The market size of prefabricated vegetables is expected to reach 410 billion yuan this year
An effective breakthrough in promoting the transformation and upgrading of the food industry
core reading
Since the beginning of this year, the sales of pre-made vegetables have ushered in rapid growth, which has been welcomed by more and more consumers, and has also attracted many enterprises to invest in the layout, which has become an effective breakthrough in promoting the transformation and upgrading of the food industry.
In the future, multiple parties will need to form a joint force to formulate a unified industry standard for prefabricated vegetables to help the healthy and sustainable development of the industry.
Garlic pork ribs, pork with plums, pickled fish in golden soup, braised beef brisket with tomato... Nowadays, fast and delicious pre-made dishes are brought to people's family table.
In addition to being welcomed by more and more consumers, pre-made dishes have also attracted many catering companies, e-commerce platforms, and investment institutions.
At the same time, many places across the country have introduced measures to support the development of the industry, and relevant standards have also been introduced one after another.
On June 28, the China Hotel Association released two group standards, "Prefabricated Cuisine Quality Management Specification" and "Prefabricated Cuisine Product Classification and Evaluation", to provide standard guidelines for the quality grading and production quality management of prefabricated dishes.
What is the current status of the development of the prepared vegetable industry?
How to regulate and guide to promote its healthy development?
The reporter conducted an interview.
Rapidly growing market demand
"Since I tried pre-made dishes for New Year's Eve dinner this year, I have fallen in love with this cooking method." Chen Xiao, a resident of Longgang District, Shenzhen City, Guangdong Province, is familiar with the pre-made dishes that he often eats: after the ingredients are thawed, they are heated in a microwave on high heat for 10 minutes. In minutes, you will get a plate of flavored grilled fish; boil the concentrated soup with water, add vegetable buns and noodles, and finally put in the fat beef slices, and a delicious meal is done... "Pre-made dishes are more delicious than instant noodles. Takeaway is faster and is very suitable for daily consumption by office workers." Chen Xiao said.
Since the beginning of this year, the sales of prepared vegetables have grown rapidly.
During the "May 1st" holiday, Tmall's sales of pre-made vegetables increased by more than 80% year-on-year, and during the "618" period, it increased by more than 230% year-on-year; in May, the sales of semi-finished pre-made vegetables in Hema Workshop doubled year-on-year.
According to data from the China Prefabricated Vegetable Industry Alliance, the national prefabricated vegetable market is expected to reach 410 billion yuan this year, and may reach a trillion yuan in the next five years.
According to statistics from iiMedia Research, more than 80% of consumers who buy pre-made dishes are between the ages of 22 and 40.
Among the surveyed users, over 80% of users consume pre-made vegetables every week, and customers buy pre-made vegetables mainly to save time.
In the catering industry, pre-made dishes have a long history, and they were mainly supplied to restaurants or hotels in order to improve the standardization of their products and the efficiency of meal delivery.
In recent years, prepared dishes have gradually become popular with ordinary consumers.
For most consumers, buying pre-made vegetables means that they don’t have to buy and wash the vegetables, let alone how to season them. When they get home, they open the package and simply heat or stir fry. In just a few minutes, a delicious dish can be served on a plate. table.
"At present, there is no recognized and unified definition of pre-made dishes. It is generally believed in the catering industry that pre-made dishes are dishes that are produced through standardization and industrialization to meet dining needs." Jin Yong, vice president of the China Restaurant Association, introduced.
Xu Weibing, chairman of Guangzhou Restaurant Group Co., Ltd., introduced that taking the transformation of classic Cantonese cuisine into pre-made dishes as an example, in the process of developing Cantonese Poon Choi, Cantonese chefs first used traditional cooking techniques and ingredients to make Poon Choi. Test, lock the flavor and formula, and then decompose the links such as raw material selection, processing technology, flavor modulation, maturation processing, and fresh-keeping preservation step by step, and seek the optimal industrialization parameters and standard process flow to achieve standardized and reproducible production of pot vegetables. .
Business competition is becoming increasingly fierce
Today, pre-made dishes are not only loved by more and more consumers, but also become a new track that attracts many companies to compete.
"As the demand for home catering consumption continues to increase, the production and operation of prefabricated vegetable companies has grown rapidly. At the same time, the capital market has also paid great attention to and accelerated investment in prefabricated vegetable production and processing, supply chain, industrial park construction and other fields, boosting prefabricated food. The rapid development of the vegetable industry." Jin Yong said.
Catering enterprises to speed up the layout.
