Per reporter: Liang Xiao Per editor: Wen Duo, Lu Xiangyong, Yi Qijiang
Approaching the Spring Festival, market funds also smell the aroma of Chinese New Year's Eve rice. On the last trading day of the Year of the Ox (January 28), the A-share prefabricated dish sector strengthened again, with Xi'an Catering (000721, SZ), Quanjude rising more than 7% (002186, SZ), New Hope (000876, SZ), Qianwei Central Kitchen (001215, SZ), and Weizhixiang (605089, SH) also rising more than 3%.
Entering January, there was a round of speculation in A-shares. With the popularity of the lazy economy and the home economy, the "prefabricated" dishes in the preparation of pre-ingredients and spices are on fire in 2021, and the industrial capital has already smelled the business opportunities contained in it, and even Lu Zhengyao of Ruixing Coffee has also chosen the prefabricated vegetable track to make a comeback. The model of "pre-made cuisine + central kitchen" has also been selected by many listed companies.
According to the "Daily Economic News" reporter, the application of pre-made dishes in the catering industry is as early as before the C-end - the current consumers in large restaurants and restaurants, in fact, it is difficult to eat "freshly fried and cooked" dishes.
"More than 60% of the restaurants are pre-made dishes, and 70% of the restaurants that hold wedding banquets and birthday banquets are pre-made dishes, but consumers don't know it." When it comes to the pre-made dishes of the recent fire, Jiang Yi, the founder of Hao Shrimp And the catering columnist, first threw out this view that may be a bit subversive of public perception. In his view, the application of prefabricated dishes in the catering industry in order to improve operational efficiency is not a new thing, and consumers' perception of whether restaurant dishes are prefabricated is not strong.
Li Peixuan, general manager of Sichuan Mai Duo Wei Catering Service Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Mai Duo Wei), told the "Daily Economic News" reporter that prefabricated dishes are a general concept, but whether it is a semi-finished dish of "instant cooking" or a finished dish of "instant heat", its essence is to put some processes of cooking in front. The pre-made dish model has been widely used in student meals and nutritious meals that are easier to standardize.
Image source: Per reporter Liang Xiao photo
The pre-made vegetables were on fire, and Lu Zhengyao also participated in the team battle
On Chinese New Year's Eve night, the prepared dish may become the Chinese New Year's Eve debut of some young "chefs".
In April 2021, the first share of weizhixiang of prefabricated dishes landed on A shares, and more than ten up and down boards were mentioned; and a number of prefabricated vegetable industry chain enterprises also successively obtained tens of millions of financing. In addition, well-known chain catering brands such as Haidilao (06862, HK), Xibei Xiaomian Village, Meizhou Dongpo, typhoon shelter and so on have also launched retail prefabricated dishes to C-end consumers, while fresh retail platforms such as Dingdong Buy, Yonghui Supermarket, Hema Fresh and large supermarkets have also laid out in this field.
According to anxin Securities research report data, the size of the prefabricated vegetable market in 2021 is about 210 billion yuan, and the industry scale is expected to grow to 600 billion yuan by 2025. Shanxi Securities believes that the space scale of China's prepared vegetables is expected to be 345.9 billion yuan in 2021, an increase of 18.1% year-on-year, and the prepared vegetable industry is expected to become the next trillion catering market in the next 3 to 5 years.
However, the above data includes traditional frozen products and convenience foods, and also covers most of the To B group meal companies. According to 36Kr, Zhang Aichao, COO of Gourmet Food Technology, said at an event that from an operational point of view, the "trillion-level" market is actually not very real, "the current market size of this industry should be around 150 billion, which is a more rational state."
Whether it is the level of 100 billion or the level of trillions, it is foreseeable that prefabricated dishes will become a hot race track for capital in the future.
The recent industry news is that after folding Luckin Coffee, Lu Zhengyao also pointed his entrepreneurial goals to the prefabricated vegetable track. On January 10, Tongue Tip Technology, founded by Lu Zhengyao, announced the launch of the home business "Tip of the Tongue Workshop". Li Yingbo, rotating CEO of Tongue Technology, told the "Daily Economic News" reporter a few days ago that the positioning of Tongue Technology is a brand product company, and the current strategy is to empower all franchisees, so there will be no direct business.
