Image source @ Visual China
| analysys analysis
According to CCTV, the overall sales of prepared dishes across the country have increased significantly since March. On the first trading day after the Qingming holiday, the concept of prefabricated vegetables rose generally, and the daily excellent freshness and Dingdong buying vegetables in the US stock market also went higher before the plate. A-share companies such as Yasui Foods (SH603345) and Hengshun Vinegar Industry (SH600305) have also looked at the field of prefabricated dishes and publicly stated that they will expand or increase their layout.
In the special context of the epidemic, it seems that the popularity of prepared dishes is once again not surprising.
According to CCTV, the overall sales of prepared dishes across the country have increased significantly since March. On the first trading day after the Qingming holiday, the concept of prefabricated vegetables rose generally, and the daily excellent freshness and Dingdong buying vegetables in the US stock market also went higher before the plate. A-share companies such as Yasui Foods (SH603345) and Hengshun Vinegar Industry (SH600305) have also looked at the field of prefabricated dishes and publicly stated that they will expand or increase their layout.
The popularity of prepared dishes has long been seen. During this year's Spring Festival, the sales of pre-made dishes on e-commerce and fresh food platforms have increased. According to the ministry of commerce's business big data monitoring of key e-commerce platforms, the sales of prefabricated dishes during the "2022 National Online New Year Festival" increased by 45.9% year-on-year.
Is the prefabricated track still a blue ocean? Why do fresh e-commerce companies with Their own Internet genes have laid out prepared dishes? Under the trillion scale, is there still a chance for pre-made dishes?
Trillions of prefabricated dishes trigger a new "war situation"
There have been many studies that have labeled prepared dishes as trillions of dollars in the market size. And this track is not a completely new area of development. Prepared dishes generally refer to convenient flavor dishes that are prepared with accessories and processed into finished or semi-finished products, which can be eaten after simple processing. From the perspective of broad classification, it can be roughly divided into four categories: that is, to match, that is, to cook, that is, to heat, and to eat. Compared with the quick-frozen products that began to develop in the 1990s, 3R food has become the focus of competition in the current pre-made cuisine track, through pre-cooking or pickling, to minimize the cooking difficulty and ensure the taste of food.
From the demand side, prepared dishes can be divided into two categories: B-end enterprise merchants and C-end consumers. B-end prepared dishes started earlier and also occupied a large market share.
For catering enterprises, the completion of food pre-treatment through B-end pre-prepared dishes can reduce costs while ensuring the stability of vegetable quality and quantity, and undoubtedly provides a boost to their standardized production and large-scale expansion. With the acceleration of the pace of life, the change of consumption habits and the catalysis of the epidemic, C-end prepared dishes have become increasingly popular among consumers, and have also become an important layout direction for many enterprises to enter the prefabricated dishes.
Analysys analysis found that the main players in the prefabricated vegetable market include professional prefabricated vegetable brands, catering enterprises, and commercial supermarket retail enterprises. The C-side seems to have become a "new market" that many players are aiming at.
Judging from the financing of prefabricated vegetable brands, silver food, rare small plum garden, and wuman fresh that have been financed in 2022 are all new brands of prefabricated dishes with c-end layout. From the perspective of the layout of catering enterprises, whether it is the "Jia Guolong Kung Fu Dish" launched by Xibei, the "Open Rice" launched by Haidilao, or the "Tongue Tip Hero" of Lu Zhengyao's re-entrepreneurship, they are all grabbing the C-end market. Not to mention that it has a large number of C-end customers, supermarket retail, fresh e-commerce, Hema and Dingdong have launched self-operated pre-made cuisine brands.
C-end large fresh e-commerce "grab food" pre-made dishes
The current high market share and high penetration rate of B-end prepared vegetables make its development relatively mature, while the C-end demand still needs to be further cultivated. In this context, B-end prefabricated vegetable companies try to adjust their thinking to force the C-end, and the C-end fresh e-commerce with a large number of consumers has already begun to lay out.
According to Analysys Qianfan data, the fresh e-commerce APP with high activity is relatively stable. In February 2022, the TOP10 apps for the number of active people on the whole network of fresh e-commerce were Hema, Multi-point APP, Jingdong Home, Daily Excellent Fresh, Meituan Preferred, Dingdong Grocery Shopping, Pu Pu, Yonghui Life, RT-Mart Excellent Fresh, and Food Line Fresh.
Further combing found that in addition to the shelves of prefabricated vegetable products, these head fresh e-commerce platforms have long been through self-operated or cooperative way to layout the prefabricated vegetable market.
