Economic Observer reporter Wang Xinning Recently, consumer Xiao Chen's table frequently appeared on the table of local specialties, including many large dishes with complex production processes and long production time: such as Sixi balls, drunken crabs, Cantonese flower rubber chicken, and grassland sheep scorpions. This is not because Xiao Chen went to New Oriental to learn a trip to cook, but because she found new world -—— pre-made dishes when shopping online.
Since January, the wave of the capital market has pushed the concept of prepared dishes to a peak, and a number of related listed companies have received letters of concern from exchanges about the concept of prepared dishes they are involved in due to stock changes. On January 4, The League of Nations Aquatic Products (300094. SZ) closed the limit at 20%, up 116% as of Jan. 17; SZ) won seven consecutive boards from January 12 to 20, an increase of 95.19%. Tongqing Building (605108. SH), Haixin Food (002702. SZ), Fucheng Shares (600965. SH) and other stocks are also active.
According to institutional data, the scale of China's prefabricated vegetable industry is estimated to be 345.9 billion yuan in 2021, an increase of 18.1% year-on-year, and it is expected that China's prefabricated vegetable market will still maintain a growth rate of about 20% in the future, and the scale of the prefabricated vegetable market will reach 516.5 billion yuan in 2023.
Is the pre-made dish really so fragrant?
Consumer impressions
At present, it is the eve of the Spring Festival, in the Shenzhen Hema Fresh Huangting Square store, pre-made dishes occupy more and more shelf booths.
The reporter saw in the store that nearly ten freezer partitions were placed with a variety of prepared dishes. According to the cooking method, the pre-harvested dishes on sale are hot pot, steamed vegetables, stews, stir-fried vegetables, grilled meat and so on.
The hot pot varieties alone include pork belly chicken, coconut chicken, Korean troop pot, seafood pot, sauerkraut fish hot pot and so on. Around 8 p.m. on weekdays, there were only a few coconuts left on the coconut chicken shelves, and the clerk said, "This coconut chicken sold out very well, and it sold out at three or four o'clock in the afternoon." ”
Eat a meal at a coconut chicken restaurant such as Shenzhen Runyuan Four Seasons and Four Seasons Tongren, and the per capita consumption is about 100-150 yuan. The 99 yuan coconut chicken sold by Hema Fresh can be eaten by 2-4 people, which is a cost-effective choice for diners.
Prefabricated dishes refer to finished or semi-finished dishes made of agricultural products, livestock and poultry, aquatic products, etc., with various auxiliary materials, and pre-processed (such as slitting, stirring, pickling, rolling, molding, seasoning, quick-freezing, freezing).
It is not a new thing, and now it has long been accepted by the majority of consumers, frozen food, fast food belongs to the pre-made dishes, such as all kinds of canned, ham sausage, frozen dumplings and so on. However, everyone's impression of this type of food is more that it is occasionally eaten in emergency times, because their varieties are more limited and the taste is relatively single.
The popular pre-made dishes mainly refer to more complex And closer to the people's table Chinese dishes. Chen Liang, an employee of a financial company, lives in a dormitory with a kitchen, but the fast-paced life in first-tier cities has robbed him of his cooking freedom. For Chen Liang, pre-made dishes are currently the best choice to partially replace takeaway.
"I can say that I am lucky not to have to work overtime every day, but when I leave work at 6:30 on weekdays, the company does not care about meals and dinner." Like many young people, Chen Liang used to always order takeaway to solve the problem of three meals, but after a physical examination last year, he began to change his behavior pattern, "Many people my age have fatty liver, and I am close to the upper limit of normal value, I don't know if it is to eat takeaway food." ”
Although he was not sure why, Chen Liang was increasingly trying to do it himself. In food shopping software such as Dingdong or Meituan, the goods under the "Kuaishou Cuisine" column can always attract Chen Liangjia's desire to shop cart. The more he buys are semi-finished dishes, including chicken breast of various brands and Chinese stir-fry. In his opinion, the material bag is less, and the intake of oil and salt can be controlled by itself, which will be healthier.
