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The next trillion catering track prefabricated dishes ushered in a new "player", former Luckin Chairman Lu Zhengyao founded a new project "Tip of the Tongue Workshop" officially entered the prefabricated dishes track.
Lu Zhengyao "changed his career" to catering and food after the Luckin storm to create the "Fun Noodles" brand, and said that "this is his last stop before retirement", and seemed determined to do a big job, but after 3 months of operation, the first store of "Fun Noodles" in Beijing Phoenix Hui Shopping Center has been closed, 14 stores across the country are showing rest, and the brand has also changed its name to "Fun Bayu" to sell hot pot pot pot.
Titanium Media found that the company behind "Fun Bayu" is Tongue Tip Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd., which owns the prefabricated dish brand "Tip workshop", and Lu Zhengyao is the chairman of the strategy committee, which also received a RMB 550 million Series A financing led by Yingke Capital in August 2021.
Lu Zhengyao made a big move again? What is the appeal of the pre-made dish, which attracted Lu Zhengyao to lead Shenzhou Car Rental and Luckin Coffee founder Ma to join the "fight"?
Capital chases deer to "turn red" pre-made dishes
In the past week, the 21 prefabricated vegetable concept stocks in the Shanghai and Shenzhen sectors have continued to strengthen, and the main targets have been rising and stopping, what is the "demon wind" of the prefabricated concept stocks?
Shanxi Securities Research Report predicts that the space scale of China's prepared vegetables is expected to reach 340 billion yuan in 2021, an increase of 18% year-on-year. In the next 3-5 years, the mainland prepared vegetable industry is expected to become the next trillion catering market.
Investment institutions in the primary market have also long been eyeing this "fat meat", including Qingsong Fund, Zero One Venture Capital, Donghe Capital, Yuanjing Capital, Innovation Factory, Xingtuo Capital, Zero2IPO Asset Management, Yusheng Capital, etc.
According to the data of enterprise investigation, since 2013, a total of 71 investment and financing incidents have occurred in the prefabricated vegetable track, and the total amount of disclosed financing has exceeded 1 billion yuan, involving 42 projects. From the perspective of financing time, 2015-2016 is the peak period of financing, there are 14 and 17 financing events respectively, 2020-2021 is another peak period of financing, there are 12 financings in the prefabricated vegetable track in 2020, and there are 13 financings so far in 2021.
In 2021, the prefabricated vegetable track investment and financing
For this phenomenon, Peng Yu, vice president of the industrial investment division of Yingke Capital, said in an interview with Titanium Media App: "The prefabricated vegetable industry is currently in the development stage of horse racing, and I believe that after full market competition screening, the industry will grow a number of leading and innovative benchmarking enterprises." ”
Prepared dishes are not new.
We have long been in contact, when we were young, the silver heron eight treasure porridge, soaked foot claws and other foods that can be eaten after opening, the supermarket's three full-speed frozen dumplings, hand cakes, steamed buns and other foods that can be eaten after addition, are all in the category of pre-made dishes, we first call it "old pre-made dishes".
Different from the recent emergence of "new pre-made dishes", that is, ready-cooked foods that are heated and then stir-fried with stir-fry ingredients and cooked, as well as ready-to-use foods for semi-finished clean dishes with cooking ingredients. There is currently no academic definition of prepared dishes, and from the degree of processing, they can be briefly divided into four categories: ready-to-eat food, instant hot food, instant cooking food, and ready-to-eat food.
Looking back at history, pre-made dishes originated in the United States in the 1940s, began to be commercialized in the 1960s, and ushered in a rapid growth of 20% in the late 1980s with the rapid development of the Japanese economy. After decades of development, the United States and Japan have grown into large-scale prefabricated enterprises with great influence in the world, such as Sysco, Conigera, Tyson, Nichiren, Kobe & Co., Ltd. and so on.
Looking back at China, with the entry of McDonald's and KFC fast food restaurants in the 1990s, prefabricated vegetable processing plants began to appear in China, but due to immature conditions at that time, the overall development of the industry was relatively slow. Until 2015, the number of prefabricated vegetable enterprises registered exceeded 4,000 for the first time, exceeded 8,000 in 2018, and 12,500 new registrations in 2020, an increase of 9% year-on-year, these data seem to indicate that the golden period of the prefabricated vegetable industry has arrived.
Compared with foreign countries, data show that the size of the US prefabricated vegetable market in 2020 is 45.4 billion US dollars; the japanese prefabricated vegetable market size in 2020 is 23.85 billion US dollars, with an industry penetration rate of more than 60%; the size of China's prefabricated vegetable market is about 200 billion yuan, and the industry size is expected to grow to about 600 billion yuan by 2025, while the penetration rate is only 8%, and the low penetration base means that the future is bright.
How could an eagle-like astute capital miss the next trillion-dollar catering track?
Who's boosting pre-made dishes?
Prefabricated dishes have attracted widespread attention from capital and the public, which is inseparable from the promotion of four elements of catering standardization, takeaway, epidemic situation, and e-commerce new retail.
