On January 15, 2022, citizens customized "pre-made dishes" at the New Year goods market of The Nanning International Convention and Exhibition Center in Guangxi. Source: Visual China
Author 丨Lius
Editor 丨 Kang Xiao
Produced by 丨Shenwang Tencent News Xiaoman Studio
Squirrel cinnamon fish, shrimp tendons, sweet and sour tenderloin, black pepper denim bone, black fish sauerkraut fish... Dishes that used to require a day or even days of preparation can now be served to the table of Chinese New Year's Eve meals within an hour, even if the person in charge has no cooking experience.
In the past, this was unthinkable. The epidemic has changed people's living habits, and more people choose to eat at home than eating out. Under the "home economy", the video content showing cooking skills on platforms such as Kuaishou, Douyin, and Xiaohongshu has a high number of views, and the rice cooker bakes cakes, homemade fritters, cold skins, and a variety of recipes have been moved to the Internet.
This has cultivated fertile soil for the development of the prefabricated vegetable industry.
On the occasion of the Spring Festival in 2022, the pre-made dishes largely meet the needs of young people who celebrate the New Year in situ, but are not proficient in cooking, but also pursue the sense of Chinese New Year's Eve ceremony.
Prepared dishes are washed, cut, collocated, processed, packaged and stored in a frozen or vacuum manner, and consumers can quickly serve them on the dinner table after purchase with a simple cooking.
Ai Media Consulting data predicts that the size of China's prepared vegetable market will be 345.9 billion yuan in 2021, and then it will increase year by year with a growth rate of about 20%. In the next 3 to 5 years, the prepared vegetable industry has the potential to become the next trillion catering market.
According to the data of Tianyancha, there are more than 69,000 enterprises whose names or business scope include "quick-frozen, prepared dishes, prepared foods, semi-finished foods, ready-to-eat foods, and clean vegetables". Among them, the number of enterprises in Shandong ranked first with more than 9,400, accounting for 13.71%; the number of enterprises in Henan, Jiangsu and Guangdong exceeded 5,000 respectively, ranking second, third and fourth in the country.
With the title of "trillion-level market scale", prefabricated dishes have become the new favorite of the capital industry, and major e-commerce platforms, fresh retail, and chain catering enterprises have rushed to this track.
With the Spring Festival of the Year of the Tiger in 2022, a revolution around the table has arrived.
Pre-made dishes stand on the air outlet
This is the second Spring Festival spent in Beijing since the epidemic. As early as a week ago, she contacted the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner that had been booked by Jin Dingxuan and Quan Jude, but was told that it was already fully booked and could only wait for the second batch after the 8:30 p.m. overturning.
This came as a bit of a surprise to Ping Ping. The pandemic doesn't seem to have dampened people's enthusiasm for going out for Chinese New Year's Eve meals. According to the data provided by Meituan to "Deep Net", in the reservation function of the Meituan App, the number of restaurant users who booked in advance from January 1 to January 2 Chinese New Year's Eve night increased by 95.8% year-on-year.
In early January, the number of catering merchants serving Chinese New Year's Eve meal packages online increased by more than 118% compared with last year, and the number of orders for Chinese New Year's Eve meal packages nationwide doubled compared with the same period last year.
"The family is large, usually busy at work, to eat Chinese New Year's Eve meal in the restaurant is the best choice for 'free hands'." When he learned that the pre-made dishes could be made Chinese New Year's Eve meals quickly, PingPing planned to buy a single item to try first.
Meituan buys vegetables, Dingdong buys vegetables, Hema and Daily Excellent Fresh and other fresh e-commerce companies, Taobao, Jingdong and other e-commerce platforms, as well as chain catering, all choose to Chinese New Year's Eve rice as an important battlefield for promoting prepared dishes at this node of the Spring Festival.
"Deep Web" noted that on the Taobao platform, Songhelou, Heyuan Restaurant, Dong Zhijia, Guangzhou Restaurant flagship store, etc. launched Chinese New Year's Eve rice semi-finished products, kuaishou dish sets, including cold cuts, hot dishes, dim sum, seafood pots and other dishes, with monthly sales of thousands.
Meituan Buy Food jointly with Chef Xiang, Dianping Must Eat List, online list restaurant braised pork, soybean pork claw, Xiangwei double pepper fish head, pineapple grunt meat and other similar models, cooperation restaurants include Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Wuhan area of Guangzhou restaurants, Tao Taoju, Na is not pot, Meizhou Dongpo, Beijing banquet.