Ou Houxi, head of Dingdong Buy Vegetable Kuaishou Cuisine, said in an interview in June last year that there were more than 1,000 SKUs on the platform of 'Kuaishou Cuisine', with the national sales of 'Kuaishou Cuisine' exceeding 100 million in April and the sales of East China exceeding 100 million in May. At present, the "Kuaishou Dish" on the home page of the Dingdong APP has been renamed "Pre-made Dish", and its recent data shows that the food related to the Kuaishou Dish of this year's New Year Festival has increased by more than 400% year-on-year.
Compared with Chen Liang, Xiao Chen's channels of contact with prepared dishes are very different. She does not shy away from being a "foodie", and also pays attention to a large number of food content bloggers, and usually a big hobby is to brush the food area video. "I've been wondering for a long time what the food on the screen is, and whether it's as good as it looks. Don't people often brush 'I must buy a mobile phone that can smell when I have money in the future'? That's me! ”
On the road of pre-made dishes, food bloggers have become the leaders of Xiao Chen. "The first time was to buy the golden soup of the old rice bone, because the steps of hanging that soup are too complicated, too difficult, and the consumption of materials is too much, from the hanging soup to the finished product, it takes four or five hours, in order to try this taste, I think it is worth spending this money."
Since then, she has successively purchased drunken crab and shallot oil from the eclipse, fried sauce from old rice bones, sixi balls, and Yunnan rice noodles from The Little Brother of Yunnan Province... More and more content bloggers are starting to make products with their own professional level and influence, so food lovers like Xiaochen have more opportunities to try early.
A post-70s reporter told reporters that not only young people and the "home generation" have a high degree of acceptance of prepared dishes, but also some post-60s and post-70s have begun to buy some pre-made vegetable products when they are feasting. "You can enjoy the taste of the restaurant without going out, why not enjoy it?"
Eight immortals across the sea
At present, the companies involved in the production of pre-made dishes include upstream meat, aquatic products and other fresh ingredient manufacturers, midstream frozen food, fast food and other food manufacturers, downstream e-commerce platforms, brand catering, etc., it seems that the entire industry is eager to try this track.
Guolian Aquatic Products is an aquatic product food enterprise in Zhanjiang, Guangdong Province, which belongs to the aquaculture industry under the shenwan tertiary classification, and its main products are shrimp and tilapia fry, aquatic feed, primary processed products and deep-processed foods.
In recent years, "integrated aquatic products provider" has become the strategic positioning of Guolian Aquatic Products. Since 2019, Guolian Aquatic Products has added a variety of seafood and aquatic dishes to its annual report as a background, echoing its spicy crayfish pasta products and sea bass products.
Since January, Guolian aquatic products have risen rapidly under the concept of pre-made dishes, and the exchange has paid attention to them. In its reply, Guolian Aquatic Products said that the company's prefabricated vegetable revenue in 2019, 2020 and January-September 2021 was 634 million yuan, 730 million yuan and 577 million yuan. The proportion of revenue gradually increased, 13.69%, 16.24%, and 17.49% respectively.
Similar to The League of Nations Aquatic Products, Sungnong Development (002299. SZ) based on chicken wings, chicken breast and other semi-finished dishes, Great Lakes shares (600257. SH) based on freshwater aquatic products, minced pepper fish heads and sauerkraut black fish fillets, both allow agricultural products to flow directly from the breeding base in the form of prepared dishes to consumers' tables.
As a veteran pre-made dish, quick-frozen food is naturally not willing to fall behind in this beach race. In 2018, yasui Foods (603345. SH) set up the "Mr. Frozen Product" Outsourcing Division to focus on new products with potential in the catering market. In 2020, Xiamen Anjing Frozen Products Supply Chain Co., Ltd. was established, and Yasui Foods held 70% of its shares.
