Financial Associated Press| New Consumption Daily, April 29 (reporter Li Danyu researcher Liang Youyun) Since 2022, prefabricated dishes have become one of the few plates in the consumption field that are bullish in the secondary market.
Affected by the repeated epidemics, pre-made dishes have become the first choice for young consumers to "hoard dishes".
According to media reports, the sales of prepared dishes nationwide increased by more than 100% year-on-year in March, and the most severe situation in Shanghai increased by more than 250% year-on-year in the past half a month.
The field of prepared dishes, which is regarded as a "new outlet", has gathered all kinds of new and old players for a time. Zi Qi, head of the Tmall prefabricated cuisine industry, told the New Consumption Daily reporter that the current prefabricated cuisine players are mainly divided into three categories: traditional catering brands, B-end supply chain enterprise transformation, and operational businesses that are more proficient in online traffic.
Under the influence of the epidemic, major prefabricated dish brands have shown a clear trend of online, but logistics blockages have restricted the expansion of many brands.
Recently, New Consumption Daily talked with Zheng Zheng, head of the long-established brand and yuan restaurant, Li Mengqi, vice president of maizima, a cutting-edge prefabricated vegetable brand, and Zi Qi, head of the Tmall prefabricated vegetable industry, to sort out the industry context and explore the development trend of prefabricated dish brands.
Grading of consumption of prepared dishes
Overall, the mainstream consumer group of prepared dishes is still young consumers. According to the "2021 China Prepared Cuisine Industry Analysis Report" released by Ai Media Consulting, young and middle-aged people (22-40 years old) are the main consumer groups of prepared dishes, especially in the case of office workers lacking cooking time.
But it is also to serve this group, and the prefabricated cuisine brand shows a completely different development path.
Zheng Zheng told reporters that the main customer group of Heyuan Restaurant offline is the high-end business crowd, the main dish is swallow wing abalone, this style also continued to the line, the dishes mainly cover dry abalone juice fishing rice, Buddha jumping wall and so on. "In the past 2-3 months, our customer unit price has reached more than 1,000 yuan, and the SKU is about 70, which also means that the customer base we cover on Tmall has been very accurate."
The emerging brand Mai Zi Ma has chosen a different development model from Heyuan Restaurant, according to the Mai Zi Ma Tmall flagship store, the current brand has launched boiled beef, small crispy meat, sweet and sour tenderloin, sauerkraut fish, lion head and other home-cooked products, with a total SKU of 20+, and the unit price is about 150 yuan.
Mai Zima's portrait of the customer group is more clear, mainly for 30+ family women, mainly exquisite white-collar workers. Li Mengqi, vice president of MaiZima, said that more than 80% of customers are currently such consumers. Similar to Heyuan Restaurant, the customer base is concentrated in the urban areas of Guangjiang and Zhejiang in the north, and the consumption strength is guaranteed.
Zi Qi revealed that the prefabricated dish brands represented by Heyuan Restaurant and Mai Zi Ma also have the difference between the peak sales season. "According to previous experience, the peak sales season of long-established brands is more in the New Year Festival, because he provides a lot of big dishes like Buddha jumping off the wall; and operation-oriented businesses such as Mai Zi Ma are more partial to the mass consumer population, close to the habit of three meals a day."
Whether online or offline, consumption frequency and consumer retention are still the main challenges facing the current prepared food industry.
"Taste is the primary problem in the expansion of the current pre-made vegetable industry, especially how to let consumers still enjoy the same taste as dine-in after repeated heating," Cao Zhipeng, an investor in the catering industry, told reporters that pre-made dishes are not a new industry, and have been serving the B-side before, and the preheating process is relatively perfect, but consumers cannot be required to do the same thawing and preheating steps, so it will have more or less impact on taste, which in turn will affect repurchase.
Under the chaos of the industry, the online and offline integrated layout is still the mainstream
Although there are still many problems in the industry that have not yet been solved, there are still many players pouring in under the blessing of heat.
An investor told reporters that although prefabricated dishes are not new, their development at the C-end still needs time to accumulate, rather than capital to strengthen.
Recently, Lu Zhengyao's investment in the tip of the tongue heroes, fun stores, etc. have increased the number of prefabricated vegetable tracks, under the goal of opening thousands of stores in half a year, the prefabricated cuisine industry has been accelerated and developed.
