On January 19, Aunt Qian's strategic adjustment to withdraw from the Beijing market led to a lot of emotional discussion in the market.
In fact, community fresh food has obviously been a successful business model verified by Aunt Qian in South China, according to official information, Aunt Qian has nearly 2,000 stores in South China, and has achieved overall profitability in South China. This time, Aunt Qian chose to withdraw from the Beijing market, which may have other hidden feelings.
According to Aunt Qian, the decision to withdraw from the Beijing area has been discussed within Aunt Qian for several months, on the one hand, because there are large differences in dietary preferences between the north and the south, and it will take time to build a supply chain system that adapts to the eating habits of the north, in the context of repeated epidemics, the difficulty of operation has the actual need for timely stop loss; on the other hand, the epidemic has detonated China's C-end prefabricated vegetable track, and Aunt Qian plans to concentrate superior resources on prefabricated vegetable products to build a second curve of enterprise operation.
Therefore, only by combining and analyzing the two major strategic adjustments of Aunt Qian's "withdrawal from Beijing" and "making efforts to prepare dishes" may be able to grasp the essential logic of Aunt Qian's market strategic adjustment.
Overall, Aunt Qian "turned from attack to defense" in store expansion, consolidated the competitive position of mature markets such as South China, and took the lead in ensuring operating cash flow and profits in the context of the epidemic; at the same time, in the new business scenario, "from defense to attack", concentrated resources to quickly seize the C-end prefabricated vegetable blue ocean market, and created the next "cash cow" business.
Between "one advance and one retreat", Aunt Qian has adopted a more pragmatic enterprise development strategy, while gradually opening up a larger space for commercial imagination.
Prepared dishes are the "big pick"
In fact, the concept of "prefabricated dishes" has appeared since the invention of instant foods such as instant noodles decades ago, but due to the long and difficult C-end prefabricated vegetable industry chain, coupled with the limitations of early food industry technology, prefabricated dishes have mainly developed for B-end scenarios for many years to provide catering chains and food supply chain enterprises with semi-finished products, seasoning packages and other prefabricated vegetable products.
However, with the continuous improvement of food technology, packaging, cold chain logistics and other aspects, C-end pre-made dishes have gradually matured in terms of technology, quality and experience. From the perspective of consumer demand, due to the repeated impact of the epidemic in the past two years, the outbreak of home dividends, coupled with the general trend of China's consumption upgrading, the emergence of a single economy and a lazy economy has promoted the strong demand of consumers for prepared vegetable products.
Since the definition and classification of "prepared dishes" are still relatively vague, there are also certain differences in the domestic market space for prepared vegetables. According to the data forecast of Anxin Securities Research Report, the current market size of China's prepared vegetable industry is about 210 billion yuan, and the industry scale is expected to grow to about 600 billion yuan by 2025; and according to the data forecast of Huachuang Securities, the market space of China's prepared vegetables will reach 700 billion yuan in the next decade; and Guohai Securities believes that in the long run, China's prepared vegetable industry is expected to develop to a scale of more than 3 trillion yuan.
Either way, it shows that prefabricated dishes will be a super track of hundreds of billions or even trillions. According to the NCBD Meal Treasure Book "2021-2022 China Prefabricated Vegetable Industry Development Report" estimates that the penetration rate of C-end pre-made dishes will rise to 30% of the entire industry in 2025.
From the policy level, pre-made dishes have also ushered in development dividends. On May 26, 2021, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs emphasized in the "Guiding Opinions on Accelerating the Cultivation and Development of the Whole Agricultural Industry Chain" that it is necessary to innovate and develop formats such as direct supply of agricultural merchants, prepared dishes, catering takeaway, cold chain distribution, etc., and develop and promote models such as "raw material base + central kitchen + logistics distribution". Recently, the Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of Guangdong Province also held a prefabricated dish "double festival" marketing and "cloud flower market" work conference, and listed prefabricated dishes as the key products of the "double festival" marketing of Agricultural Products in Guangdong in 2022.
At present, due to the influence of life rhythm and living habits, young consumer groups have become the main consumers of pre-made dishes, and during the Tmall Double 11 period in 2021, pre-made dishes have also been officially selected as one of the top ten trend items. During this year's Spring Festival, some regions' advocacy for the local New Year has further promoted pre-made dishes to become the new favorite of Chinese New Year's Eve rice.
Recently, Aunt Qian was invited to participate in the 2022 Guangdong prefabricated dish "double festival" marketing activities, developed dozens of new prefabricated dishes such as pot vegetables, plum vegetable buckle meat, and fortune pig hands, and advocated that young people use prefabricated dishes to make a Chinese New Year's Eve meal for their parents. According to the actual measurement of the "Guangdong Chinese New Year's Eve Rice Timing Challenge" launched by Aunt Qian, it takes an average of only 40 minutes to make ten classic Chinese New Year's Eve rice main dishes with Aunt Qian's pre-made dishes, and at the same time achieves high-quality and authentic cooking taste. Nowadays, Aunt Qian's promotional video "New Year's Day• Make a Chinese New Year's Eve Meal" has been launched and has been forwarded by a large number of users in social networks.
At present, prefabricated dishes also belong to a large blue ocean market stage of competing for deer, and it can be expected that with the development of the prefabricated vegetables business, the prefabricated dishes will also become an important "cash cow", not only in the category can complement the traditional fresh food, but also in the user portrait, it can also quickly penetrate into the young group and open up the commercial imagination space for the future development of Qian.