The model of Anjing Food is to integrate upstream small and medium-sized ingredient manufacturers in the asset-light operation mode, OEM production for "Mr. Frozen Product", develop and promote all kinds of hot pot peripheral ingredients and prepared dishes suitable for multi-regional and multi-channel sales nationwide, and there are tempura shrimp, fried pork ribs, and various types of boiled fish fillets that are currently on sale. According to the company's annual report, in 2020, its dish products achieved revenue of 673 million yuan, an increase of 23.26% year-on-year, accounting for 9.66% of the total revenue.
Sanquan Foods (002216. SZ) and Haixin Food have also launched related products, but they are less mentioned in the announcement, and the online sales are much smaller than those of Yasui Foods.
If pre-made dishes are an option for middle and upper-tier enterprises to find high gross profit growth points, then for catering companies, the impact of the epidemic on them may make prepared dishes become a must.
Jia Guolong, chairman of Xibei Noodle Village, recently said publicly that prefabricated dishes will be the key direction of Xibei in the future, "Jia Guolong Kung Fu Dishes" has been placed on the company's core strategic position, and the goal for the next ten years is 100 billion yuan of operating income. Jia Guolong Kung Fu cuisine focuses on beef, mutton products and some northern pastries, but its product varieties are also expanding to various regional dishes.
There may not be many companies like Xibei that make their goals public, but there are many catering brands that also start from catering, and have strength and reputation are also making a muffled effort, including many Chinese time-honored brands.
Buddha jumping wall is a classic dish in Fujian, raw materials include fish belly, sea cucumber, abalone, chicken, duck, ham and other dozens of raw materials, the production process is cumbersome and long, from the preparation of vegetables to the finished product takes less than a few days, more than a dozen days, such a complex, and high price of dishes is the catering brand favored prefabricated dishes varieties. Searching for "Buddha Jumping The Wall" on Taobao, guangzhou restaurants, heyuan restaurants, Juchun Garden, Tao Taoju and other old stores ranked first in the list.
To Guangzhou Restaurant (603043. SH) is concerned, the impact of the epidemic on the catering business is obvious, with its catering industry operating income of 489 million yuan in 2020, down -26.7% from the previous year, while the operating cost of 462 million yuan, an increase of 85.15% over the previous year. Costs are about to catch up with revenue, with gross margins down 57.13%. However, its overall revenue continued to grow, mainly due to the fast-growing mooncake business and the frozen food business in recent years.
Guangzhou Restaurant said that in response to the normalization of the epidemic, it will launch differentiated products such as potted dishes, quick-frozen dishes, and set dishes. At present, its pre-made dishes are mainly based on New Year dishes, and sales are concentrated before the Spring Festival, and its relevant staff told reporters that the pre-made vegetable business has been established before the epidemic, but the proportion is relatively small and has not been listed separately.
Huatian Hotel (000428. Tan Guohua, head of Hunan Huatian Xiangcai Industry Development Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of SZ), told reporters that prefabricated dishes have been available for several years, mainly for Chinese New Year's Eve rice and banquet dishes. At present, there are two kinds of pre-made dishes launched by his hotel: one is factory-produced, and the other is handmade by the hotel itself. "Before the epidemic, some pre-made dishes were mainly produced by factories, and the hotel research and development center made the formula and sent it to a professional manufacturer to make it. After the epidemic, the homemade part of the hotel's catering became very popular. Then the latter has two forms of sales, one is that the guests book a family banquet for a certain day in advance, and our chef will fry the dishes and deliver them home on the same day. The other is specialty products, such as a portion of plum button meat, crispy chicken, crispy duck, Buddha jumping wall and so on. Tan Guohua said.
At the same time, he also told reporters that not all dishes are suitable for prefabricated dishes, at least at the current level of technology, including personalized products, vegetables, especially leafy vegetables, and dishes that need to be carefully crafted.
Trend?
A consumer commented on January 16 at the bottom of the purchase page of a product in the Tmall flagship store in Tongqinglou: "A box of a few pieces of meat, but also fat." But buying Tongqinglou stocks earned more than 10,000 yuan in two days, so give praise. "At least two pieces of information are revealed, first, the commodity itself may not be well in line with consumer expectations; second, the concept of pre-made dishes is too hot in the secondary market.