Prepared dishes are an inevitable product of catering standardization. After the international fast food giant entered China in the 1980s and 1990s, the clean food distribution factory began to appear in China as a link in its mature standardized supply chain. Since 2005, long-established catering stores such as Xinya and Quanjude have begun to launch pre-made dishes with their own characteristics, but it has always been difficult to grow. After 2010, the process of expanding the model of restaurant brand chain stores began to accelerate, at this time, the requirements for the taste and quality stability of the dishes produced by its brand stores were higher than those of traditional restaurants, and it was difficult to guarantee if all of them were made by chefs. On the other hand, the increase in labor costs has also prompted restaurants to start thinking about how to improve the efficiency of the ping, reduce the dependence on chefs, and the demand for prepared dishes at the big B end is gradually opening up.
According to the data of the China Chain Store & Franchise Association, more than 74% of the chain catering enterprises in China have built their own central kitchens and distributed prefabricated dishes to stores, of which the proportion of prefabricated dishes used by the head chain catering enterprises has been relatively high, and the proportion of pre-made dishes eaten by enterprises such as Zhen Kung Fu, Yoshinojia, Xibei, and Xiaonanguo has reached more than 80%.
The timeliness of takeaway forced small B-end merchants to be more inclined to purchase semi-finished pre-made dishes. In 2014, the takeaway industry appeared, takeaway merchants began to race, in addition to the competition on the discount, in the speed of catering also began to PK, according to the rules of the platform side of the store need to be 30 minutes -1 hour to deliver the meal to the user's hands, the time left for the restaurant enterprise is only about ten minutes, in such a short period of time, standardized semi-finished products become the best choice for takeaway businesses. Large-scale small B-end customers began to use prepared dishes, and the industry ushered in a second rise. It is worth noting that fresh retail supply chain enterprises such as Shuhai and Hema have begun to lay out prepared dishes at this stage.
The epidemic has made the prepared dish jump from the B-end to the C-end table. Under the epidemic situation, many restaurants are closed, everyone is also worried about the risk of eating out, when many users are worried about how to cook, Haidilao, Xibei and other powerful catering companies quickly make market responses, launch self-heating hot pot, fast food and other products, through such a simple operation of pre-made dishes model, that is, to solve the consumer cooking difficulties, but also to solve the contactless, but also offset part of the loss of dine-in.
The rise of e-commerce and new retail channels has allowed pre-made dishes to reach users quickly and conveniently. According to Tmall data in 2021, the turnover of pre-made dishes during the Double 11 period increased by about 2 times year-on-year, ranking among the "10 trend items" released by the Tmall New Life Research Institute, and the Kuaishou cuisine hot pot of the new retail channel Dingdong to buy vegetables set a record of 200,000 pots sold in a single day. In this regard, Hema also said that taking the data of the first quarter of 2021 as an example, 54% of post-95 Hema consumers often buy their own ingredients to cook, and semi-finished dishes/prepared dishes are one of their favorite commodities, and the purchase ratio has reached twice that of post-65s.
The data shows that the main consumption force of e-commerce and new retail channels is the post-80s and post-90s groups, and this part of the population has to face busy work on the one hand, and on the other hand, it has to face the "century problem" of eating. "If after work, you can simply heat for 5 minutes to get a yellow stewed chicken rice, I think it can instantly enhance the happiness of life is also very time-saving, too busy at work, no time to cook, and do not want to always eat outside." 」 Consumer Xiao Watermelon (pseudonym) said in an interview with Titanium Media.
Peng Yue, vice president of Yingke Capital's industrial investment business unit, said: "The domestic young and middle-aged catering customers are leading the consumption changes in the catering industry, and the demands of taking into account quality, efficiency and convenience are becoming increasingly apparent, and they are also cultivating potential customers for the development of the prefabricated vegetable industry. ”
B and C are fighting each other to divide the trillion market
Huachuang Securities expects that from the overall point of view, the current scale of the mainland prefabricated vegetable market is about 200 billion, of which the B-end is 180 billion and the C-end is 40 billion, and the compound growth rate in the past decade has remained at about 20%, of which the compound growth rate from 2014 to 2019 is about 30%.
From Haidilao, Xiaolongkan to Jiumaojiu, Xibei, from Meizhou Dongpo, Guangzhou Restaurant to KFC, from hot pot to fast food, from traditional Chinese food to Western food, the head catering enterprises of major categories and major cuisines have launched their own pre-made dishes and entered the war situation strongly.
Veteran catering brands are moving towards a new battlefield, Haidilao through its "open meal" brand launched more than 10 convenient dishes that only need to cook for 5 minutes, and delivered to home in Beijing 24 hours; "Jia Guolong Kung Fu Dish" of Xibei noodles has more than 200 stores, consumers can either buy in the store and heat it up, or buy and deliver it to their homes through online channels.
