The emergence of prepared dishes has solved many problems such as "people, efficiency, and cost" in operations, and has greatly lowered the threshold for catering operations. However, at the same time, most prepared dish processing companies are still small, weak, and fragmented, and product innovation is difficult. The overall ability and level are unsatisfactory
New norms are urgently needed in the development of prepared dishes
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As the Spring Festival holiday approaches, pre-made dishes for New Year’s Eve dinner have become a hot topic. From the inclusion of prepared dishes in the Central Government’s No. 1 document to the establishment of the country’s first undergraduate college of prepared food industry... governments from all over the country have taken action to compete for the “capital of prepared dishes”.
The Spring Festival is approaching, and citizens have begun to prepare New Year's goods. In the prefabricated braised roast duck production workshop of Chongqing Zhenbenwei Food Co., Ltd., workers are busy producing braised roast duck, including water bath sterilization, hot air baking, and vacuum packaging. The site is busy and orderly.
After nearly a year of research and soliciting opinions from the industry many times, the "National Standard for Prepared Dishes" was finalized and submitted to the Office of the Food Safety Commission of the State Council for review at the end of 2023. The development of the prepared food industry is inseparable from the support of high-level standardization work, allowing consumers to eat with more confidence.
In the past few years, the development of the prepared vegetable industry has shown a blowout trend, and the scale of the industry has expanded rapidly. Data from Tianyancha shows that my country’s prepared vegetable market will be 419.6 billion yuan in 2022, reaching 600 billion yuan in 2023, and is expected to rise to one trillion yuan in 2026. Data shows that there are currently more than 64,000 companies related to prepared dishes in the country, of which more than 5,000 will be newly registered in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 152.9% in 2022.
Attractive big market
On January 28, in the production workshop of Shangkoujia Company in Liangping District, Chongqing, the reporter saw that the automatic packaging equipment was neatly arranged and operating efficiently. As a leading prefabricated vegetable enterprise in the district, it already has more than 30 fully automatic bag-feeding packaging machines, 3 fully automatic weighing and packaging machines, 3 sterilization production lines, 5 drying lines, and the entire "digital workshop" with an annual output of It can reach 12,000 tons, and the output value exceeded 300 million yuan last year.
Wu Xianliu, director of Chongqing Shangkoujia Food Company, told reporters that the company has established a food safety leadership group to regularly organize reviews of product quality to ensure that the company's product raw material safety acceptance rate is 100% and that the product's third-party inspection pass rate is 100%. Safety "on the tip of your tongue".
In recent times, many advertisements for pre-made dishes for New Year’s Eve dinner can be seen both online and offline. Some well-known restaurants have also launched pre-made meal products for New Year’s Eve dinner. For example, Food Technology Company, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Jinling Hotel, has created a product that covers special pastries, classics, etc. The product system includes five series of braised food, signature prepared dishes, landmark snacks and gift boxes. Quanjude currently has nearly 30 categories of prepared dishes and cooked food products on the market, with good sales momentum.
Industry data shows that during the 2023 Spring Festival, consumers across the country purchased New Year’s Eve dinners. The unit price of meat products such as pigs, beef, and sheep increased by 40% month-on-month. Meat dishes still firmly occupied the C position on the New Year’s Eve dinner table. National sales of prepared dishes alone reached 130 billion yuan, and sales during the Spring Festival accounted for about 20% of the whole year.
On January 27, the production workshop of Xingfu Xibing Southwest Prefabricated Baked Food Production and Distribution Base located in Yongchuan High-tech Zone, Chongqing was busy. Self-baked pizzas were gradually taking shape on the intelligent production line and were about to be on the dining tables of thousands of households. As a leading company in the new field of prefabricated baked goods, the project has achieved an annual output value of 500 million yuan in the first phase, and is expected to have an annual output value of 1 billion yuan after the second phase is completed.
The person in charge of the company said that the workshops are almost at full production capacity. In response to the growing orders, the company actively coordinates transportation resources, strengthens transportation organization, and pays close attention to every link from product development, product offline to delivery to ensure that products are shipped in the shortest time. Delivered to customers internally.
Get into the fast lane
Recently, two news came out of the prepared vegetable industry in Shunde, Guangdong - the Shunde branch of the Guangdong Provincial Prepared Vegetable Industry Joint Research Institute and the Shunde District Prepared Vegetable Industry Development Promotion Center were both listed at the Shunde Food Industrialization Research Institute.
As early as February 2023, the Prepared Food Industry College of Sichuan Tourism University was established, becoming the first industrial college in China established by a public undergraduate college through the integration of industry and education. Subsequently, Sichuan University of Light and Chemical Technology established the College of Prepared Vegetable Industry. By September last year, Yangzhou University’s School of Tourism and Culinary Studies opened the country’s first “prepared cuisine” undergraduate major.
The inclusion of prepared dishes in the Central Government's No. 1 document also gives local governments the confidence to lay out the prepared dish industry and new and old players to seize the opportunities provided by the prepared dish policy. Weifang, Shandong Province last year formulated a three-year action plan for the high-quality development of the prepared vegetable industry, establishing the overall goal of reaching 300 billion yuan in the scale of the entire industry chain in three years, cultivating 3,000 market entities, and building "the first city in China's prepared vegetable industry." The scale of the vegetable industry has exceeded 150 billion yuan and is expected to reach more than 200 billion yuan this year.
