Text | Red Meal Net
In 2021, pre-made dishes have become a hot topic of discussion in the catering industry. It is not only a hot potential stock in the eyes of restaurant companies and back-end industrial chains, but also an object of competition by investment institutions. And the fiery performance of the 2022 Spring Festival pre-made dishes, people can't help but speculate, is the track wind outlet really coming?
Through this Spring Festival, it can be seen that the first explosive category of the catering industry in 2022 has appeared, and it is a pre-made dish. This is somewhat unexpected, but it seems reasonable.
Chinese New Year's Eve rice is a carnival of prepared dishes
Before the Spring Festival, perhaps many people have noticed that whether it is offline supermarkets or online e-commerce platforms, prefabricated dishes have quietly accounted for a large proportion of the Chinese New Year's Eve cuisine army. Large and small restaurant companies and even back-end production enterprises have also launched single-product pre-made dishes, whole table Chinese New Year's Eve-table banquet pre-made dishes.
According to the red food network, at the end of December 2021, Hema Fresh launched the first shot of the New Year's dish reservation, opening the pre-booked dishes including king crab, East Star Spot, Buddha jumping wall, braised pork, etc., from large seafood to traditional hard dishes are all on the scene, single dishes and family portrait New Year dishes can be booked through the Hema app or offline stores, the price ranges from tens to thousands of yuan.
This is also one of the earliest layouts of Hema's New Year dishes. As of January 21, Hema data shows that since the launch of the prefabricated New Year dish, the number of pre-orders in many places across the country has shown an upward trend, and the sales volume in Beijing has doubled, and it is expected to usher in a wave of high growth in the last week before the festival.
At the same time, before entering December 2021, Meituan Has also revealed to the outside world that it will cooperate with long-established and high-reputation restaurants such as Guangzhou Restaurant and Tao Taoju to create a list of must-eat foods for the New Year. Subsequently, Meituan Buy Wentao launched the "Elephant Chef" x "Must Eat List" special area, and launched a series of family banquet pre-made dishes that can be eaten simply by heating.
Guangzhou restaurants, inspired by mooncakes, have been entering the pre-made cuisine Chinese New Year's Eve rice for many years. Tao Tao Ju, Zhi Wei Guan, Lou Wai Lou, Xinghua Lou, Songhe Lou, Heyuan Restaurant, Shen Dacheng and many other long-established and catering enterprises are inspired by Guangzhou restaurants, and also put pre-made dishes Chinese New Year's Eve rice rows on the list of essential goods every year. Meizhou Dongpo, who tasted the sweetness of pre-made dishes during the epidemic, and Xibei, which vigorously invested in pre-made cuisine restaurant Jia Guolong Kung Fu cuisine in 2021, also began to "march" from single-product pre-made dishes to Chinese New Year's Eve meals on the whole table...
△ Image source: Tao Taoju official Weibo
New brands that specialize in pre-made dishes are also targeting this market opportunity.
Zhong Xuegao's prefabricated dish brand Li Xiangguo has launched a tiger year edition of the New Year dish series gift box, including spicy red fire yellow croaker, Hongyun wine stuffy Dongpo meat, Huaiyang Qing stewed lion head and other more than ten dishes of the New Year gift box, pot dish gift box and Golden Soup Buddha jumping wall gift box, sold on major platforms, very popular with consumers. The "upstart" Zhenwei Xiaomeiyuan, which has been repeatedly financed, and Mai Zima, who has invested in Yuanqi Forest, have also launched related products.
Online forces have appeared, offline supermarkets are also making efforts, and dozens of Chinese New Year's Eve lunch gift boxes of different brands have been neatly stacked on the shelves of major supermarkets. In the past, the 3kg gift box for 6-8 people has always been a best-selling product, but this year, the pre-made dish for one person has also become the main promotion of supermarkets.
On the shelves of large supermarket chains such as RT-Mart and BHG, hema fresh and other products, Dahong packaged Chinese New Year's Eve vegetable products are piled up. In addition to the prefabricated dish products covering the major brands mentioned above, there are many strong supply chain brand products, such as Shuhai, Chia Tai, fresh e-commerce self-owned brand Hema Workshop, Meituan Elephant Chef, Dingdong Ace Dishes, etc.
△ Image source: Hema Fresh official Weibo
Different platforms and different channels seem to be struggling to push pre-made dishes to the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner table. For restaurants, the importance of prepared dishes that can help restaurant companies reduce costs and increase efficiency and greatly increase net profits is self-evident.
