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Wen 丨Openapple Finance (ID: kaiboluocaijing), author 丨 Jin Jiepan, editor 丨 Wei Jia
What do you eat Chinese New Year's Eve meal?
The first meal of capital in 2022 - pre-made dishes, do you consider it?
Towards the end of the year, fresh/e-commerce platforms, catering merchants, and consumer retail brands are all pushing pre-made dishes Chinese New Year's Eve lunch gift boxes. Now that it is the third Spring Festival under the epidemic, the enthusiasm of the upstream and downstream industrial chains continues to be ignited, and the collective eyes are on the people who celebrate the New Year on the spot.
Kai Pineapple Finance learned some developments from people in the pre-made vegetable industry:
In the past, to B companies related to frozen food and cold chain logistics, some of them have turned around and entered the C-end prefabricated dishes; restaurants that can't be named have begun to learn Xibei 'Jia Guolong Kung Fu Dishes', and placed their own pre-made dishes in a conspicuous position in the store.
The small and medium-sized pre-made cuisine team is particularly excited, having been preparing for Chinese New Year's Eve meals for several months. Among them, the team still held the mentality of trying it out during the Spring Festival in 2021, and now it is almost at any cost to do marketing.
A former U.S. food delivery industry entrepreneur said that the wave of domestic prefabricated dishes has swept into some North American cities on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, and a large number of Chinese restaurant owners are eager to try...
Companies that are involved in "eating" are actively adding firewood to pre-made dishes, but in the eyes of mass consumers, pre-made dishes, seasoning packages, lazy dishes, and fast-hand dishes are still silly and unclear.
According to the classification of treatment, the generalized pre-made dishes are roughly divided into three categories: ready-to-use foods, ready-to-cook foods and instant hot/ready-to-eat foods.
Chen Li, a former entrepreneur of pre-made dishes, believes that ready-to-eat food is a snack snack, and that is, hot food is an ordinary long-term consumer goods, which belong to the old antiques, that is, matching, that is, cooking food is more in line with the concept of prepared food. The most typical are semi-finished fresh dishes that need to be cooked, and frozen finished dishes that require secondary heating.
In fact, in the past year, the capital heat wave in the primary and secondary markets has also hit the cooking and food.
C-end prefabricated players have worked hard to "fry" for a year, waiting for the Spring Festival in 2022 to beat the gong and drum to show their muscles. After communicating with a number of prepared dish consumers, it was found that the attitude of young diners who needed to be curried most by pre-made dishes was not as positive as expected, and some people said after tasting the prepared dishes that Chinese New Year's Eve rice would not be considered.
Many industry insiders are optimistic about the prefabricated dish track as a whole, but they still poured cold water on the To C part: the current penetration rate of pre-made dishes for young people is very low, even in the Spring Festival flash highlight moment, the reference significance is not great.
Why capital and entrepreneurs should be rational and do not have to indulge in the carnival of Chinese New Year's Eve meals, this article takes you to uncover the fog of the prefabricated vegetable track.
Six Gate School "stir-fried" pre-made dishes
Consumers may find prefabricated dishes novel, but it is not a new thing, just because for a long time, the main track of continental pre-made dishes was on the B side. According to the survey report of Guohai Securities, the B-end and C-end ratio of China's prefabricated vegetable market is 8:2.
In the past year and a half, the strength of C-end prepared dishes cannot be underestimated.
Catering supplier Wang Yang introduced that he learned from the industrial chain that before the epidemic, some companies stepped into the field of C-end prepared dishes, but the scale is generally very small, and the annual revenue of 10 million or 20 million is already good. Until the second half of 2020, the epidemic boosted, capital "sprinkled money", marketing investment increased, prefabricated dishes can be regarded as really out of the circle, these companies have revenue of one or two hundred million ambitions.
Today, the list of people who will do pre-made dishes has obviously become longer. By origin, these players can be divided into six gates.
Professional pre-made dish company - Weizhixiang (C-end mainly B-end as a supplement), Qianwei Central Kitchen (focusing on B-end), Haidilao's subordinate "Shuhai Supply Chain" and so on
Upstream agriculture and animal husbandry aquatic enterprises - Delis, Shuanghui Food, Guolian Aquatic Products, Chia Tai, etc
Traditional quick-frozen enterprises - Yasui Food, Sanquan, Si Nian, etc
Catering enterprises - Haidilao's "open rice", Xibei's Jia Guolong kung fu dish, Wang Jiadu food, etc
Retail participants - Hema "Hema Workshop", Meituan Buy Vegetables "Elephant Chef", Aunt Qian "Chef Dishes", Yonghui's "Color Food Immortals" and so on
Entrepreneurial enterprises - zhenwei small plum garden, taste lion, wangjiahuan, find ingredients, ding-ding fresh food, three meals with ingredients, etc
Looking back, the first big guy to stir up the prefabricated dishes was Michika. It was sent to the throne of the A-share "prefabricated dish first share" by the shareholder wind of the epidemic and the lazy economy, and on April 27, 2021, as soon as it was listed, it pulled out 13 limits, and the stock price soared nearly four times.
