Ignition Dimension (ID: chaintruth) original
Produced by Burning Finance
Author | ZHANG Lin
Edit | Cao Yang
Spicy crab, dried pot fatty sausage, cumin lamb, dried stir-fried parsley, home-cooked stewed with fish... At this year's Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, Li Yue, a post-90s girl, is ready to become a chef and zhang Luo has a table of meals to entertain friends.
When she told her boyfriend about this idea, the boyfriend said to her with a puzzled face, "When did you learn to cook?" ”
In fact, Li Yue has always been a kitchen white, and the real hero of this Chinese New Year's Eve meal will be the pre-made dish. Pre-made cuisine, a product that is not a new thing but has successfully spread throughout the circle of friends and social platforms during this year's Spring Festival.
In Weibo, topics related to prepared dishes have emerged in an endless stream, such as #Prefabricated dishes are popular during the Spring Festival sales doubled#, #Prefats or trillion-level big markets#, #Prefab dishes are nearly 80% cheaper than restaurants#, #Chinese New Year's Eve rice pre-made dishes consumption is 70% of young people#, etc. In the Little Red Book, search for "prepared dishes" and take thousands of related notes.
Photo / Little Red Book (left), Douyin (right)
Source / Screenshot of Burning Finance
Baidu index shows that since November 2021, the search index related to prepared dishes began to fluctuate. On January 13, 2022, the prefabricated dish search index soared to 11976.
Burning Finance searched for "Chinese New Year's Eve Rice" on Tmall and found that all kinds of prefabricated dishes are various, and the price ranges from a few hundred yuan to thousands of yuan. According to the customer service of a pre-made vegetable shop, the preparation time of all 12 dishes is not more than 1 hour, and the dishes are fresh, and the taste of the finished product is similar to that of the restaurant.
Zhu Danpeng, an analyst in the Chinese food industry, told Burning Finance that cooking white, home culture, takeaway, and lazy effect are all reasons for the new generation to become the mainstream consumer group of pre-made dishes, and it is also a key point that makes "pre-made dishes" go from behind the scenes to the front of the stage.
As a result, driven by the dual drive of the home economy and the demand for the Spring Festival, the stock prices of prefabricated vegetable-related concept stocks have also continued to rise.
According to Tiger Securities, the share price of Guolian Aquatic Products (300094.SZ) began to fluctuate since December 21, 2021, rose sharply on January 4, 2022, and hit a new high on January 17. In addition to Guolian Aquatic Products, the "first share of prefabricated vegetables" (605089.SH), and the stock price has also exceeded 100 yuan.
For a time, the pre-made dish or the first big buzz in 2022 was very popular. In addition to enterprises specializing in prefabricated dishes, catering enterprises, traditional frozen food enterprises, new retail platforms, seafood, pig enterprises, and meat companies have seized the new heights of the prefabricated vegetable market.
The Guolian Aquatic Products Securities Department told Burning Finance that prefabricated dishes are a track that capital and entrepreneurs have "planned for a long time". As early as 2019, some investors said that prepared dishes will be the next outlet for new consumption. As a new generation of solutions to eat at home, prefabricated dishes are infiltrating from the B-end and C-end double-line, the fast pace of life of The Z generation, the ability to cook and the willingness are decreasing, coupled with the catalysis of the epidemic, the Spring Festival is approaching, making the pre-made dishes rapidly popular, attracting investors to layout.
According to the data of Tianyancha, the annual registration volume of prefabricated vegetable-related enterprises in 2019 and 2020 reached the highest level in ten years. As of 2021, there are more than 68,000 pre-made vegetable-related enterprises in the mainland.
However, despite the many brands and the popular concept, the pre-made dishes may still need to be worked on. Burning Finance has observed in a number of Hema Fresh and Yonghui supermarkets that there are special areas for prepared dishes in supermarkets, and there are many types of prepared dishes, but there are basically only young people staying in this area, and there are very few purchases. After inquiry, Burning Finance found that "too expensive", "worried that the dishes are not fresh" and "nutrient loss" were the main reasons why it could not buy in the end.
