Fresh e-commerce is experiencing a cold winter, and players who are still sticking to the front line after 2021 are still trying to find ways to seek profitability and improve their viability.
In addition to getting rid of the pressure of a single cash-burning business, the entire industry is also creating differentiated advantages, but in the differentiated business development of different platforms, prefabricated dishes have become a major consensus.
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A breakthrough in the profitability of fresh e-commerce
The definition and name of prepared dishes are nothing new, as the industrialization trend of the catering industry becomes more and more obvious, coupled with the lazy economy brought about by consumption upgrading, its market has suddenly become open; and the arrival of the epidemic has only accelerated its outbreak.
In recent years, prepared dishes have been favored by capital, and their performance is also very powerful. In the recent Spring Festival holiday, the explosive power of pre-made dishes has given this track the strength of a new outlet, and also allowed fresh e-commerce to see a new breakthrough.
According to the data released by Daily Excellent Fresh, during the Spring Festival in the Year of the Tiger, the sales of pre-made dishes on the platform increased by 2.7 times compared with usual days, the sales of Hema pre-made dishes increased by 345% year-on-year, and the sales of high-end prepared dishes in Dingdong Buy Vegetables in this period increased by more than 3 times year-on-year, selling 3 million copies in just seven days.
Compared with the previous daily routine, the Spring Festival and the epidemic did provide a favorable opportunity for the concentrated outbreak of prepared dishes. Before that, prefabricated vegetables have long become a popular track, according to the report of the China Commercial Industry Research Institute, according to the compound growth rate of 20% per year, the next 6-7 years of the mainland prepared vegetable market or more than trillion yuan of scale, in the long run, the scale of the mainland prepared vegetable industry is expected to reach 3 trillion yuan.
The rapid layout of the fresh food track and the fierce C-bit war during the Spring Festival are enough to see the market potential in this field; on the other hand, the entire industry has invariably made a breakthrough in this field, which also reflects that the pre-made dish may be an optimal solution to break through the dilemma for the industry that urgently needs to expand its business and make profits.
Since last year, fresh e-commerce has received positive feedback from the prefabricated market. In 2021, the overall sales of daily excellent fresh prepared dishes increased by more than 300%, and the average unit price of boutique prepared dishes reached 80 yuan; the person in charge of Dingdong buying vegetables and prepared dishes also said that the sales of prefabricated dishes would be removed immediately, and the market feedback was very rapid, "In the past year, Dingdong bought vegetables in the East China market before and after the prefabricated dishes on 1500 to 1600 SKUs, long-term sales of goods on the platform is 400 to 500, seasonal new products account for about 30% to 50% of the total products of the department. ”
Optimistic about the pre-made dish, in addition to the market potential in consumer demand, there is also gross profit, and then improve profitability, according to the person in charge of the daily excellent fresh frozen food, overall, the pre-made dish is at least 15 percentage points higher than the average gross profit margin of the platform.
Fresh e-commerce companies choose prepared dishes, in addition to driving user activity, improving gross profit and profitability, there are also natural common advantages.
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Fresh e-commerce and prepared dishes promote each other
The increasing demand for prepared dishes, in addition to the pursuit of refinement and laziness by young cooks, is fundamentally because of the increasing maturity of the supply chain link in the catering industry, which makes the standardization and scale of dish production more possible. As the high efficiency and low cost advantages of prepared dishes in the To B field continue to expand, the demand in the To C field is gradually emerging.
Compared with takeaways, the target group of pre-made dishes is a group of young people with cooking needs and willingness: they demand freshness and quality in their dishes, and they want to simplify the preparation and cooking process as much as possible. Especially for some kitchen novices, pre-made dishes can greatly reduce the difficulty of cooking.
To ensure the quality of the ingredients, transportation and storage need to be taken into account; in addition, in terms of cost, in order to further penetrate the market, it is also necessary to avoid excessive unit prices as much as possible. This is not a low threshold in terms of stable and efficient supply of the supply chain, as well as logistics and cold chain technology.
The main business of fresh e-commerce is online fresh sales, must focus on agricultural and sideline products, to ensure a stable supply chain, in terms of reaching the C-end, to ensure timeliness, there are also front warehouses, community stores, community group buying and other models, and basically equipped with riders, and constantly improve the performance capacity and quality.
Therefore, involved in the field of pre-made dishes, fresh e-commerce has long had a ready-made foundation, users have accumulated to a certain extent, coupled with the operation and development in recent years, has been able to minimize the scrap rate of dishes, seize the cooking needs of multiple classes.
As a blue ocean market in recent years, prefabricated dishes are still in their infancy, and fresh e-commerce companies are betting on this track in order to seize the opportunity.
In addition, due to the differences in food culture in various places, the tastes of consumers around the world are very different, and they are increasingly not limited to traditional local flavors, and the emergence of prepared dishes caters to this trend. Fresh e-commerce can start from multiple angles such as taste, method, and variety, and make differentiated push and research and development of dishes for traditional taste groups and early adopters, so as to avoid falling into the vortex of homogeneous competition.
All in all, fresh e-commerce is very suitable for the development of prepared dishes. Through the promotion of these platforms, effectively grasp and guide this consumer demand, pre-made dishes can break out at this time of the Spring Festival, in fact, it is indispensable to the promotion of these e-commerce platforms.
In turn, the profitability and growth space of pre-made dishes have also prompted the fresh e-commerce companies of the "backwater war" to decisively enter the game, quickly layout, and use natural advantages to shine in the C-position battle of fast food Chinese New Year's Eve rice.
The excellent performance of the pre-made vegetable business can undoubtedly give the fresh e-commerce in the water a reassuring pill. In 2022, fresh e-commerce must take profit as the goal, continue to explore feasible models, and solve the problem of burning money to buy vegetables without making money, and if prepared dishes are successful, they can bring a lot of buffer space.
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Can pre-made dishes support the future of fresh e-commerce?
The popularity of prepared dishes has attracted more companies to join the staking, but fresh e-commerce companies that have experienced bubble bursting may be more able to see the challenges of this outlet.
First of all, everything is difficult at the beginning, prefabricated dishes are still in their infancy, the entire industry is not yet a climate, the lack of head factories, and it is difficult to form a scale effect in the short term.
Secondly, in order to achieve the standardization of the production of prepared dishes, there must first be a standard. The domestic cuisine is rich, the standards of traditional practice cognition are different, how to ensure the taste, but also to ensure the safety and quality of production, so that consumers have a certain reference, which is the entire industry needs to solve.
Finally, in order to further penetrate the market, it is necessary to continue to expand promotion efforts and change consumer perceptions. Although in first- and second-tier cities, prepared dishes have been recognized by more and more people, more people are still unable to distinguish the difference between prepared dishes and cooking bags and takeaways, and it is difficult to find their advantages.
Problems abound, but the potential of pre-made dishes will further accelerate the resolution of these problems. For fresh e-commerce, prefabricated dishes are the "second curve" that can continue to increase the development, at present, although it is still impossible to know how much profit improvement prefabricated dishes have brought to fresh e-commerce, but the attention it has caused is enough to continue to attract capital to stop and join.
While fresh e-commerce develops the pre-made vegetable business, the expansion of other businesses has never stopped. To support the future of fresh e-commerce, pre-made dishes are only one part of it.
Author: Uncle Hang