Time-honored restaurants such as Guangzhou Restaurant and Tongqinglou, as well as chain catering brands such as Haidilao and Xibei, have launched pre-made dishes one after another.
Xu Weibing said: "As more and more companies deploy prefabricated dishes, the products of prefabricated dishes are increasing. However, it is a difficult problem to restore the color, aroma, taste, meaning and shape of the products, and the tastes of the north and the south are quite different."
Upstream companies go downstream.
Condiment companies such as Lihe Taste, Hengshun Vinegar Industry, and Haitian Flavor Industry have all indicated that they will focus on the research and development of pre-made dishes.
Wang Bin, chairman of Lihe Taste, said: "At present, the prefabricated vegetable market is still in the outbreak period, and most of the prefabricated vegetable companies in the market are in the stage of staking. Rapid expansion of production, low-end production capacity overflow, and increased industry competition intensity.”
E-commerce platforms have entered the game one after another.
E-commerce platforms such as Hema Xiansheng, Meituan Maicai, Jingdong Supermarket, Daily Youxian, and Dingdong Maicai have announced their entry into the pre-made food track.
Li Feng, head of the Meituan Mai Cai prefabricated food project, said: "The e-commerce platform can help catering businesses with no development experience to quickly enter the field of prefabricated dishes, and relying on the platform's sales channels, it can provide more services for catering companies to move from offline to online and offline integration. Help and help regional catering brands go nationwide."
Local governments actively promote.
Since the beginning of this year, Guangdong, Shandong, Fujian, Hebei and other places have introduced prefabricated food industry development policies.
In March, Guangdong issued the "Ten Measures to Accelerate the High-Quality Development of Guangdong's Prefabricated Vegetable Industry", deploying to accelerate the construction of an influential prefabricated vegetable industry highland across the country and the world.
In April, Shandong Weifang released the "Three-Year Action Plan for the High-Quality Development of the Prefabricated Vegetable Industry in Weifang City (2022-2024)", Shouguang and Zhucheng under the jurisdiction of Weifang City rely on their own agricultural foundation and food processing system, and the prefabricated vegetable industry develops rapidly .
The upstream of prefabricated vegetables is connected with rural development, and the downstream is connected with consumption reform, which will become an effective breakthrough to promote the transformation and upgrading of the food industry.
"Relevant departments should strictly control the market access mechanism, strengthen policy and financial support, guide enterprises to make efforts in new product innovation and process upgrading, and encourage enterprises to participate in the formulation and revision of national standards, industry standards and local standards for prefabricated vegetables." Zhucheng Animal Husbandry Development Center Director Xu Lanfang said.
At the same time, industry insiders reminded that it is necessary to prevent excessive investment in the prefabricated vegetable industry. At the moment when the limelight is on the rise, there may be repeated construction and excess production capacity.
Perfect standard healthy development
The prepared vegetable industry has broad market development prospects.
"Pre-prepared vegetables have huge consumer demand, and at the same time are an important link connecting modern agriculture and modern food industry, which is in line with the trend of upgrading agricultural products to food and agricultural supply side upgrading to the demand side, and is conducive to promoting the integration of primary, secondary and tertiary industries in agriculture. , rural supply and urban catering demand integrated development." said Chen Lin, general manager of 22 City Supply Chain.
While the prepared vegetable industry is developing rapidly, it also faces many challenges.
my country has a vast territory and many cuisines, and the regional characteristics of pre-made dishes are obvious, and the development of related enterprises may encounter the bottleneck of geographical restrictions.
In the early stage of the development of the prefabricated vegetable industry, there were also problems such as inconsistent product standards, irregular operation techniques, and unstable nutritional, flavor and quality.
Standardization is an important basis for accelerating the industrialization process of the prepared vegetable industry, and it is also an effective means to promote the healthy development of the industry.
The current lack of industry standards for prepared dishes is changing.
Guangdong organized the pilot work on the construction of a standard system for the whole industry chain of prefabricated dishes in the three major Cantonese cuisines, and gradually formulated and improved a series of standards for prefabricated dishes from the field to the dining table.
On June 2, the China Cuisine Association released four group standards, "Pre-made Dishes", "Guidelines for the Design of Light Food Nutritious Meals", "Industrialized Standardized Chinese Soup" and "Industrialized Standardized Chinese Soup".
However, these standards are mostly local and group-based.
"With the continuous growth of the prefabricated vegetable industry and the rapid development of prefabricated vegetable enterprises, enterprises, associations and governments should increase their efforts to formulate unified prefabricated food industry standards to help the healthy and sustainable development of the entire industry." Jin Yong said.
Our reporter Lin Lili