In addition, there are still industry problems such as lack of industry standards, homogenization of products, and difficulty in occupying a competitive advantage in the market.
Obviously, the pre-made dishes that stand in the air outlet still have a long way to go.
The pre-made dish becomes the new protagonist of Chinese New Year's Eve rice
"599 yuan 12 dishes, even if you are a kitchen white, you can get a table of Chinese New Year's Eve meals in 20 minutes." This is the introduction of the anchor that Li Yue overheard in the live broadcast room when he was worried about how to get the Chinese New Year's Eve meal this year.
"I didn't hesitate to place an order." Li Yue told Burning Finance that because of the epidemic prevention policy, this year she not only decided to stay in Beijing with her boyfriend for the New Year, but also invited her friends who stayed in Beijing to have a Chinese New Year's Eve meal together. "But all I can do is boiled noodles and scrambled eggs with tomatoes, and the pre-made dishes have helped me regain face."
Li Yue told Burning Finance that compared with hot pot, the variety of pre-made dishes is more abundant, and compared with takeaway, pre-made dishes satisfy the ritual sense of cooking. "Of course, we can also choose to go to the restaurant, but making a hearty Chinese New Year's Eve meal at home is not only more full of New Year's flavor, but also more reassuring to parents who are far away from home."
Photo/ Tmall Juhuasuan live broadcast room
Source/Burn Finance Screenshot
Like Li Yue, she was worried about Chinese New Year's Eve meals with Aunt Wang in Shanghai. In the past, Aunt Wang would start booking a hotel a month in advance, worrying that the supply of Chinese New Year's Eve meal boxes was in short supply. But this year, for the first time, Aunt Wang included pre-made dishes in her Chinese New Year's Eve meal plan.
Aunt Wang told Burning Finance that she originally had no plans to put pre-made dishes on the table, but in the case of the restaurant's Chinese New Year's Eve full of reservations, some long-established and star hotel clerks invariably recommended Chinese New Year's Eve rice pre-made dishes to her. "For my concerns about the freshness of the dishes and the preservatives, the clerk said that the prepared dishes will be made and sold according to the order to ensure freshness."
With the idea of trying it out, Aunt Wang ordered six hard dishes such as Buddha jumping off the wall, braised abalone, and spicy crab in a long-established house. "After all, it was the first time I tried it, but I still used the pre-made dishes as a supplement to the Chinese New Year's Eve meal, ordering some dishes that were difficult to handle and not easy to operate at home, and with some simple vegetarian dishes and cold dishes, I made a full table of Chinese New Year's Eve rice."
"The prepared dish will certainly not have as homely taste as it is made, but if the Buddha jumps off the wall and the braised abalone only needs to be heated for ten minutes to be served, the time and energy saved can also make up for the lack of taste." Aunt Wang said that if you make a table of Chinese New Year's Eve at home, dishes such as pig's trotters, elbows, ribs, etc., you need to start preparing a day in advance, which is actually quite hard.
"Although you don't choose pre-made dishes every day, but during the New Year's Festival or family dinner, pre-made dishes are still a good choice, after all, they can not only improve the richness of the dishes, but also reduce a lot of workload for themselves." Aunt Wang said.
In addition to serving on their own tables, prepared dishes have also become the first choice for many people to give gifts. Lin He's gift to honor his parents during this year's Spring Festival is a pre-made dish gift box. "I accidentally saw the prefabricated dish tweet in the public account article of a fresh e-commerce company, and at that time I thought that this gift box was really good, and I thought that I couldn't go home for the New Year, so I directly booked a Buddha jumping wall gift box to mail back to my hometown."