"Since the beginning of this year, the market demand for our products has gradually increased, and the supply of products has exceeded demand. At the busiest time, there can be more than 10 transport trucks waiting in line. Since the company settled in Liangping, we have continued to develop various new products for prepared dishes. This year We have newly developed 6 types of porridge star nutritious breakfasts, 9 types of Gu Zhuangyuan drinks and milk teas, and 5 types of stand-up bag soy milk and pudding. Now we have more than 30 kinds of products." said Tang Chaoyan, manager of Chongqing Liangping Gu Zhuangyuan Food Co., Ltd.
Qian Jianchao, secretary of the Liangping District Party Committee, who ranked first in the list of the top 100 national prepared vegetable industry bases in 2023, told reporters that the role of the prepared vegetable industry in "strengthening the second industry, leading the first industry, and activating the third industry" will be fully utilized to build the prefabricated industry in western China. The Vegetable City is the starting point to accelerate the construction of the "three districts, five centers and nine platforms" prepared vegetable industry ecology, and strive to create a 50 billion-level prepared vegetable industry cluster. There are 318 enterprises in the prepared vegetable industry chain in the district, with an output value of 28.016 billion yuan last year. It strives to achieve an annual output value of more than 50 billion yuan in the entire prepared vegetable industry chain by 2025, and to achieve an annual output value of more than 100 billion yuan by 2030.
Fujian has the natural advantage of having both mountains and seas to offer. As one of the eight major cuisines in China, Fujian cuisine is famous far and wide. With the sudden rise of the prepared vegetable industry, Fujian, a major food production province, has also joined this "competition". The person in charge of the Fujian Provincial Investment Promotion Department said that they will encourage the development of prepared medicated dishes, encourage traditional Chinese medicine research institutions, pharmaceutical factories and prepared vegetable food processing enterprises in the province to jointly launch a series of "seasonal medicated diet" products, and introduce targeted investment and introduction of well-known domestic medicated diet production brand enterprises. Form a collective brand influence in the field of medicinal prepared dishes.
From a commercial perspective, prepared dishes are a product of food industrialization. Public data shows that prepared dishes can increase a restaurant’s profit margin by 7 percentage points. At the end of 2023, Guoquan was successfully listed, and Xiaocaiyuan also received financing again. It is understood that there are many catering companies in the industry that are still preparing to apply for IPO and rush into the capital market.
Still in a small, weak, scattered state
"In the past, people's understanding of pre-made dishes often stayed at the simple processing and refrigeration stage, and the product quality was uneven." Tang Xiaotong, chairman of Chongqing Weihai Group, said that with the improvement of food safety awareness and the development of science and technology, pre-made dishes have become more and more popular. Vegetable companies have begun to focus on product research and development and production technology, and use scientific and technological means to improve the taste, quality and nutritional value of products, making prepared dishes no longer just simple processed foods, but high-quality gourmet choices.
As a business returnee from overseas, Tang Xiaotong founded Chongqing Weihai Supply Chain (Group) Co., Ltd. in 2020. It not only produces standardized seasonings and semi-finished pre-prepared dishes, but is different from other companies in that the pre-prepared dishes they provide still maintain the "hot pot spirit" Its unique charm is that the meat products will not taste bad after being fried twice before eating. Last year, its output value exceeded 100 million.
It is undeniable that most of the prepared vegetable processing enterprises are still in a small, weak and fragmented state. The overall technological research and development of prepared dishes is insufficient, and the comprehensive ability and level of product innovation are unsatisfactory, making it difficult to meet the needs of the rapid development of prepared dishes. Not long ago, CCID Consulting's Consumer Economic Research Center released the white paper "Research on the Top 100 Competitiveness of China's Prepared Vegetable Enterprises in 2023", which lists the top 100 most competitive enterprises in China's prepared vegetable production field. Three companies including Qishuang Food, Zhenbenwei and Shangkoujia in Liangping, Chongqing are on the top 100 list, ranking first among the top ten prepared vegetable industry bases in China in 2023.
“The competitiveness evaluation index system for prepared vegetable enterprises has five first-level indicators including enterprise size, quality control capabilities, standards and innovation, brand and market, and risk status, and 11 second-level indicators such as enterprise revenue, quality management, and product quality inspection. "Yu Debiao, director of CCID Consulting's Consumer Economic Research Center, said that the purpose of the evaluation is to promote promotion through evaluation, set a benchmark for the prepared vegetable industry, and promote high-quality development of the industry.
"Being included in this top 100 list has greatly enhanced the company's brand image. We look forward to the early release of the "New National Standard". The company will continue to make efforts in talent reserves, new product development and quality assurance, and launch more products that will satisfy consumers." New products of pre-made dishes." said Jia Wenren, deputy general manager of Zhenbenwei Food Company.
"To avoid homogeneous competition, the development of the prepared food industry requires in-depth thinking about industrial integration, forming an industrial chain cluster effect, jointly opening up all upstream and downstream links, studying regional food characteristics, and developing hygienic, safe, and original specialties." Chinese prepared dishes Xinyuan, the research director of the Industry Alliance, believes that pre-prepared dishes, which are at the forefront, are facing great challenges. Consumers’ demand for freshness, health and deliciousness will not change. What will change is the cooking techniques and techniques of the ingredients. Innovation. (Worker Daily)