"The emergence of Weizhixiang has made those enterprises in the secondary market that can be linked to pre-made dishes come up and down a few times." It's like a stimulant for capital and startups, spurring the primary market's pursuit of prefabricated dishes. Lin Zhiyong, CEO of Three Meals, described it.
According to statistics, since 2020 alone, the financing amount of the prefabricated vegetable industry has reached billions of yuan.
Of all the projects, the largest "catfish" came from Lu Zhengyao. A number of entrepreneurs learned from investors that Lu Zhengyao had previously been deeply involved in the Luckin counterfeiting scandal, but it did not affect him to stir up the industry, and the capital was willing to believe in his ability to catch the wind.
At the beginning of 2022, Lu Zhengyao set foot in the prefabricated vegetable industry and launched a new project called "Tip of the Tongue Workshop", holding a conference and recruiting franchises, attracting a lot of media and capital attention to the prefabricated vegetable track. A partner of a fast food brand described Kai Pineapple Finance as a community store with "semi-finished dishes + prepared dishes + hot pot ingredients", mainly home-cooked dishes.
At a glance, the enterprises that are related to "eating" have come one by one. Those who sell meat and seafood, quick-frozen products, open restaurants, and control fresh retail channels have successively jumped on the big ship of "prefabricated dishes".
But don't think too simply of the pre-made dish. An investor in the consumer sector said that in the Six Gate Sect, it is more optimistic about professional pre-made vegetable companies, quick-frozen enterprises and retail companies. Because these three types of enterprises, at least in the dish research and development capabilities, cold chain logistics capabilities, brand awareness of the three key dimensions, there is an advantage.
Kai Pineapple Finance also found that a clear trend is that there are many B-to-C faces in the list, including listed companies such as Delis and Guolian Aquatic Products, as well as entrepreneurial projects. They originally did the To B business related to frozen food and cold chain, and recently "fried" C-end pre-made dishes while hot.
Dingding Fresh Food, founded by Tang Wanli, when it entered the pre-made dish in 2018, it did the B-end business of serving convenience stores, and after the epidemic in 2020, it opened the C-end, and the current B and C business accounts for half and half.
Lin Zhiyong was originally an entrepreneur who served B-end restaurants, doing frozen food and cold chain logistics. At the beginning of 2020, he sniffed business opportunities, incubated the new retail platform of semi-finished prefabricated dishes for C-end families, "Three Meals with Ingredients", and has received three rounds of financing so far.
Young people complain: there are few choices of prepared dishes and poor taste
There are more chefs for stir-frying, more small two who go out to welcome customers, and people who eat takeaway may not be obedient.
In the middle of January this year, CCTV Finance launched on Weibo "This year's New Year, will you buy prepared dishes?" In the vote, 50% of netizens did not need to buy, 12% said they often bought, and the remaining 38% of netizens chose to "be ready to buy and try to taste".
It seems that the ratio of eating to not eating is five to five.
However, the survey results of Lin Zhiyong's team show that more than 60% or 70% of the mainstream audience of pre-made dishes are originally cooked, mainly middle-aged people and the elderly between the ages of 30-40. They regard pre-made dishes as a supplement to the daily cooking of the family, and the purchase channels are mainly offline; and the young people who originally had no cooking habits have just begun to gradually infiltrate, and their habits are still ordering takeaways.
Many industry insiders believe that the current "identity" of pre-made dishes is still the "spare tire dish" of the kitchen, the frequency of consumption is limited, to be large, but also to grab the "rice bowl" of takeaway, infiltrating the young people in their twenties and thirties.
Pineapple Finance and a number of young people who have purchased prefabricated dishes have found that the probability of them re-purchasing pre-made dishes is not large. Summarizing the reasons, there are mainly two aspects: first, there are few choices, and second, the cost performance and taste are not as expected.
Chen Fang, the hostess of the family of three, considered prefabricated dishes last year Chinese New Year's Eve meal, but did not start, this year is close to the Spring Festival, and then open the e-commerce platform and live broadcast room to find that the brand is dazzling, but the category homogenization is too serious. "Is the prefabricated dish 'fried' with the old three Buddha jumping off the wall, sauerkraut fish, and soup?"