In terms of C-end consumption, consumers have also shown unprecedented enthusiasm for "prepared dishes".
According to Red Food Network, during the New Year Festival from January 6 to 10, 2022 alone, the sales of prefabricated dishes on Taobao increased by more than 100% year-on-year. The data of the top ten New Year goods released by Tmall also shows that the sales of prepared dishes increased by 16 times compared with last year, ranking first in the "top ten New Year goods".
Before the end of January, the overall sales of Jingdong's fresh prepared dishes have exceeded 10 million, an increase of about 94% year-on-year. During the "Online New Year Festival" sponsored by the Ministry of Commerce, the sales of Chinese New Year's Eve rice series products increased by 96% year-on-year, of which the growth rate of prepared vegetable products was as high as 380%. In the Annual Ceremony of various companies and units, in addition to the traditional flavor and fruit, many pre-made vegetable products were also added...
△Image source: Red Food Network
In addition, the performance of prepared dishes in the stock market is also very strong.
Since 2022, there has been continuous news of prefabricated vegetable-related stocks rising and falling. A number of prefabricated concept stocks collectively came out of a wave of eye-catching ups and downs in the middle of the month, although some sectors have pulled back during this time, but their overall performance is still bright. As of January 21, the cumulative increase of the two prefabricated vegetable concept stocks of Delis and Guolian Aquatic Products was 77.78% and 67.77% respectively.
Looking back at the tide of new consumption in the second half of 2021, the prefabricated vegetable track is still attracting much attention, the pace of financing is accelerating, and since January 2022, many prefabricated cuisine brands have passed out investment and financing information. It can be said that the first shot of catering in 2022 was launched by pre-made dishes.
Pre-made dishes are becoming more and more "understanding" of consumers, and the epidemic is focusing on releasing demand
Why is it that the pre-made dishes that have existed for many years usher in a big outbreak during this year's Spring Festival? Perhaps it is because pre-made dishes are becoming more and more "understanding" of consumers, and consumers are increasingly demanding such "knowing their own" prepared dishes.
Under our traditional perception and popular trends, Chinese New Year's Eve meals are more cooked at home as a family. However, a few years ago, a small number of families began to choose to go to restaurants and hotels for reunion, and there would be almost no purchase of semi-finished products for processing, and even if there were, it was one or two Buddha jumping off the wall, pot dishes and other more complicated dishes.
The relevant person in charge of LiXiangguo said that in the past, prefabricated dishes failed to become popular, on the one hand, consumers believed that semi-finished prefabricated dishes were relatively poor in nutrition and taste, and failed to meet consumer requirements; on the other hand, the ability of prefabricated dishes on the market to reach consumers across the country was relatively lacking.
△ Image source: Li Xiangguo's official Weibo
In fact, from the perspective of development history, the emergence of pre-made dishes was actually provided to restaurant companies at the beginning. In the process of standardization and chaining, the central kitchen is becoming more and more important, and the key to reducing costs and increasing efficiency of the central kitchen lies in pre-packaged dishes, cooking packages, and semi-finished dishes, which is what we are talking about.
With the continuous development and improvement of chain brands, the taste and texture of pre-made dishes are becoming more and more in line with consumer demand. Li Xiangguo also believes that in recent years, the prefabricated vegetable market has emerged some "value for money, excellent comprehensive cost performance" choices in product quality, category research and development, and overall services such as cold chain transportation, so that more and more consumers, willing to try to liberate themselves and their families, will take the initiative to search and order for high-quality, authentic prefabricated New Year meals.
As the relevant person in charge of Hema said, modern people buy pre-made dishes, more to simplify the kitchen process, to put it bluntly, it is lazy economy. Therefore, when developing New Year vegetable products, Hema is also simplifying the processing steps as much as possible, and its New Year vegetable products can almost be directly heated and served.
△Image source: Zhenwei Xiaomeiyuan official Weibo
In addition to Hema, many brands also focus on "pleasing" young people and launch a large number of one-person products. For example, the pre-made dish brand Taste Lion, which focuses on "one-person food", and the three-meal ingredient that also puts "one-person food, one-step cooking" in the first place.
Although in the Chinese New Year's Eve rice sector, "one-person food" is not a strong demand, but this shows that more and more restaurant companies and prepared dish companies are beginning to understand consumers better, and the back-end production chain has begun to pay attention to the C-end and care more about their consumption experience.
