As the year draws to a close, under the trend of consumption upgrading, the prefabricated vegetable market has begun to enter a "hot period" and has become a hot topic chased by the capital market and the consumer market.
Under the impetus of the two, local catering and fresh related enterprises have made efforts to lay out the pre-made vegetable track. On the one hand, new players are trying to enter the game in order to seize market opportunities; on the other hand, old players are accelerating their momentum and expanding their market share with hard power.
The current stock of the mainland's prefabricated vegetable market is about 300 billion yuan, such as according to the compound annual growth rate of 20%, the next 6-7 years of the mainland's prepared vegetable market will grow into a trillion yuan scale, in the long run, the mainland prepared vegetable industry is expected to achieve more than 3 trillion yuan scale.
Although the capital is fanatical, the domestic prefabricated vegetable industry is still in its initial stage, the degree of market concentration is low, the regional characteristics are obvious, and the number of large-scale national operation enterprises is small.
This means that the certainty of the domestic prefabricated vegetable market pattern has not yet existed, and the market pattern still has the possibility of reshuffling and the opportunity to spawn a new king. However, under the dual influence of the industry's shortcomings and development space, what advantages do enterprises need to have in order to have the potential to become a new king?
Under the wind outlet, players from all walks of life poured in
Pre-made dishes are not new, and the quick-frozen foods that have long been known to the public, such as quick-frozen pastries, ham sausages, canned food, etc. are all pre-made dishes. With the changes in the consumer market, the concept of pre-made dishes has been further generalized, and the tastes and types are more complex, and the Chinese dishes that are close to the daily three-food meals, such as yellow stewed chicken, sour soup fish and various types of Chinese stir-fry.
According to the data released by the China Commercial Industry Research Institute, the consumer market of prepared dishes is mainly concentrated in first- and second-tier cities, with 45.7% of prefabricated consumers distributed in first-tier cities, 19.8% of consumers distributed in second-tier cities, and 16.4% of consumers distributed in third-tier cities.
The main reason for this phenomenon is that the work and life in first- and second-tier cities are relatively complicated, and consumers generally have no time to cook or have inconvenient eating. At the same time, the consumption level of this part of the population is relatively high, and they pay more attention to healthy diet, and it is difficult to meet their catering needs for takeaway and eating out. In addition, the "small family" consumer population structure also provides sufficient market space for prepared dishes with small capacity and convenient production.
The expansion of demand has attracted the intervention of capital.
According to enterprise investigation data, the number of prefabricated vegetable-related enterprises in mainland China will reach 72,000 in 2020. The first share of prefabricated dishes, "Weizhixiang", was successfully registered in A shares in May 2021, accelerating the development of the industry. Other players in the fresh and dining track have joined the competition sequence.
In 2017, Hema began to lay out prefabricated dishes, open up upstream agricultural product bases, and catering enterprises, and use its own new retail store system to carry out prefabricated cuisine education at the C-end;
At the end of 2021, Meituan will buy vegetables on the new "Elephant Chef" X "Must Eat List" special area, and unite with Guangzhou Restaurant, Tao Taoju and other catering brands to explore the prefabricated vegetable market;
At the beginning of 2022, Tech Planet reported that Luckin founder Lu Zhengyao founded the Tip of the Tongue Technology Group to incubate the "Tip of the Tongue Workshop" prefabricated dish project to catch up with the new outlet;
According to enterprise investigation data, from 2020 to 2021, a total of 23 financings occurred in the prefabricated vegetable track, and head capital such as Welfare, Sequoia and Hillhouse bet on prefabricated dishes.
(Source: Guest Business)
The expansion of the market pattern has driven the growth of the industry. But the rapid and lack of regular development has also magnified the flaws in this "trillion market".
Inside the opportunity, industry problems still exist
Although the prefabricated wet market is on the cusp, there are still many pain points in the industry.
At present, the existing sales model of the domestic to C prefabricated vegetable market can be roughly divided into online and offline. One is the offline franchise store represented by Weizhixiang, and the other is the online retail model represented by the rare small plum garden. However, whether online or offline, there are obvious shortcomings in the supply chain and sales.
The disadvantage of offline stores is that when the level of consumer acceptance is at a low level, a prefabricated cuisine store needs to have a higher customer flow to support normal operation; the online model is farther away from the consumer and can reach a relatively narrower consumer group.
At the same time, the unit price of existing pre-made vegetable products is basically between 20-50 yuan, which does not have much price advantage compared to restaurants, and directly weakens the willingness of consumers to buy. Because more prefabricated dishes need to rely on cold chain transportation, the cost is relatively high, and if the cost is compressed on the ingredients, it is easy to bring about the problem of reducing the quality of the ingredients.
Different from the fresh industry with similar formats, the time and space span of prefabricated dishes from raw materials to processing to sale is long, involving the linkage and collaboration of various business forms such as dish research and development, raw material processing, cold chain transportation, marketing and retail.
This means that prefabricated vegetable enterprises need to open up the supply chain of source agricultural products and complete the scale of production, so as to ensure that while maintaining low costs, they can provide high-quality and inexpensive prepared vegetable products.