The central kitchen behind the pre-made dishes: small and medium-sized dining can not afford to play
As a general concept, the scope of prepared dishes is very broad, and it is not new to consumers. From the earliest frozen dumplings and dumplings, to the popular cooking buns in recent years, and even the washed and cut ingredients in the supermarket, they are all considered to be prepared dishes.
In the research report, Shanxi Securities divided prefabricated dishes into four categories: ready-to-eat food, instant hot food, instant cooking food, and ready-to-eat food. The pre-made dishes that have recently caught fire are more complex Chinese pre-made dishes, most of which are cooked or ready-to-use foods, such as braised horseshoe lion's head, Buddha jumping off the wall, fragrant braised pork hands, braised beef brisket, spicy crayfish, chopped pepper fish head, etc.
Whether it is "prefabricated dishes" in the narrow sense or "pre-prepared dishes" in the broad sense, the complex processes such as cleaning and cutting of ingredients, cooking and seasoning are advanced from the C-end to the B-end, or from the catering store to the central kitchen, which is the proper meaning of the word "prefabricated". The central kitchen for the large-scale industrial production of prefabricated dishes also came into being.
The central kitchen was originally built by chain catering enterprises to standardize the dishes of different stores, with the purpose of ensuring the stability of supply chain quality and the consistency of the taste of the dishes produced, and achieving the purpose of reducing costs and improving efficiency. To a certain extent, the central kitchen has solved the problem of the difficulty of standardization of mainland catering and promoted the further development of the mainland catering industry in the direction of chaining.
According to data quoted by Guohai Securities from the China Chain Store and Franchise Association, more than 74% of 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 head chain catering enterprises has been higher, and the use of prefabricated dishes by enterprises such as Zhen Kung Fu, Yoshinoya, Xibei and Xiaonanguo accounts for more than 80%.
Nowadays, more consumers want to buy pre-made dishes and simply cook them at home, while large supermarkets such as Yonghui Supermarket and Jiajiayue, as well as food processing enterprises such as Guolian Aquatic Products and Arowana have entered the game, and the concept of central kitchen has also been extended from the initial finished product production to raw semi-finished products and hot-processed semi-finished products.
Image source: Screenshot of Huachuang Securities Research Report
At the beginning of January, the prefabricated vegetable leader Guolian Aquatic Products (300094, SZ) issued a pre-increase plan to raise no more than 1 billion yuan, of which 200 million yuan will be used for the construction of the central kitchen project of its subsidiary, with a total investment of 253 million yuan. According to the disclosure, after the completion of the project, the production capacity of prefabricated dishes such as guolian aquatic shrimp dumplings, grilled fish, shrimp slip, and sauerkraut fish will be greatly improved.
The grain and oil giant Arowana (300999, SZ) also said in a recent exchange with investors that the central kitchen is a very important new business segment of the company, and the company's existing business will basically play a role in the central kitchen.
New Hope (000876, SZ) recently said on the investor interactive platform that the company's food business includes pig slaughter, meat products deep processing, central kitchen and other segments, of which the central kitchen business takes prefabricated dishes as the main product and catering enterprises as the main customers.
According to farmers' daily, the central kitchen selects, cleans, slitts, cooks, packs, and then distributes various ingredients through assembly lines to the catering stores and consumers who need them. This one-stop central kitchen model of procurement, storage and transportation, processing, distribution and sales is now a supply chain model created by many catering enterprises.
Relying on the "pre-made dish + central kitchen" model, on the basis of unified procurement of ingredients, unified standardized production, and unified cold chain distribution, from the cleaning, slitting, and cooking of ingredients to the sealing, packaging, and sales of food, the mechanized and integrated production mode can greatly improve efficiency and reduce labor costs.
That is to say, at present, the pre-made dishes produced by the central kitchen are still mainly for the B-end downstream catering enterprises - including small and medium-sized restaurant enterprises, but they mostly choose third-party central kitchens. After working in the catering industry for many years, Li Peixuan, general manager of Mai Duo, is more cautious about the self-built central kitchen of small and medium-sized restaurant enterprises.