In addition, the decision-making power of Chinese New Year's Eve meals is also shifting.
In the past, the decision-making power of Chinese New Year's Eve meals was in the hands of the older generation of 50-60 years old for many years. With the development and change of society, young people in the extended family are more and more "home" trend. According to the results of the Hema New Year vegetable market research, young people aged 30-35 are now taking over the dominance of Chinese New Year's Eve meals, and this part of the consumer group is more willing to try pre-made Chinese New Year dishes.
The epidemic has made this demand faster and more concentrated to release and break out.
Typical such as Xi'an, which has just ended the lockdown, Gong Wei, a columnist of the Red Food Network, said that the epidemic and lockdown have made the demand for prepared dishes in Xi'an almost become just needed, and the box horse, which was not too existential, instantly occupied the C position in the hearts of consumers.
In the context of the special environment of the epidemic, takeaway and prepared dishes have greatly solved the problems in consumers' lives. Everyone tasted the convenient and fast "sweetness" of pre-made dishes, which dispelled many people's previous doubts about the taste and texture of pre-made dishes, thus instantly opening up the "communication" bridge between pre-made dishes and consumers that needed many years to build, and inadvertently allowing pre-made dishes to quickly complete consumer education.
From this point of view, the outbreak of prepared dishes in this Spring Festival can be said to be the result of the combined action of many factors such as the production side, the supply side, the demand side, social consumption habits, the transfer of discourse power, and the epidemic.
2022 may be a critical period for the development of prepared dishes
So, does this mean that the pre-made dishes that have just passed the first year of the development of the consumer side will usher in the limelight in 2022?
It is undeniable that under the joint action of a variety of factors, pre-made dishes may indeed embark on a period of rapid development.
On the one hand, the back-end supply chain and production chain have become increasingly mature because of catering standardization and chaining; on the other hand, the consumer demand of B-end catering enterprises and C-end public has become a strong demand, whether it is a large restaurant enterprise or a small store, the proportion of pre-made dishes and seasoning packages will also increase. You know, pre-made dishes are tracks that have existed and developed for many years, and when the C-end really develops, this track will usher in a complete outbreak.
After the superposition of the epidemic and the Spring Festival, pre-made dishes have indeed obtained the best consumer education opportunities. There is supply, there is demand, and there is a mass base, coupled with the high degree of involvement of capital, prefabricated dishes basically gather the elements of rapid development.
However, we should also see that pre-made dishes, whether they are served in B-end restaurant companies or in the C-end mass market, may need more time from food safety, taste, contradictions between storage and taste, marketing, etc.
Take the Chinese New Year's Eve rice pre-made dish, the price of the same category on the market ranges from 200-1000 yuan, and there are even 9 pieces of 9 free shipping "parallel goods", the price difference is huge.
This also reflects the relative chaos of the current pre-made vegetable market, a mixed situation. For an emerging market, too much "bad money" is likely to make consumers who are new to contact, have a try-and-see mentality lose confidence, causing the market to shrink.
Also contributing to this outcome is the contradiction between food safety, storage and taste.
Prepared dishes, long-term storage is a necessary condition. In order to meet this condition, will any manufacturer increase the shelf life through additives, or other unconventional means? At the beginning of the market, in the mixed stage, such a situation seems to be unavoidable. For consumers who can hardly confirm the production process, this is a huge hidden danger and will become a consumer threshold.
△Image source: Hema Fresh Public Account
And because this is the first Spring Festival of the outbreak of prepared dishes, many consumers are holding the mentality of trying to buy prepared dishes. How do consumers view prepared dishes? Can the prepared dishes meet their requirements? Will they repurchase? These issues will take time and market feedback to confirm.
That is to say, it will take a while before we can truly confirm the attitude of the consumer market to pre-made dishes; we can initially outline a more accurate market volume, and we can further judge whether the participants in the pre-made dishes track, from quality to system, are ready to take off; we can confirm whether the market is a strong real demand, or a pseudo demand for freshness; and then there will be an important form or bubble in the future catering.
All this is likely to find the answer in 2022.
From the supply side, demand side, capital side, we seem to be able to say that prefabricated dishes are ushering in the wind. On the road to the development of pre-made dishes, the catering industry actually has a lot of lessons to make up. And let's give it a little more time and let the bullet fly a little longer.