He told Burning Finance that in the past, he would buy wine for his father during the Spring Festival, but as they grew older, they felt that it was not healthy enough to send wine. "Every year during the Spring Festival, I want to send them something that they don't eat often or don't use often, so that they can try more new things, and the pre-made dishes can just let them taste the fresh, and also add dishes to the Chinese New Year's Eve rice."
Capital is keen and there are many players
In fact, pre-made dishes are not new.
In the 1990s, as fast food restaurants such as KFC and McDonald's entered the Chinese market, clean vegetable distribution and processing began to appear in China. After 2000, deep-processing semi-finished vegetable enterprises began to emerge, but due to the immature conditions of related supporting conditions, the overall development of the industry was relatively slow. In 2014, with the economic development and the explosive growth of takeaway, the prefabricated vegetable industry entered a period of volume at the B end. The number of companies entering the market also rose from 4,000 in 2015 to 8,000 in 2018.
For a long time in the past, prefabricated dishes are the "secret weapons" of catering enterprises, for B-end catering enterprises, the use of prefabricated dishes can reduce labor costs, reduce the area of the back kitchen, improve the efficiency of meals, ensure the stability of product taste, and improve food safety quality assurance. At that time, C-end consumers even had a bad impression of companies using pre-made dishes.
However, in just 2 years, the promotion of the epidemic and the changes in consumer consumption patterns and consumption habits, under the role of the "lazy house economy", directly made the prefabricated dishes usher in an outbreak at the C-end, especially by the post-80s and post-90s crowds.
According to the "2021 China Prepared Cuisine Industry Analysis Report" released by Ai Media Consulting, more than 80% of the C-end users of "prepared cuisine" are aged 22-40 years old, and nearly six have become female users. More than 80% of the survey users consume pre-made vegetable products every week, and customers buy pre-made dishes mainly to save time.
Guohai Securities analysis said that for the C-end, with the post-80s and post-90s becoming the main group of household consumers, they are facing the degradation of cooking ability, no time and no energy, and the uneconomical and unhealthy pain points of eating out. Under the normalization of the epidemic, the scene of eating at home has increased, and the rise of new retail channels such as Hema and Dingdong has also accelerated the consumption of prefabricated dishes.
Photo/Fruit and vegetable good pre-made dish area
Source/Burning Finance Photo
The popularity of preheated dishes at the C-end has made enterprises in the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain begin to lay out. In addition to enterprises specializing in pre-made dishes such as Weizhixiang and Qianwei Central Kitchen, traditional quick-frozen brand enterprises such as Yasui Food and Sanquan Food have also joined the battlefield. Catering giants including but not limited to Xibei, Haidilao, Meizhou Dongpo, etc. will naturally not miss this opportunity.
New retail platforms such as Hema Fresh, Daily Excellent Fresh, and Dingdong Buy Vegetables have also launched prefabricated dishes, and even guolian aquatic products, an upstream enterprise in the industrial chain, have also made efforts to operate their own pre-made vegetable products.
Many listed companies are also involved. According to the incomplete statistics of Burning Finance, dozens of listed companies, including Guolian Aquatic Products, Zhangzidao, ORG, Chunxue Food, Weizhixiang and Longda Cuisine, have entered the prefabricated vegetable track, and have expressed high expectations for the prefabricated vegetable business in terms of production capacity and performance targets.
The continuous entry of players has also made the good news of the concept of prefabricated dishes continue, and many stocks such as Guolian Aquatic Products, Delis, Zhangzidao, Gaishi Food, Jinling Hotel, Xi'an Catering, and Haixin Food have continued to rise.
In addition, many brands in the field of prefabricated dishes have been favored by capital, and recently, companies such as Taste Lion, Pot Circle Food Hui, and Zhenwei Xiaomeiyuan have frequently raised funds, and the amount of financing has reached tens of millions, behind which are well-known investment institutions such as IDG Capital and Source Code Capital.
