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The shuffle period is approaching, and the barbaric growth is over
Written by Meng Huiyuan
Editor/Chen Dengxin
"Nearly 80% of consumers in Jiangsu who buy prepared dishes encounter quality problems", "Semi-finished prefabricated dishes are spit on the wrong version", "Why young people do not buy prefabricated dishes", with the frequent appearance of such spit on the Internet, the chaos of the prefabricated vegetable industry is gradually becoming well known.
In this context, the China Prefabricated Vegetable Industry Alliance, which claims to "provide nine major industry services such as training, consultation, information, production and marketing docking, and policy interpretation for member units", came into being, allowing the outside world to re-examine the blue ocean market of prefabricated vegetables.
From the relevant data, after nearly two years of rapid development, the market size of the prefabricated vegetable industry has reached 410 billion yuan, and if it continues to maintain a growth rate of more than 20%, it will reach a trillion scale in the next 5 years. However, at present, most of the prefabricated vegetable processing enterprises involved in the division of this trillion "cake" 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 business model, and the industry lacks unified national standards.
The key is, from the food giants such as Anjing Food, to the subdivided diet leaders such as New Hope, Arowana, wen's shares, etc., to the fresh e-commerce platforms such as Hema and Daily Excellent Fresh, as well as chain catering enterprises such as Haidilao and Xibei, Hengshun Vinegar Industry and Haitian Flavor Industry Condiment Enterprises... With more and more players entering the prefabricated vegetable track, the white-hot competition in the industry continues to intensify, and the chaos is more prominent.
Lenovo the "first stock of prefabricated dishes" that was successfully listed on April 27, 2021, and the performance of the stock market this year is inseparable from words such as "accelerated decline" and "closure and suspension of the board", not to mention other entrants who are still competing for the market. So, can the development of the prepared vegetable industry really rely on this new "industry standard" to step into the smooth road?
The first stock of prefabricated vegetables was listed for one year, who "encouraged" it?
There is no doubt that the establishment of the China Prefabricated Vegetable Industry Alliance has added another fire to the "prosperity" of the prefabricated vegetable market.
The secondary market reacted most quickly, when the prefabricated vegetable industry alliance was announced, the concept of prefabricated vegetables also continued to strengthen, taking advantage of this "East Wind" Of Fucheng shares, BBK, Delis and other "non-staff" enterprises have achieved stock price increases and stops, and the grandeur of the "wind outlet" can be seen.
The concept of pre-made dishes continues to strengthen, and even Zhangzidao, Fuling squeezed vegetables, and Guolian aquatic products have rubbed into the heat of pre-made dishes
In fact, if you carefully observe the investment and financing of the development of the prefabricated vegetable industry, you can already see the signs of the "fire" of the industry: around 2014, the sudden emergence of takeaway led to the rapid growth of the prefabricated vegetable industry, and the capital that first saw the potential of prefabricated vegetables began to exert force, and 14 and 17 financing incidents occurred in 2015 and 2016, respectively.
In the following years, the outbreak of the epidemic and the support of local policies undoubtedly accelerated the development of the prepared vegetable industry. During this period, the concept stock of prefabricated vegetables experienced several collective outbreaks, including more than 30 financing incidents including prefabricated vegetable supply chain enterprises and retail enterprises, and investors included star institutions such as Meituan, Innovation Factory, and Sequoia Capital, with a total financing of up to hundreds of millions of yuan. Weizhixiang directly landed on A shares and became the "first stock of prefabricated dishes" in China.
The popularity of the prefabricated vegetable industry has also led more enterprises to enter the game to "share meals". According to Tianyancha data, the number of prefabricated vegetable-related enterprises has gradually increased in recent years, and there are currently more than 68,000 pre-made vegetable-related enterprises in the mainland, and nearly 58% of the enterprises were established within 5 years. Among them, not only the fresh e-commerce platforms such as Hema and Daily Excellent Fresh have entered the game; chain catering enterprises such as Haidilao and Xibei have also launched prefabricated dish brands; and even condiment companies such as Hengshun Vinegar Industry and Haitian Flavor Industry have said that they will make efforts in the research and development stage of prefabricated dishes.