New retail store e-commerce is not to be outdone, Dingdong buy vegetables from January 2021, the total transaction volume of Kuaishou dishes in its large market has doubled 3 times, and now has reached 10%, becoming one of the fastest growing categories; Hema as early as 2020 after the epidemic set up 3R business department (that is, hot instant cooking), and force its own semi-finished product brand "Hema Workshop" into the field of prefabricated dishes, data statistics, Kuaishou vegetables in hema fresh line sales accounted for more than 60%, including many hema own brand products.
Entrepreneurial prefabricated vegetable companies are also in this wave, and quickly get financing. For example, the aforementioned Lu Zhengyao's new "Tip of the Tongue Workshop" received a RMB 550 million Series A financing led by Yingke Capital in August 2021. It advocates "everyone can easily become a chef", that is, cooking products standardize Chinese cooking, providing A package of main ingredients, B package of accessories side dishes, C package cooking sauce, consumers can cook through simple steps, three minutes to make a dish.
It is worth mentioning that the tip of the tongue workshop subverts the traditional store form, the product uses combined assembly, flexible combination according to demand, with the online APP browsing and purchasing methods, greatly liberating the display space and storage space of the store. Therefore, compared with the traditional display supermarket, the area demand of the store is different, and the tip of the tongue workshop can easily open a store with a minimum of only 8 square meters. Li Yingbo, rotating CEO of Tongue Tip Technology, said in an interview with Titanium Media App: "This innovative store model, with small investment and high efficiency, greatly reduces the difficulty of site selection, and also allows the tip of the tongue workshop to sink efficiently, infinitely close to consumers, and truly become the closest supermarket to customers." ”
"The players of the prefabricated vegetable track will cut into the market from multiple angles, some from the upstream supply chain, some from the channel, a number of catering brands, and some compound condiments, and there will be many players on this track." Wang Weiwei, managing partner of Huaying Capital, said.
The front is full of "roadblocks"
The wind of prefabricated dishes in the primary market and the secondary market is hot, but from the perspective of market penetration, the mainland's prepared dishes are still in their infancy, which is full of opportunities and is also full of "roadblocks, especially at the C-end."
First and foremost is the highly fragmented food and beverage market. Prefabricated dishes are born out of the catering industry and rooted in the catering industry, and must not escape the pattern of the catering market. China's food service market revenue increased from 2.8 trillion yuan in 2014 to 4.7 trillion yuan in 2019, with a compound annual growth rate of 10.9%, while Chinese catering accounted for about 80% of China's food service market, and the market size is huge.
"On the other hand, there is a problem of a high degree of fragmentation of the market. The competitive landscape of the domestic catering industry is very fragmented, with the chain rate of China's catering industry being only about 10% (vs. 54% in the United States, the global average of 27%), and the catering brand CR5 is only about 2%. The reason why it is very important is that a considerable proportion of traditional restaurants lack the awareness of standardization and scale, and the dishes and processes between various stores are often unable to be standardized, and it is difficult to achieve rapid replication and effective expansion. Supply chain instability, most of the catering enterprises in the effective radius of the store to buy ingredients and accessories in the vegetable market, the quantity, price of uncontrollable, once the enterprise began to expand, from the bottom up to build a supply chain system costly, the comprehensive ability requirements are high, the supply chain immediately became a bottleneck in development. Peng Yu, vice president of the industrial investment division of Yingke Capital, said.
In addition to the supply chain, the region is also part of the decentralization, Sichuan cuisine, Cantonese cuisine, Lu cuisine, Su cuisine, Zhejiang cuisine, Fujian cuisine, Hunan cuisine, Hui cuisine eight major cuisines have their own characteristics and representative dishes, users have different preferences for it, each cuisine has its user group, plus internet red innovative dishes emerge in an endless stream, users can not escape the nature of early adopters, this phenomenon for a brand of prepared dishes "unified rivers and lakes" is also full of difficulties and challenges.
"Behind the bottleneck is an opportunity, and the prefabricated vegetable industry has also ushered in an opportunity." Peng Yu, vice president of the industrial investment division of Yingke Capital, said. But at the same time, the decentralized nature of the catering industry will inevitably lead to the marketization of prepared dishes.
Wang Weiwei, a partner at Huaying Capital, also said: "At present, decentralization is a high probability, and its essence is pure vegetables + seasonings. ”
Finally, there is the taste and repurchase rate. Chinese is still accustomed to eating freshly fried dishes, thinking that the taste and ingredients just out of the pot are the freshest and most delicious eating moment, then how to make the taste of the prepared dish to make a hot stir-fry, so that users will not feel that there is a difference This is on the one hand, on the other hand, how to continuously expand the SKU and repurchase rate while satisfying the user's taste buds, even if the delicious pre-made dish, the user will continue to eat it.
Behind a thriving pre-made dish, there are thorns and challenges. What is left for capital is when it is more appropriate to start, how to break through the "roadblocks" and go longer and farther with the industry, and what is left for investors is when to enter the market and will not do leeks. (This article was first published on the Titanium Media App, and the author |.) Guo Hongyu)