The Guolian Aquatic Products Securities Department told Burning Finance that from the perspective of the market environment, around 2016, the acceptance of prepared dishes among consumers was still relatively low, and the market cultivation cost was larger. However, with the upgrading of consumption, the prevalence of the lazy economy, and the catalysis of the epidemic, prefabricated dishes have been better cultivated in the market for C-end consumer customers, and the market space of related consumers is gradually opening.
Real or fake demand?
It seems that the prepared dish is walking on the wind outlet.
According to the "2021 China Prepared Vegetable Industry Analysis Report", the size of China's prepared vegetable market in 2021 will be 345.9 billion yuan. Pre-made dishes in China is just in its infancy, with the upgrading of consumption and cold chain logistics layout, after which it will increase at a rate of 20% year by year, and the scale of China's prepared dishes will be about 516.5 billion yuan in 2023.
The Guolian Aquatic Securities Department also told Burning Finance that with the layout of the logistics cold chain and the change of people's consumption concepts, the prefabricated vegetable market will accelerate its development at both ends of B and C. A number of institutions have shouted a trillion slogans for the domestic prefabricated vegetable track. In the future, prepared dishes are likely to become the meals of young people, it is not a gust of wind, more will become the next outlet, but also one of the trends of future development.
However, in the eyes of more industry insiders, although the pre-made dish seems to be in the limelight, the next is still full of unknowns.
Zhu Danpeng pointed out that although prefabricated dishes have formed a certain market scale, the brand still faces many challenges on the road to development. On the one hand, the consumer's recognition and acceptance of prepared dishes is not high enough, and some consumers will think that the nutrition of prepared dishes has been lost or the ingredients are not fresh. On the other hand, pre-made dishes do not have national standards, which are prone to hidden dangers in food safety.
After the 90s, Xinyu expressed his confusion about the heat of the prepared dish.
When a chopstick with a dark and red kung pao chicken was sent into his mouth, Xinyu felt a full industrial taste. Xinyu told Burning Finance that she saw that many social media were discussing pre-made dishes, and she also wanted to buy them to try. "Fast is fast, and the taste is also that taste, but it has nothing to do with delicious food, and the feeling is the same as the takeaway fast food ordered every day."
Wang Chuang after 95 also does not understand the positioning of prefabricated dishes, he said to Burning Finance, the price of prefabricated dishes is not low, the taste is not as good as the restaurant, and the kitchen is cleaned up after meals, which is not cost-effective.
"Although consumers have enthusiasm, the degree of enthusiasm is very different, and it cannot be compared with the enthusiasm of capital for prepared dishes." Zhu Danpeng said, "Consumers' awareness of prepared dishes is not deep enough, which requires the integrity of the industry, product quality stability, brand credibility, consumption scene innovation, dish taste protection and other parties to promote, relying on the enterprise is not enough." ”
There are also cases of failure of prefabricated dishes launched by well-known brands. In October 2020, Xibei launched the prefabricated cuisine brand Jia Guolong Kung Fu Dish, there is no kitchen and chef in the store, and all dishes are semi-finished products. According to the official introduction, this is the founder of Xibei Catering and the famous chefs of major cuisines to develop and launch a local famous dish with authentic taste, time-consuming and labor-intensive, using minus 40 degrees of freezing lock technology.
However, this so-called kung fu dish not only did not stir up waves in the industry, but the evaluation given by consumers was also diametrically opposed to the official introduction. On social media, many netizens complained about it like airplane meals, cans, "eating takeaway together in the restaurant", "100 yuan per capita, eating quick-frozen box lunches." ”
The Guolian Aquatic Products Securities Department said that although the entry threshold of prefabricated dishes is not high, it is not easy to do well. At present, the industry is in the early stage of development, not only facing the offline sales scenario is limited, the supply chain is incomplete, the cost is too high, the product is affected by cold chain logistics and other industry pain points, but also must ensure whether the quality of prepared dishes is stable, whether it is nutritionally healthy and other issues.