In 2017, Hema launched the prefabricated dish brand "Hema Workshop", from the handmade fresh wonton category into the prefabricated vegetable market; Dingdong Buy Vegetables followed the C-end Dingdong Bawang Meal, Dingdong Grand Slam and other self-operated brands, launched the B-end prefabricated dish brand "Vitality Fresh Food" in March this year; in 2021, Yonghui Supermarket launched the "Hui Ma To Home" brand to enter the Kuaishou dish, and the daily excellent fresh launched its own brand "Daily Signature Dish".
Analysys analysis believes that fresh e-commerce companies want to find new breakthroughs through prefabricated dishes. The convenient, trouble-free and cost-effective characteristics of pre-made dishes are suitable for C-end consumers, and the market demand is large. In addition, fresh e-commerce companies with difficult profitability have also been expanding the diversification of their businesses, and their rich experience in supply chain management has also enabled them to develop the pre-made vegetable market.
Taking Dingdong Buy vegetables, which simultaneously lays out B-end and C-end prefabricated dishes, as an example, in Q4 2021, its revenue was 5.484 billion yuan, an increase of 72% year-on-year; GMV reached 6.004 billion, an increase of 59.6% year-on-year; net profit loss was 1.096 billion, compared with 1.245 billion in the same period last year. In the press release, Dingdong Grocery mentioned that prefabricated vegetables were the sector with the best gross profit performance, with a GMV of 900 million for Q4 pre-made dishes.
Fresh e-commerce companies hold a large number of C-end traffic channels, their own production and processing and the production capacity of upstream suppliers, etc., all of which have laid the foundation for their development of prefabricated dishes. In addition, the big data accumulated through its platform can also provide rapid feedback for product development and production.
Compared with other players in the pre-made vegetable market, the development of fresh e-commerce in pre-made dishes also has advantages.
Analysys analysis believes that because of the stable supply of goods and factory warehouses, fresh e-commerce such as Dingdong buying vegetables has run through the whole process of supply from the source of goods, processing and warehousing, and logistics in advance than catering enterprises. And the consumers of fresh e-commerce are generally still young people in high-tier cities, and the demand and acceptance of prepared dishes by such people are relatively high.
Can fresh e-commerce "eat" pre-made dishes?
Under the momentum of full swing, the story of fresh e-commerce layout of prepared dishes is not as good as it seems.
The problems faced by the prepared vegetable industry are similar to those faced by the catering industry, and the enterprises show the characteristics of small and scattered, and have a strong regionality. Consumers' diverse eating habits also make it more difficult for brands to create national explosive products.
According to tianyancha data, there are currently more than 68,000 prefabricated vegetable-related enterprises in the mainland that are in existence, in business, moving in and out. Among them, nearly 58% of the enterprises were established within 5 years, and more than half of the enterprises had a registered capital of less than 1 million.
At the same time, prepared dishes are not a high-barrier industry, and homogeneous products are prone to appear. Taking the very seasonal pre-made dishes as an example, whether it is lobster in summer or green dough in spring, almost every platform will launch similar products. Not to mention the daily product series of wonton dumplings and home-cooked dishes.
Although compared with B-end prefabricated dishes, C-end prefabricated dishes have relatively high gross profits, and relying on their own brand building can also have a large increase in price. However, Analysys believes that there are also many challenges and problems in pre-made dishes. For example, food processing technology and safety, food information standards, dish richness, cold chain transportation technology, etc., also require enterprises to invest funds and human efficiency for construction and management, so that prefabricated dishes are more standard and safe.
For the fresh e-commerce industry, profitability still seems to be a difficult problem. Fresh products themselves have limited profits due to their product characteristics and problems such as preservation and transportation costs, and in recent years, fresh e-commerce has also tried to reverse losses through diversified development.
For example, the daily excellent fresh smart vegetable market is a new business developed according to the purchasing habits of mainstream people, mainly digital transformation of the traditional vegetable market, extending the business tentacles from online to offline; Dingdong buy vegetables opened three "Dingdong good morning" in Shanghai last July to test the water offline breakfast business.
In this way, the C-end prefabricated dish with relatively high gross profit seems to be a game-breaking direction. But whether it can really help fresh e-commerce achieve profitability remains to be seen. From the perspective of development prospects, pre-made dishes are the current new consumption trend, but from the current market acceptance, the coverage is still narrow, and the future also needs to open the public reputation through quality and higher cost performance.