This new blue ocean market does live up to expectations and is constantly breaking the imagination of relevant practitioners. Some data show that after nearly two years of rapid development, the market size of the prefabricated vegetable industry has reached 410 billion yuan, and if it continues to maintain a growth rate of more than 20%, it will reach a trillion scale in the next 5 years.
However, under the appearance of flowers and brocade, the chaos of the prefabricated vegetable industry cannot be ignored. For a long time, the product standards have not been unified, many non-prepared vegetable companies have hung up the name of prefabricated dishes to confuse the concept, and the food safety problems caused by additives and preservatives... All have become an important factor inhibiting the further development of the prepared vegetable industry.
From the data of the public opinion monitoring system of Jiangsu Consumer Network, the most popular period of prefabricated vegetable sales at the beginning of 2022 - from January 1 to February 10, Jiangsu Province's public opinion on Chinese New Year's Eve rice prefabricated dishes totaled 56948, the problems mainly focused on the quality and price of dishes, consumers complained that the dishes were not fresh, oily, short and expensive; suspected of false publicity, the actual goods purchased by some consumers were inconsistent with the promotional content of business pictures, web pages and other promotional content; the problem of goods transportation, Consumers ordered Chinese New Year's Eve meals pre-made dishes are delayed in delivery, or are not received after Chinese New Year's Eve; after-sales problems, merchants cancel orders without consent, and consumers are blocked by requesting returns for refunds or compensation for losses.
The implementation of corresponding measures such as controlling food safety, formulating a set of special food safety standards, detailed product specifications, ensuring the transportation conditions of goods, and improving the taste and flavor of prepared dishes has become more and more urgent. In this regard, the establishment of the China Prepared Vegetable Industry Alliance, and its possible role in market regulation, is the most natural choice for the prefabricated vegetable industry to adapt to the development of the times.
"Industry standards" are hard to clean up hidden corners
"The establishment of the China Prefabricated Vegetable Industry Alliance is a positive response to the urgent demands of the current development of the prefabricated vegetable industry, and provides organizational guarantee for better promoting the high-quality development of the prefabricated vegetable industry and realizing the integration and development of the first, second, and third industries in rural areas." The establishment of the China Prefabricated Vegetable Industry Alliance, Song Juguo, deputy director of the Agricultural Trade Promotion Center of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, said so.
Of course, for the prepared vegetable industry itself, this is actually only the first step towards the development of standardization. As Zhu Danpeng, an analyst in the Chinese food industry, said, even though the industry alliance has been established, the standards formulated from the current point of view are "at most an industry standard, not a national standard", and there is no uniqueness and mandatory.
On the one hand, there are still pain points in the current prepared vegetable industry, resulting in the recognition and acceptance of prepared dishes by the consumer side is not high enough. Because the prefabricated vegetable industry has a low entry threshold and many entrants (from fresh e-commerce to seasoning factories, and even "non-staff" enterprises such as BBK, there are countless enterprises that start at the sight of "outlets"), there are many industries involved and the situation of FOUNDRies is common, but there is a lack of unified national standards, so that food safety-related hidden dangers occur frequently.
Anxin Securities released a research report said that about 70% of the prefabricated vegetable processing enterprises are still in a small, weak, scattered state, many are individual industrial and commercial households and workshop-style production and processing mode, did not form a more complete business model, "in foreign countries, prefabricated dishes have a very strict standard, that is, within half an hour, from room temperature, hot to freeze to minus 40 degrees." At present, many small businesses do not have such technology and equipment. ”
The recognition and acceptance of prepared dishes by the consumer end are not high enough
On the other hand, although the epidemic has made the market situation of prepared vegetables rise and increased, and promoted the business of prepared vegetables from the B-end to the C-end, it is not good to say how much dividends can really be eaten by related enterprises. According to Euromonitor data, the market share of B-end and C-end of China's prepared dishes in 2021 is about 8:2 (revenue caliber), which shows that the actual demand for C-end is not as high as imagined.