"The investment in the central kitchen is millions (yuan), and once its machine is started, the daily energy consumption, labor, and field rent consumption are relatively large, and several terminal stores cannot afford to feed them, so there must be a market and then build a factory." Li Peixuan said that in the past few years, due to the unclear positioning of the central kitchen (many central kitchens have made an enlarged sample of the kitchen), coupled with the scale has not met the corresponding requirements, resulting in "who does who dies", most of them are loss-making.
In fact, the central kitchen is a typical asset-heavy investment, which requires a lot of manpower and equipment. Huachuang Securities also pointed out in a survey report that for most catering enterprises with thin profits, there is still a certain threshold for the construction and expansion of central kitchens.
Pre-made dishes require only a few experienced chefs to control the quality
"In the law of eating, flavor is more important than anything else." This line from "China on the Tip of the Tongue" speaks to Chinese's pursuit of food taste. So, can industrially produced prefabricated dishes do a good job of "taste management"?
Jiang Yi is quite confident about this: "There is no compromise [of the taste of the prepared dish]. In his view, the taste of prefabricated dishes depends on the formulation of standards, as long as the production process is up to standard, it will definitely be able to achieve the standard taste. Jiang Yi also believes that for the nuances of the taste of dishes, the perception ability of ordinary consumers is not strong, if you score a dish, "ordinary consumers can distinguish between 60 points and 90 points, but for 85 points and 90 points, it is a lack of discrimination; and the standard of prefabricated dishes is to do 85 points, otherwise it is unqualified." ”
The main business of Mai Doo is to provide group meals to fixed groups of people in various dining scenarios such as office buildings, parks, food districts, and neighborhood centers. General Manager Li Peixuan believes that when supplying pre-made dishes to the B-end, enterprises have higher requirements for the innovation ability and price of dishes. "For the B-end, the pre-made dish is to solve the problem of the B-end employment, which can reduce labor costs and reduce unstable factors; for the C-end, the pre-made dish is aimed at office workers or people who have a greater demand for meal time control."
It can be seen that different types of consumers have different needs for the taste of dishes, and the C-end ready-to-cooked dishes that have recently caught fire are catering to consumers who love food and have to eat well. The ideal consumption scenario is that a complex dish can be brought to the table in just two steps: ordered and simply prepared according to the instructions. Therefore, after a meal, everyone can make a star chef "the same dish".
It seems that the chef is on the opposite side of the prepared dish.
Jiang Yi, founder of Hao Shrimp Chuan, believes that in the catering industry, the reason why pre-made dishes have become a trend, in addition to reducing costs and increasing efficiency, the chef group lags behind the development of the catering industry is also a major reason. "Dining is growing too fast now, but the chefs are growing too slowly." He believes that the chef himself belongs to a skilled job, and the accumulation and maturity of technology takes at least three to five years. But after the rise of the mobile Internet, the catering industry has exploded, and "the rapid development of catering and the slow growth of chefs are a contradiction." "So it's no surprise that only a handful of experienced chefs need to control quality prepared dishes."
In fact, prefabricated dishes have indeed accelerated the differentiation of the chef industry. Last year, Jiumaojiu and its brand Taier Sauerkraut Fish openly recruited chefs and offered millions of annual salaries. Chen Guoxun, known as the "King of Southern Cantonese Chefs", also said in an interview with a catering industry self-media that for chefs, it is a good development direction to engage in the research and development of prepared dishes in the future.
"Behind the pre-made vegetable factories in each factory, there are masters with taste research and development capabilities doing (product taste) control." Jiang Yi said. According to him, in addition to high-paying hires, prefabricated vegetable factories will also adopt a copyright-like cooperation model with experienced chefs, with chefs controlling the quality of products, and chefs will also get a share of the product revenue.
Reporter | Liang Xiao Editor| Wenduo, Lu Xiangyong, Yi Qijiang, Wang Jiaqi
Proofreading | Cheng Peng
Cover image: Visual China
| the original article of the daily economic news nbdnews |
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