Cui Hengliang, the founder of the ingredients, analyzed that these three types are favored for a reason: the taste is universal and there is little need for market education; in the past, the degree of industrialization in B-end catering was high, and the gross profit was high.
Buddha jumping off the wall on the counter of a fresh supermarket to open pineapple finance / photo
The pre-made contestants have options, but they don't have many options either. Lin Zhiyong said that the C-end prefabricated vegetable track is still in its infancy, and many companies only have the ability to push a fist product or series at the beginning. Because chinese cuisine is complex, each type of dish requires different research and development capabilities, raw material processes, and production equipment, and has high financial requirements.
Doing the "old three things" that are not easy to make mistakes does not mean that the players of the pre-made dishes have been at ease.
Some time ago, in order to invite friends to dinner at home, Cheng Yi, who loves to taste, spent 80 yuan to buy a flower glue chicken seafood side stove in an official store of a brand. She showed her new gadgets in front of her friends with great anticipation, and it turned out to feel like she had been cheated. "The side stove bought at a 70- discount price of 80 yuan is not as real as a self-heating small hot pot of 30 yuan." There are few ingredients, the taste is far worse than dine-in or even takeaway, and the most unacceptable thing is that the chicken is small and the chai and seafood are fishy. ”
After 95, Sun Chu bought a certain brand of Buddha who had been planting grass for a long time jumped off the wall, and he complained in the circle of friends, "The industrial taste is very heavy, I really dare not eat, it was not clear what is a prefabricated dish, and now it is black."
Lin Jia has had two experiences of preparing dishes. Once, the fresh e-commerce platform ordered a semi-finished clean dish, and received a look, "the lotus tablets inside have changed color somewhat." The last time, she ordered a pork belly chicken soup, and was impressed by the more than 8,000 reviews displayed in the product description and display, "it looks convenient, fast and delicious", can be eaten in the mouth, "fishy taste is very heavy".
This year Chinese New Year's EveChinese New Year's Eve meal, Lin Jia no longer considers pre-made dishes. Sun Chu said to Kai Pineapple Finance, "After experiencing it, I know that pre-made dishes have high requirements for users, you must be lazy, lazy to cook yourself, and you can't be too lazy, lazy to only order takeaway."
"Now there are more factors affecting the promotion of prepared dishes, such as taste reduction, ingredient preservation, distribution efficiency, etc., which are not as good as consumer expectations, and players in the C-end market are groping." New retail expert Bao Yuezhong said.
"People who come over" pour cold water: the market has not changed
The reaction of the young people was expected in the eyes of Chen Li, the "veteran" of the prefabricated dish.
Around 2013, a number of fresh e-commerce companies arose in China, and he founded one of them to make pre-made dishes, but it was not the name at that time. For a variety of reasons, the project did not survive to the present.
Chen Li himself subsequently devoted himself to other industries. He revealed to Kai Pineapple Finance that one of the final outcomes of the project was to sell all the production processes of all recipes to a head fresh e-commerce platform.
"At the beginning of 2020, some investors with a keen sense of smell paid attention to the pre-made vegetable track, and many people tempted me to go back to the field, but I refused." Part of the reason, he says, is that "user acceptance hasn't changed compared to a few years ago."
The current changes in the vigorous pre-made dishes are from the outside. Fueled by capital and media, prefabricated dishes have entered people's vision; the infrastructure of social cold chain logistics has been more perfected, and the supply chain of catering ingredients has become more mature - pre-made dishes have entered an excellent time window.
However, he believes that for two consecutive years, young people have noticed pre-made dishes, but practitioners have not seized the opportunity to break into the young people.
"They are the least cooked type of people, they don't want to spend time and no planning on cooking, and they want this group of people to give up takeaways, open fires to heat pre-made dishes, and solve pain points." Chen Li said that the core is to improve the taste and distribution efficiency, close to takeaway.
According to the shelf life of the prepared dish, it can be divided into short-term insurance and long-term insurance, short-term products, the taste can be comparable to takeaway, but the threshold is high. "At present, there are quite a few prepared vegetable companies in the market, doing long-term insurance products, with a higher success rate and a shorter monetization path, which is actually frozen takeaway." Chen Li said.
In his view, even if it is a frozen long-term prefabricated dish, there is still room for the research and development of the prefabricated dish. He gave an example, the same buns, the market is sold are cooked embryo frozen buns, bun skin in advance, wake up noodles, wrapped after steaming, and then frozen. Now there are companies that are developing raw frozen buns, the skin of the buns is not sticky, the taste is better, but the technical threshold is much higher.
In terms of efficiency compared with takeaway, Chen Li believes that at present, in addition to retail players can be compared, other mainstream prefabricated food players have not yet been able to achieve 30 minutes - 2 hours delivery.