According to a report from the "Rule of Law Daily" on February 12, since last year, affected by the epidemic, the "home economy" has driven the expansion of prefabricated dishes from supply restaurants to supply families, and gradually entered thousands of households, but the problems of inconsistent graphics and text, cutting corners, ingredients are not fresh, and poor taste have also made many consumers "complain".
Originally an excellent opportunity to change the inherent impression, win the trust of consumers, and broaden the market space, many consumers have failed in the market chaos of industry standardization and dishonest operation.
To put it bluntly, even if the industry alliance is responsible for the function of "providing training, consultation, information, production and marketing docking, policy interpretation and other nine major industry services for member units", determined to "promote full-link informatization and business interaction, and form a horizontal and vertical information and development platform", because "there is no uniqueness and mandatory", at most it is only an industry standard for reference, although it has certain positive significance, but it is necessary to regulate the development of the entire industry, which has certain difficulties at the practical operation level. It is not realistic to urge incoming companies to pay attention to technology and equipment investment, and it is not realistic to make changes in this regard.
The shuffle period is coming, ending barbaric growth?
Perhaps, the deeper significance of the establishment of the industry alliance is to sound the alarm bell for the industry to usher in the reshuffle period.
As mentioned above, "the establishment of the China Prepared Vegetable Industry Alliance is a positive response to the urgent demands of the current development of the prepared vegetable industry", which shows that those who use shoddy, propaganda fraud, and even the use of expired and inferior ingredients in order to reduce costs have had a great negative impact on the healthy development of this industry.
Do a simple logical reasoning, starting from the outbreak of prefabricated vegetable demand (outlet), prefabricated vegetable upstream and downstream enterprises and even some cross-border players rush to enter the "enclosure", but due to the lack of unified industry standards, or most enterprises are subject to the lack of technology and equipment, which eventually leads to frequent food-related problems, causing consumer dissatisfaction and reducing their consumption desire, then the supply and demand relationship is reversed, in the current prefabricated vegetable industry chaotic situation, how many products can attract consumers to buy again?
As WeiZhixiang mentioned in the prospectus, "most workshop-style semi-finished product enterprises have a large gap with large-scale enterprises in raw material procurement, production process, warehousing and logistics, etc., and it is difficult to achieve raw material traceability, standardized production and cold chain logistics distribution, which cannot ensure food hygiene and safety, and will be phased out in the future." ”
The upgrading of prepared dishes is a systematic project involving multiple links
For most prefabricated vegetable companies, whether they want to survive the increasingly fierce market competition or continue to become bigger and stronger, they need to solve the problems of upstream supply chain, warehousing logistics and cold chain, dish research and development innovation and scale, and the creation of large single products, which is destined not to be a short-term project.
Some insiders said, "In the final analysis, prefabricated dishes are still food, and the final point of competition is still in taste and convenience." This puts forward high requirements for the company's product research and development, and will also become an important factor in the reshuffle of prefabricated dishes. ”
The reality is that in terms of price, the unit price of prefabricated vegetable products is more than 20 to 50 yuan, compared with restaurants, there is no obvious price advantage; in terms of taste, prefabricated vegetables are large-scale products, it is difficult to meet the tastes of more people; in terms of distribution, many prefabricated dishes need to rely on cold chain transportation, the cost is relatively high, if the cost is compressed on the ingredients, it is easy to bring about the problem of reducing the quality of ingredients.
It is not difficult to see that there are more difficulties in prefabricated dishes when participating in market competition. It can be said that from raw materials to processing to sale, prefabricated dishes involve dish research and development, raw material processing, cold chain transportation, marketing and retail and other business forms of linkage and collaboration, only by hoping to open up the supply chain of source agricultural product resources and complete the scale of production, in order to ensure that while maintaining low costs, we can provide high-quality and inexpensive prepared vegetable products, which is also the real core competitiveness of such enterprises.
In the words of Zhu Danpeng, "Prepared dishes are a blue ocean market, and the future potential is still very large." If prefabricated vegetable enterprises want to achieve greater development, they need to improve the integrity of the industrial chain and make full efforts in brand building and stable quality. ”
END
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