Zhu Danpeng said that China's prepared dishes have not really entered the stage of "production and marketing", although the capital side and the industrial side are very passionate, but the consumer side does not have much desire. "The main consumer group of prepared dishes is still concentrated in young people, and it is difficult to broaden the consumer population." Influenced by food culture and eating habits, Chinese prefer fresh food. The production and sales process of the prepared dish itself is contrary to China's original food culture and health culture, so it is difficult to be accepted by a wider group. ”
A number of securities institutions have also said that the local festival has spawned the demand for prepared dishes, and it is still necessary to consider the long-term development after the heat. Anxin Securities Research Report shows that nearly 70% of the prefabricated vegetable processing enterprises are still in a small, weak and scattered state, and many of them are individual industrial and commercial households and workshop-style production and processing models, and have not formed a relatively complete commercial business model.
Ping An Securities believes that overall, the market concentration of the prepared vegetable industry is still relatively low, the main layout is in the East China market, and the factories are also concentrated in the Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai regions, and have not yet formed a scale.
Zhu Danpeng added that in order to achieve the goal of "production and marketing", it is necessary for the industrial side to match and meet the core needs of the consumer side, crack the shortcomings and pain points of industry development, and the prefabricated vegetable industry can usher in a broader market space.
The Guolian Aquatic Products And Securities Department said that the reason why prepared dishes can become a development trend is that the industrial division of labor allows its products to industrialize, which puts forward higher challenges to the industrialization and standardization of enterprises' products, and another major challenge comes from the establishment of a supply chain system. In addition, it is also necessary for enterprises to dig deep into the consumer demand of consumers from online to offline, from home to store, expand new consumption scenarios, attract new customers, deep process the single product, and improve profit margins.
The Guolian Aquatic Products and Securities Department stressed that although at present, mainland prepared dishes are still in the early stages, the industry is growing at a high speed, the industry space is large, and the opportunities faced by enterprises are far greater than the challenges. From the perspective of market demand, the central kitchen of pre-made dishes is the product of standardization and rapidization.
From a technical point of view, with the development of quick-frozen technology, the storage time of semi-finished dishes can be greatly extended, and the quick-frozen technology can improve the standard rate and further promote the optimization of concentration, and the future pattern is expected to be "higher concentration of quick-frozen dishes and regional competition of other pre-made dishes". "Enterprises with strong product research and development capabilities and high-quality product production capabilities are expected to establish brands in this blue ocean market."
"For catering companies, making prepared dishes is the current hot trend." Zhu Danpeng said frankly that many enterprises for their own development needs, closely follow the industry trend to layout prefabricated dishes is beyond reproach. But the key problem is that the prefabricated market has not really entered the node of production and marketing. This market not only needs consumer cognition and acceptance, but also has higher requirements for the central kitchen, the integrity of the industrial chain, quality, service system, etc., which is still a big challenge for enterprises.
In particular, it is worth noting that the secondary market also shows a trend of deheating. Ruwei Zhixiang's stock price continued to fall after breaking through 100 yuan, and as of the close of A-shares on January 28, its stock price closed at 69.39 yuan / share, down nearly 40% from the previous 102.85 yuan / share. The stock price of Guolian Aquatic Products also fell continuously from a high of 9.95 yuan / share, and as of the close of trading on January 28, it closed at 6.19 yuan / share, down more than 30%.
In this regard, industry insiders have hinted at the risk, "From the current point of view, whether the prepared dish is worth investing in is not clear, investors need to make rational judgments and avoid following the trend." Blind entry may only be counterproductive. ”
Resources:
"Prefabricated vegetable concept stocks continue to erupt, and Guolian Aquatic Products and so on have risen and stopped for three consecutive days! Source: Securities Daily
*The caption and some of the inner text illustrations are from Visual China.
*Li Yue, Wang Nan, Lin He, Xinyu and Wang Chuang are pseudonyms in the text
*Disclaimer: In no event shall the information herein or the opinions expressed herein constitute investment advice to any person.