes is very rapid. Making pre-prepared dishes "not eaten from time to time", with more personal elements of Internet celebrity, can form stronger attention and attraction, such as the winter solstice next month, might as well develop the winter solstice solar terms The characteristic differentiated pre-made dishes cater to the needs of the audience.