preface:
With the approaching of the Chinese New Year and the continuous rise of the local New Year atmosphere, pre-made dishes have not only become a hot topic of people's after-dinner conversation, but also one of the important catalysts for the soaring stock price of pre-made vegetable concept stocks in the stock market.
The topic of "prepared dishes" and capital market-related concept stocks are very popular, but most people do not know the specific meaning or classification of "prepared dishes". In the author's visit to the wet market, to the uncles and aunts who buy vegetables and cook, ask about the understanding of "prepared dishes", most of them do not know what "prepared dishes" are, a small number of people say that they have heard, but they do not know what it is.
The uncles and aunts who have been galloping in the vegetable market for many years do not know what "prefabricated dishes" are, which is also reasonable and unexpected. After all, the three words "prepared dishes" appear most often in the capital market, especially since the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, with the "first share of prepared dishes" flavor zhixiang (605089. SH), Qianwei Central Kitchen (001215. SZ) and other companies related to the concept of prefabricated dishes have been listed one after another, and the attention of capital has continued to increase, and the exposure of "pre-made dishes" has increased sharply.
In fact, "prepared dishes" have been developed on the mainland for many years and can be found everywhere in our lives. At present, there is no standard classification and definition of "prepared dishes", and processed foods such as canned food, dumplings, and semi-finished dishes belong to the category of prepared dishes.
At present, many research institutions believe that prefabricated dishes refer to agricultural vegetables, livestock, poultry, aquatic products as raw materials, with various types of auxiliary materials, centralized production with modern standards, pre-processing through slitting, mixing, pickling, molding, seasoning and other links, using rapid freezing technology or other preservation technology to preserve the finished or semi-finished products, and then enter the ambient temperature, refrigeration, freezing and other packaging, and finally flow to the B-end catering industry, such as Zhen Kung Fu, Xibei, Xiaonanguo and Yoshinojia and other mass chain catering brands, are the main force of B-end consumption of prefabricated dishes.
In addition, with the increasing variety of semi-finished dishes such as balls, dumplings, and egg dumplings, as well as the increase in demand for fast food methods such as instant heat and cooking, prepared dishes continue to penetrate into the C-end consumer market, and the market size continues to increase.
So, since prefabricated dishes are not new, and related pre-made dishes are everywhere in life, why do "prefabricated dishes" suddenly catch fire?
Gathering the advantages of the heavens and the place, the pre-made dishes rise with the wind
For a long time in the past, pre-made dishes were rare in the eyes of the average consumer. This is mainly the past pre-made dishes, a large proportion is occupied by the production process is relatively simple long-term pre-made dishes, such as eight treasure porridge, ready-to-eat canned, instant brine dishes, frozen dumplings and so on.
For China, which takes food as the sky, the requirements of the Chinese people for ingredients and cooking techniques can be described as the ultimate, not only to achieve full color and fragrance, but also to enjoy the smell of fireworks and understand the sophistication of the people. Therefore, semi-processed or deep-processed prepared dishes have a small proportion of the Chinese menu for a long time. The wet market, which brings together fresh ingredients from all over the country, is still the first choice of people.
In addition, people's increasing requirements for food hygiene and safety and healthy diet are also one of the important factors inhibiting the penetration of prepared dishes into the C-end market. All the main consumers in the pre-made vegetable market in the early years were B-end fast food chains, large canteens and some takeaway companies.
However, with the steady growth of China's economy, the increase in per capita income, the acceleration of new urbanization, the improvement of the cold chain transportation industry chain, the continuous penetration of the takeaway market, the rise of the "single economy" and the "lazy economy", and the decline in the proportion of young people such as the post-90s and Z era who have mastered cooking skills, all further highlight the advantages of convenient and fast prepared dishes.
Under this background, consumers' acceptance of prepared dishes has gradually increased, and related enterprises on the pre-made dishes track, in the middle and downstream have increased R&D investment and cooperation in their familiar fields, and capital attention has begun to increase.
The fuse that completely ignited the track of pre-made dishes was the outbreak of the new crown epidemic in 2020.
With the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, clean vegetables and raw bags of takeaway have become the mainstream of catering for a time, and well-known catering enterprises represented by Haidilao and Xibei have launched pre-made vegetable products such as self-heating hot pot and kuaishou dishes to meet consumer demand and offset dine-in losses in this way.
At the same time, the rise of social group buying platforms, multi-style, multi-taste prefabricated dishes continue to pour into the community group buying platform, superimposed community group buying "burn money" subsidy model, so that the unit price of prefabricated vegetable products further downward, consumers' acceptance of prefabricated dishes has also been multiplied.
At the same time, more than ten prefabricated dish-related enterprises, including Weizhixiang, Zhenwei Xiaomeiyuan, Taste Lion, Ingredients, and Three Meals, have received great attention from capital, and financing round after round. In particular, after Weizhixiang successfully landed on the A-share market and became the "first stock of prefabricated dishes", the market attention was pushed to an unprecedented height.
Under the "momentum" of capital, a variety of pre-made vegetable products with various tastes and dishes in the C-end consumer market are emerging in an endless stream, covering channels that consumers can directly reach such as online shopping platforms, community group buying platforms and supermarkets.
At the same time, "prefabricated dishes" have also become a new speculation theme in the A-share market. In particular, in the past year, the food processing sector, which has been trapped by the dual pressure of rising raw material prices and consumption fatigue, has become one of the sectors with the highest profit-making effect in early 2022, driven by the concept of "prepared dishes". Among them, delis, Haixin food, Jinzi ham and other food processing enterprises, the stock price has risen to varying degrees.
The wind has arrived, and the opportunities and challenges of prepared dishes have arrived
According to Ai Media Consulting data, the size of China's prepared vegetable market is expected to be 345.9 billion yuan in 2021, and it will reach 515.6 billion yuan in 2023, and if the growth rate of China's prepared vegetable market remains stable at 20% in the future, it will be in 2027
The annual scale of the prefabricated vegetable market will exceed one trillion.
Although prefabricated vegetables have huge market prospects, but because the mainland prefabricated vegetable market is still in the early stage of development and the industry access threshold is not high, the industry competition is still very scattered, the major prefabricated vegetable related enterprises focus on their familiar subdivision tracks, national, omni-channel, full range of prefabricated vegetable leading enterprises have not yet appeared, the future market competition pattern is full of opportunities, there are also many challenges, which enterprises can stand out, there are still many variables.
From the perspective of the industry competition pattern, the prefabricated vegetable concept stocks that have risen much in the A-share market at present have seen that they have occupied an absolute advantage and position in the prefabricated vegetable track, and the evaluation of the most important beneficiaries and the best seed players in the future has yet to be examined. Therefore, although the concept of prefabricated dishes is hot, the potential uncertainty risk is also very high, investors carefully observe and consider, do not blindly chase into the prefabricated dishes track.
In addition, pre-made dishes are not a new thing, and the reason why waves have not been raised before has largely been related to
People's attitude to life, eating habits (difficult to adjust), health concepts, food safety hazards (no national standard), industry supervision, etc., have a lot to do with each other.
The above problems will not disappear with the future demand for prepared dishes, and may put forward higher requirements for the prepared vegetable industry. These requirements are also the problems that prefabricated vegetable suppliers need to face directly in the future development.
Text: One branch