In the Dingdong Grocery Shopping Zone, semi-finished dishes such as breakfast salads, dumpling fillings, and sheep scorpions are readily available. Dingdong buy vegetables told "Deep Net" that "scene operation" is the principle that Dingdong buys vegetables has adhered to in the past year, that is, pay attention to the dining scene, including according to different seasons, solar terms, or targeted product planning in mid-week and weekend.
The Spring Festival is an important card slot time from "single product drive" to "menu drive".
At present, the sales of prepared dishes on various platforms have increased to varying degrees during the Spring Festival.
Meituan told Shenzhen.com that in the past three weeks, the sales of prefabricated dishes in the must-eat list restaurants in Beijing have increased by 134% compared with the same period in December. "Deep Web" learned that its growth rate in 2021 increased by four times compared with 2020, of which frozen dishes accounted for the highest proportion of sales and the largest growth rate.
According to the "2021 Annual Consumption Trend Report" released by Dingdong Buy, the sales volume of dingdong buy food prefabricated dishes in 2021 increased by 300% compared with the same period last year, and the penetration rate of orders including prefabricated dishes in the overall order has exceeded 40%.
They set up a prefabricated cuisine department in June 2020, and driven by the rapid development of the industry, prefabricated cuisine has now become a national business line and expanded the national SKUs to 1000-1200.
Walk from the restaurant into the family
In fact, prepared dishes are nothing new.
According to the freshness level, prepared dishes are divided into ready-to-eat food, instant hot food, cooked food, and ready-to-eat food. At present, the products sold by major platforms to C-end users basically cover the prepared dishes that need to be processed to varying degrees.
In the past for a long time, prefabricated dishes were made of agricultural, livestock, poultry and aquatic products as raw materials, with various auxiliary materials, and were made into finished or semi-finished products after pre-processing, and then transported to the back kitchen of the restaurant through the cold chain, and after rapid standardized processing, they were brought to the table of diners. We call it B-side supply.
The wide application of prefabricated dishes in B-end catering enterprises is actually that it helps enterprises to achieve cost reduction and efficiency to a large extent with the characteristics of high gross profit, which is also one of the reasons for the existence of the central kitchen of well-known catering enterprises such as Jindingxuan, Meizhou Dongpo, Xiaonanguo and so on.
For example, the yellow stew pot that was very popular in 2004 was also based on the soup, raw materials and condiments distributed by the headquarters, and the three-juice stew pot pre-made for quick cooking quickly won the world in the catering market.
Of course, the change in people's eating habits has catalyzed the outbreak of the prefabricated vegetable industry, and the deeper reason behind it is the increase in the demand for catering enterprises to resist risks, and the gradual maturity of supply links such as the cold chain of product transportation behind them.
According to data from the China Chain Store & Franchise Association, when the epidemic prevention and control situation was at its most severe in 2020, more than 90% of chain catering enterprises sold semi-finished products and prepackaged food.
According to the calculation of the research department of CICC, a 20-square-meter restaurant mainly engaged in takeaway, with an average daily average of 80 singles and an actual customer unit price of 35 yuan, after the use of prefabricated dishes, the cost of ingredients increased from 30% to 36%, while the decline in labor costs, leasing costs and operating expenses can cover the increase in food costs, and the profit margin of the store increased from 3% to 4%.
In addition, it can be compared with international chain catering enterprises such as McDonald's and KFC, which reduce the cost of distribution of raw materials, labor costs and rental costs through standardized pre-made dishes and central kitchens, and achieve chain expansion.
2019 to 2020 is an important turning point, the catering industry has been hit hard by the epidemic, in addition to the need to reduce costs and increase efficiency is more urgent, catering companies are also looking for new scenarios. As a result, C-end prepared dishes have received more attention, and catering companies have moved pre-made dishes from the back kitchen to the table of ordinary families.
Ou Houxi, the person in charge of Dingdong's prefabricated dishes, found in the past year that the factory, which originally only did B-end, has now begun to transform into a C-end. "The market reaction on the C-end is the most obvious."