In order to solve the above problems, some latecomers began to improve the traditional sales model, no longer simply as a pre-made vegetable store.
Taking the recent market attention of the tip of the tongue workshop as an example, the products sold in the first offline store in Beijing include a variety of products such as quick-frozen staple foods, pill hot pot ingredients, and condiments in addition to the brand's pre-made dishes. Its form is similar to an offline fresh supermarket, rather than a pre-made vegetable store.
The reason for this is that the Production Procedure of Chinese-style Stir-fry is relatively cumbersome, it is difficult to carry out large-scale production, and the regional differences in Chinese diets are large, which is difficult to cover the needs of different groups of people, resulting in low richness of pre-made dishes on the market and narrow audiences.
Therefore, under the new model system, in order to improve the efficiency of stores, by introducing a variety of fresh ingredient categories, to enrich the store SKUs, in order to increase the frequency of consumption to offset the cost. However, in the new model, although the cost pressure caused by the shortage of SKUs can be eliminated to a certain extent, it cannot solve the risk factors of weak R&D capabilities.
Moreover, the chinese food production process is complex and the taste is varied, and the eight major cuisines and the differences between the north and the south have made it more difficult to standardize the domestic prepared vegetable industry. The uncertainty brought about by this taste differentiation is a stumbling block to the large-scale expansion of prefabricated vegetable companies.
Under such a premise, the next step for prefabricated vegetable companies will be to take, which will mainly focus on the competition of front-end research and development capabilities, mid-end processing capabilities and back-end transportation links and sales network capabilities.
Open a new round of reshuffle, the new giant cultivation needs to "break through three levels"
Under the wind outlet, it will naturally attract the entry of many capitals.
From the new retail players represented by Hema to the Xibei and restaurants backed by the chain restaurant group, from the weizhixiang that specializes in pre-made dishes, to the frozen food enterprises Jing'an and Longda... When many players gather together, how to stand out from the crowd, it is obvious that the test will be a company in the comprehensive ability to compete.
If the three levels of front-end research and development capabilities, mid-end processing capabilities and back-end sales and distribution capabilities are used as measurement dimensions, it may be possible to screen out the possible future development of the prefabricated vegetable industry.
The first is the front-end R&D capabilities.
As mentioned above, at present, prefabricated cuisine brands are trapped in the dilemma of narrow category audiences, and it is difficult to jump out of existing limitations in dishes. There are obvious regional characteristics in the prepared vegetable market, the food is difficult to adjust, and it is difficult for enterprises to cover the needs of users in various regions.
This may provide an idea to complete the full coverage of the category by working with smaller regional prefabricated cuisine brands.
This idea has already been landed in cases. On January 11 this year, Hema signed a cooperation framework with Guolian Aquatic Products to give full play to the advantages of both sides in the retail and production ends. According to public information, hundreds of prefabricated cuisine brands with regional characteristics, such as the old Shanghai Hotel, Nanjing Jinling Hotel, and Suzhou Yan Auntie, have formed cooperation with Hema.
At the same time, Hema Fresh, which started fresh, has 550 direct procurement bases for agricultural products in the country, which can directly open up its accumulated raw material base advantages, reduce procurement costs, and beat down the price of prefabricated dishes to form an integration advantage.
The second is the mid-range processing capacity.
Unlike ordinary fresh products, prepared dishes need to be processed before being put into the consumer market. This puts forward higher requirements for the raw material screening, large-scale production and quality control ability of prefabricated vegetable enterprises.
"The first share of prefabricated vegetables" Wei Zhixiang clearly mentioned in the listing prospectus that it plans to use 240 million yuan of listing funds to supplement working capital and accelerate the construction of processing plants to make up for the lack of production capacity.
New retail representative Hema even though it has a rich supply chain network in the country, is still ready to lay out 6 central kitchens in the country, it is expected that the central kitchen project in Wuhan and Chengdu will be put into production in June this year, so that the distributed layout can not only be closer to the source of agricultural products, improve processing efficiency, but also be more grounded in the taste of prefabricated dishes and ensure quality.
Finally, there is the back-end placement capability.
At present, the prefabricated vegetable market is still dominated by the B-end, but the future C-end is bound to be a major breakthrough, so the pre-made dishes with refrigeration and freezing as the storage method will also face the last mile problem in distribution. Whether it is the offline sales system represented by Weizhixiang or the sales channels based on traditional e-commerce, it is difficult to solve the safety and efficiency problems in distribution.
Under this premise, new retail players with online and offline like Hema will obviously have more opportunities.
With 300 stores covering the whole country, Hema will be able to effectively reach C-end consumers through online and offline integration. At the same time, relying on Ali's empowerment, Hema has the advantages of supply chain such as direct procurement of fresh products and complete cold chain transportation.
If you follow the analysis of the above three dimensions, the new retail platform represented by Hema seems to be the best carrier for the prefabricated vegetable market.
At present, the pre-made vegetable track has not yet been won or lost, and players are fighting for their own battles, seeking the opportunity or shortcut to the top of the throne. Under the background of fast-paced life, the value of prepared dishes will be further enlarged with the transformation of market structure. And who can pass the three levels first, who will have the opportunity to touch the truth that other players can't touch.