In the past two days, the concept of prepared dishes has been corrected, such as the previous surge in the League of Aquatic Products has fallen by 22.37% compared with the recent high. Some institutions have suggested the risk of short-term overheating of the plate. According to the Research Report of Guojin Securities, the prefabricated vegetable industry has low barriers to entry and high difficulty in expansion, and there are many players in the industry and the pattern is scattered. The difficulty of single product production is low, but the difficulty of raw material procurement, inventory management, and flexible production has increased significantly after the expansion of categories.
Despite this, in the eyes of many people, pre-made dishes are not only a current outlet, but also the general trend of the food industry in the future.
For the popularity of prepared dishes, Tan Guohua believes that consumer demand is the driving force. He said that on the one hand, the pace of people's lives is too fast now, and it takes too much time to prepare dishes and cook, on the other hand, the epidemic has indeed changed the consumption mode of people's catering, and everyone's catering mode has moved from socialization to family, "like before our guests came to the store to eat for the New Year, and now some people book a pre-made family banquet." The hotel's shift from only making dine-in food, to takeaway, to pre-made dishes, is in line with the trend of the consumer side. ”
In addition, prepared dishes are also good for restaurant operators. "First, the labor cost of on-site production is very high and too high, and the second is to put it into mass production in the central kitchen, and our raw materials can be centrally purchased in large quantities, from the place of origin to the factory, eliminating the cost of middlemen." In addition to reducing costs, pre-made dishes can achieve uniform standards, guests have the same feelings, and there will be no situation where the chef is in a bad mood and the taste is not good. ”
Tan Guohua also mentioned that the rapid development of prefabricated dishes in the past two years is inseparable from equipment innovation and the improvement of factory production technology. "In the past, there was no such condition for making pre-made dishes, and the manufacturers were also some small workshops, and the safety aspect could not reach the standard, and the degree of reduction of the dishes at home was very poor, and it was certainly not a taste to eat and make on the spot." Now that you try it again, it's hard to make a difference. ”
This is also recognized by Zhu Yi, an associate professor at the College of Food Science and Nutritional Engineering at China Agricultural University. Just a few days before the interview, she had just attended a pre-made dish tasting meeting, and her deepest feeling was that when the plates of pre-made dishes were presented in front of her in exquisite utensils, even after eating them in her mouth, it was difficult to distinguish between true and false dishes made on the spot.
Zhu Yi believes that pre-made dishes may have come to a time when, the location is favorable, and the people are in place, "The previous clean dishes were a bit of a shadow of the pre-made dishes, but it can be said that they died in the middle of the way because of the unexpected, and at that time, both consumers and the supply side were not prepared." Now the development of cold chain logistics and the application of rapid freezing technology have made great progress in diversifying dishes, simplifying operations, and restoring tastes, which consumers can accept. ”
For the nutritional value and possible risks of prepared dishes, Zhu Yi said that at this technical level of food preservation, there is actually no need to worry about a large loss of nutritional value, and merchants do not need to add preservatives, which has long been applied to meals such as train box lunches.
However, she also mentioned that the industry is still in the ascendant, and many details of the problem need to be refined, upgraded and iterated. Because the production chain of prefabricated dishes is long and involves more links, the risk points will increase accordingly.
Zhu Yi believes that the future development of prefabricated dishes is inseparable from a problem. "Who are you?" Where are you from? It can determine where you go. In other words, we get a pack of prepared dishes, and if you don't write it clearly, even if the content is terrible, you may not be able to eat it. I also mentioned to the participating manufacturers that I hope that when eating prepared dishes, I can figure out who grows the raw materials, who raises them, where they bought them, and who made the dishes, so that their origins are innocent, so that everyone's trust in the prepared dishes will go to a higher level. ”
(Chen Liang and Xiao Chen are pseudonyms in the text)
Wang Xinning is a reporter of the Economic Observer
(The Economic Observer)
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