In general, a company must have R & D capabilities, quality control capabilities, category richness can go up, can provide mature solutions at the logistics end, and has the ability of traffic or brand ends, in order to "fry" high-scoring pre-made dishes.
C-end pre-made dishes, don't deify "Chinese New Year's Eve rice"
Chinese New Year's EveChinese New Year's Eve meals and Spring Festival parties are a good time for the education market recognized by prefabricated vegetable companies, and as early as two months ago, the various gate factions of prefabricated dishes sharpened their knives.
However, some practitioners say that both capital and entrepreneurs need to stay sober.
In 2014 and 2015, Chen Li's project launched Chinese New Year's Eve meal package. "The data in the background at that time showed that the user acceptance was very high. But once we return to the daily scene, we know that the Spring Festival must not represent the usual time. ”
"Young people want to cook because they need a sense of ceremony or emotional appeal. Chinese New Year's Eve meal and Spring Festival are the days when the people of the whole country most pursue a sense of ceremony and emotional appeal in the matter of eating. Chen Li said that the prosperity of the pre-made cuisine during the Spring Festival is the peak of the year, it is difficult to represent the norm, and in other days when young people need a sense of ceremony, the pre-made dish is only a "spare tire in the spare tire".
Pricing is directly related to the price/performance ratio. In many e-commerce platforms, the cost performance is not high, and it is one of the evaluation labels of a large number of consumers for prepared dishes.
At present, the price of a semi-finished net dish on the market is 8 yuan-20 yuan; the price of homemade single products of frozen pre-made dishes ranges from more than 20 yuan to more than 50 yuan, and the unit price of large dishes and hard dishes is about 100 yuan.
Wang Yang introduced that in theory, the cost of prepared dishes is lower than dine-in and takeaway, and the pricing can be 50% lower than that of dine-in, but the current pricing on the market can only be 10-20% lower, and there is still 30% of the price reduction space. "Because the production scale of prepared dishes is not large enough, the degree of intensification is not high, and the cost of multiple links cannot be suppressed."
The research report of Anxin Securities confirms this: nearly 70% of the prefabricated vegetable processing enterprises are still in a small, weak and scattered state, and have not formed a relatively complete business model.
But Lin Zhiyong is also worried that now is the golden time of the education market, and some entrants are just chasing the wind and engaging in vicious competition at low prices, which is counterproductive, resulting in the status of prefabricated dishes not even being guaranteed as a "spare tire".
His team found that online channels are promoting a "blockbuster methodology": the product hits the "lowest price on the whole network", and then frantically invests, "the traffic cost is handed over to the platform and the anchor, and 20%-40% of the cost is handed over to the courier company." In order not to lose too much, we have to sacrifice quality. ”
For example, a 9.9 yuan "children's filet steak" is pushed into a hit in this way. "A piece of steak is priced at 9.9 yuan, the cost should be controlled within 5 yuan, and the probability is that the steak is restructured with minced meat." Consumers taste, 'how is the taste of flavor', forming a psychological shadow, misunderstanding of the prepared dish, but harming the industry. ”
Hot pre-made dish Chinese New Year's Eve rice open pineapple finance / photo
This Spring Festival, the reference significance of the sales of pre-made dishes is not large, but it can still bring some changes to the industry.
After several peaks and troughs, C-end prefabricated dishes will eliminate some mixed speculators, and some excellent brands will be remembered by some consumers. But overall, the Spring Festival will not bring qualitative changes to the budding pre-made dishes. "The state of blooming flowers will last for another year or two, and it will take at least three to five years to run out of the number one player." Lin Zhiyong said.
According to the data of Guohai Securities, the compound growth rate of the prepared vegetable industry will reach 15% from 2021 to 2026, and the scale of the prepared vegetable industry is expected to exceed 400 billion yuan in 2026, of which the B-end scale exceeds 300 billion yuan and the C-end scale exceeds 100 billion yuan. IPG China chief economist Bai Wenxi added that the C-end market size will continue to rise, and the future of prepared dishes or B-end and C-end equally divided the world.
Chen Li looked at the pre-made food track again, claiming to be an optimist: "Buying vegetables and cooking is very painful for young people, and with the passage of time and the maturity of the industry, people will slowly turn pre-made dishes into one of the daily solutions for family catering." ”
In short, the pre-made dishes are promising, but don't take the Chinese New Year's Eve meal set too seriously.
"This Spring Festival at any cost to do market launch, may be in exchange for a beautiful report card, but do not be confused by the appearance of the eyes, pre-made dishes or cut into the daily scene." Cui Hengliang woke up.
Note: At the request of the interviewees, Cheng Yi, Sun Chu, Lin Jia, and Chen Li are pseudonyms.