Refresh the quality standards of the prepared vegetable industry
Prepared dishes represented by traditional convenience foods often have poor taste experience and low nutrition, and use sauce packages to create food flavor, but they also have the advantages of long shelf life and easy transportation, so they are mostly consumed in vertical scenes such as travel to fill their hunger. Nowadays, with the technological breakthrough of C-end pre-made dishes, it has been able to achieve better taste in products, and even can easily produce various complex Chinese foods, which has greatly expanded the user use scenarios of pre-made dishes.
However, from the perspective of the general law of the entire catering industry, "fresh and delicious" and "long-term preservation" are often not compatible, even for prefabricated dishes, in order to achieve the best taste experience, it must be supported by a fast and efficient supply chain, and this is also the advantage of Aunt Qian's entry into pre-made dishes.
It can be found that the current focus of Aunt Qian's pre-made dishes is "short-term pre-made dishes", compared with conventional pre-made vegetable products, "short-term pre-made dishes" use more high-quality, fresh ingredients, but also have more stringent requirements for logistics, supply chain, quality preservation and other levels, so "short-term pre-made dishes" are usually outside the scope of the ability of conventional pre-made vegetable manufacturers, with a high threshold of access.
But "short-term pre-made dishes" is more like a cross-dimensional blow for Aunt Qian. Aunt Qian's fresh dishes have long been refreshed by the fresh industry's standards on "freshness" with "one day one clear, one match a day" and "no overnight meat", and behind the "one day one clear" model is actually an extremely efficient supply chain management system.
According to public information, through the self-built warehousing and distribution system, Aunt Qian will ensure the freshness of ingredients through the procurement, processing, sorting and packaging of ingredients, and deliver them to the store on time, accurately and qualifiedly. In order to improve the efficiency of supply chain management feedback, as early as 2015, Aunt Qian began to build a digital and information management system, which was officially upgraded to a "hydra" system in 2020, and can now support the background data management of more than 30 cities, more than 3,500 stores, 10 million families and 17 million high-quality members of Today's Qian.
At the planting end of the upstream of the fresh supply chain, Aunt Qian has also built fresh direct mining bases such as Ganzhou in Jiangxi, Bijie in Guizhou, and Tonghai in Yunnan, opening up the production, supply and marketing links of fresh categories, not only to further realize the efficient integration of the supply chain, but also to promote the upward movement of high-quality agricultural products and help revitalize the rural industry.
The advantages of supply chain and digital management accumulated by Aunt Qian's long-term development will become the core competitive barrier for her entry into "short-term prefabricated dishes". In addition, Aunt Qian also has a strong competitive advantage in the development of pre-made dishes and scene channels.
In years of digital operation, Aunt Qian has accumulated a large amount of data on users' dietary tastes and consumption habits, which enables Aunt Qian to carry out targeted research and development of pre-made vegetable products, thereby increasing the explosive rate. In addition, with the help of existing all-scenario user channels such as Aunt Qian's offline stores, mini program e-commerce, and unmanned cabinet vegetable bars, pre-made vegetable products can not only solve the problem of sales channels, but also achieve big data precision marketing and quickly promote the development of pre-made dishes.
Catering retailing has become a prominent trend in the current catering industry, And Aunt Qian cut into the prefabricated dish track, which can not only achieve more high-quality brand recognition through "short-term prefabricated dishes", but also open the second curve of enterprise development through new business scenarios.
One step ahead of the card slot pre-made dish strategic point
Commercial competition is not only a long-term race, but also a complex chess game, not only need to have a long-term spirit, but also need to pay attention to layout and strategy, the gains and losses of a city need to be considered on the whole chess game. Amazon's long-term strategic loss has brought about the market advantage of cloud business, and JD.com's long-term investment in logistics has been exchanged for the anti-overtaking of user experience, which can be seen as a classic strategy in recent years.
Although Aunt Qian's strategic adjustment has triggered various interpretations, in the long run, the pre-made dish itself may become an important part of the daily catering culture of the public in the future, and the pre-made food track will naturally become a must for fresh retail, which has important strategic value.
According to the official announcement information, Aunt Qian will continue to cultivate a mature and stable market in the short term, so that on the one hand, it can allow the prefabricated dish business to expand without worries, so that enterprises can get rid of the pressure of multi-line operations and concentrate superior resources to seize the prefabricated vegetable blue ocean market; on the other hand, they can also further optimize the store financial model and business methodology after the store runs through the prefabricated dish model, and realize the iterative upgrading of the store, thus laying a new foundation for the steady development of the future.
Nowadays, coinciding with the "eve of the outbreak" of the prefabricated vegetable outlet, Aunt Qian relies on its own supply chain, digitalization, and user scenario channel advantages to cut into the prefabricated vegetable track, or will quickly achieve a favorable competitive advantage in the industry. With the development of Aunt Qian's "short-term pre-made dishes", pre-made dishes may enter the "fresh" era, ushering in further growth and breaking the circle.
According to media reports, in addition to ordinary prefabricated dishes, Aunt Qian also cooperates with guolian aquatic products, old altars, farming records, shengnong and other enterprises to provide accurate customized services for prefabricated dishes from field to table. In addition, for B-end users, Aunt Qian will also try to innovate the form of group meals such as canteen lunch, as an extension of the innovation of pre-made dishes and open up a wider range of business development scenarios.
All in all, from the perspective of the development trend of the catering industry, the current situation may already be in the best time to compete for the layout of the prefabricated dish track, if you can win the prefabricated dish business, Aunt Qian will also go to a higher level in the development of the enterprise. Perhaps in the near future, Aunt Qian will bring the pre-made vegetable business back into thousands of households across the country.