Among the cooperative merchants who buy food in Dingdong, there are also more and more brands that combine their own productivity to do joint customization. For example, in the past, the main channels of Lao Cheng's pot were offline, and the sheep scorpion samples sent at the beginning of the online Dingdong vegetable purchase were normal temperature products that had been sterilized by high temperature, and after learning the demand for pre-made dishes, Lao Cheng began to make refrigerated, fresh and short-term products.
The Chinese stomach that is difficult to conquer
Looking around at the current major platforms, the target audience of pre-made dishes is targeted at the younger generation, and as they get older, they gradually Chinese New Year's Eve dominance.
Hema survey found that 82% of respondents aged 30-35 have a certain understanding of the "New Year meal package", of which 65% are willing to try to buy pre-made New Year dishes; Dingdong buys fast food user portraits in the 30-45 age group.
But can this trillion-dollar supermarket conquer the stomachs of all Chinese?
Through the investigation of the deep web, it was found that young people have a higher degree of acceptance of prepared dishes, but they prefer to choose prepared dishes for one or two dishes, while the elderly cannot accept that all Chinese New Year's Eve meals come from prepared dishes.
"In addition to the richness of the dishes, the Chinese New Year's Eve meal is actually more important than the moment of family reunion," she felt that her own dishes were more poty, and the prepared dishes could not be tried in advance, and the risk of the whole table was too high.
An An comes from Hunan, the local Hunan cuisine tastes changeable, pepper fried meat, chopped pepper fish head, Xiangxi grandmother dish is the representative dish, the family usually small stir-fry mostly, she believes that the differentiated taste is difficult to be satisfied by the pre-made dish.
When it comes to market size and prospects, fans of prefabricated dishes like to use foreign markets as a comparison.
For example, in the United States, where prepared dishes first emerged, giants like SYSCO were born. The company has completed eight mergers and acquisitions in the past few decades, supplying more than 625,000 restaurants, hospitals and schools in 90 countries with agricultural products, frozen products, poultry, seafood and other ingredients, with a market share of 16% in the US catering supply market, which is typical of companies that have risen by to B supply.
For example, in Japan, in the 1970s, the process of Japanese cities accelerated, the aging, the degree of low birthrate, and the declining average household population promoted the maturity of the prefabricated vegetable market in Japan, with sales reaching 613.6 billion yuan in 2018 and a penetration rate of more than 60% in 2019. A leading company in prefabricated vegetables such as Kobe & Co., Ltd. was born.
The growth process of giants has reference significance, but the soil that nurtures giants is also crucial - compared with Western food that is easier to standardize, the eight major cuisines of Chinese food Lu, Sichuan, Guangdong, Suzhou, Fujian, Zhejiang, Hunan and Hui are difficult to achieve unified standardization.
When business logic and traditional customs collide, perhaps the ideas of entrepreneurs and capital are too optimistic.
Squeeze out the bubble
Capital is always chasing the outlet. Now, the catering investment boom is once again pouring into pre-made dishes, more urgent than ever.
According to the data of enterprise investigation, since 2013, a total of 72 investment and financing incidents have occurred in the prefabricated vegetable track, and the total amount of disclosed financing has exceeded 1 billion yuan, involving 42 projects.
Among them, 2015 to 2016 is the peak period of financing, with 14 and 17 financing events respectively; 2020 to 2021 is the second peak period, with a total of 12 financings in the prefabricated vegetable track in 2020 and 12 financings since 2021.
In April 2021, Weizhixiang landed on A shares to become the first share of prefabricated dishes, followed by the prefabricated cuisine company Delicious submitted a prospectus at the end of last year; Wang Jiadu completed nearly 100 million yuan of financing in March last year, and Zhenwei Xiaomeiyuan from Shanghai completed 4 rounds of financing in the past year, opening up online and offline sales channels for Dingdong Grocery Shopping, Taobao Tmall, and Hema Stores. Even Lu Zhengyao's latest entrepreneurial project, "Tip of the Tongue Technology", has also set its sights on the pre-made vegetable industry.
An investor who pays attention to the consumption track told the "Deep Net" that in 2018, the valuation of restaurant chain brands, central kitchens and pre-made dishes was reasonable, but now the value is overestimated, and there will be a wave of bubbles squeezed out of the new consumption track in 2022.
He believes that although the prefabricated vegetable industry stands on the cusp, the entry threshold and research and development threshold are not high, and the industry is still in the stage of competing for deer, which needs to solve the problem of production scale, and also faces problems such as breaking more user consumption habits and food safety risks.
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