"In fact, the development of an industry needs to go through a stage, our recognition of the brand is through a long-term purchase habit to develop, and finally to return to the product," Ziqi believes that the current trend of the development of prefabricated dishes is still the integrated development of online and offline, but due to the impact of the epidemic, online orders have indeed surged.
At present, the traditional catering brand type and the transformation brand of B-end supply chain enterprises are all based on offline and develop online.
Zheng Zheng also admitted in the interview that Heyuan Restaurant has been doing pre-made dishes for ten years, but lacks operational experience, and the online retail business has only been laid out for about a year.
In fact, ingredients such as bird's wing abalone themselves need to be prefabricated, so about 60% of the pre-made dishes sold online by Heyuan Restaurant coincide with the menu of offline stores. The difference in the ability between the product side and the operation end has also become a difficult point for many long-established enterprises to expand online.
It is understood that there is not much cooperation between Heyuan Restaurant and live e-commerce, and Zheng Zheng said that cooperation with the head anchor is indeed the most direct way to obtain new customers. "But for the head anchor, we are more restrained, because we hope that the contribution of all anchors to turnover can be controlled to 30%."
Emerging prefabricated cuisine brands are more skilled in marketing such as live broadcasting.
"Mai Zi Ma brand began to do (pre-made dishes) in 2019, and previously also brought goods through live broadcasting, and the cooperation with Li Jiaqi began in the second half of 2021, and the anchors currently carry goods account for 50% to 55% of our sales." Li Mengqi said in an interview with the New Consumption Daily reporter that the brand mainly takes the high-end route, the pricing is generally higher than other brands, and the promotion of customers is often through the social little red book and other exquisite life grass planting platforms.
Mai Zima's grass planting content on the Little Red Book also mostly revolves around boiled beef and sauerkraut fish, and the number of popular notes likes exceeds 6,000. Tmall sales data shows that boiled beef sells more than 10,000 servings a month, while small crispy meat, sauerkraut fish, and sweet and sour tenderloin are about 1,000 servings.
Li Jiaqi tried to eat wheat mother boiled beef during the live broadcast
The newly emerged C-end pre-made dish brands, similar to the operation mode of MaiZi Ma, also include Ding Ding Lazy Man Dish, Rare Small Plum Garden, Light Cooking and so on. Well-known investment institutions such as Jiahe Self-Management, Baidu Venture Capital, Source Code Capital, Meihua Venture Capital, Tsingshan Capital, Sequoia China and other well-known investment institutions have all bet on relevant prefabricated vegetable consumption brands in recent years.
Draft: Liang Youyun Data source: Tianyancha
As the new brands of prefabricated dishes continue to influence, whether prefabricated vegetable products can stand out in the competition ultimately depends on the upstream central kitchen, supply chain and channel strength. According to data from the China Chain Store & Franchise Association, more than 74% of domestic chain catering enterprises have built their own central kitchens.
According to the data, in 2021, Mai Zi ma will invest 250 million yuan to build a new factory covering an area of 50 acres, the first phase will be completed and put into operation in June 2022, and the second phase will be put into operation in 2023.
According to Li Mengqi, after the completion of the first phase of the factory, it is expected that the production capacity will reach 50 million to 60 million by December this year, mainly supplying existing and future wheat mother products.
Zheng Zheng revealed that due to the impact of the epidemic, the construction of cold chain warehouses in Shanghai has been postponed, and it is expected that cold chain warehouses will be set up in northern cities such as Beijing in the future to further expand the market.
On the other hand, Mai Zi Ma also began to try to develop offline. In the interview, Li Mengqi still firmly said: "Offline business is a must-do, and channels are the most important barriers." ”
According to Mai Zima, affected by the epidemic, the offline revenue has declined seriously in the past two months, and the traffic brought by online hoarding is actually not stable, and the company is trying to find a way to develop business in South China, where the epidemic has less impact.
Up to now, Maizima products have entered thousands of offline supermarkets, and the brand offline stores starting from Hangzhou have also been put on the planning agenda and are being prepared. In the field of online sales, as live streaming traffic is no longer booming, in the future, planting grass on content platforms such as Xiaohongshu will be the focus of brand customer acquisition, and the proportion of live broadcast revenue will be compressed to less than 50%.
It can be seen that omni-channel development has become the consensus of the head brand of prefabricated dishes.
"Offline layout is an important part of improving the C-end market's awareness of prepared dishes, and there are no brands that are more prominent in the development of omni-channels, and in the long run, only brands that go deep into the upstream and downstream of the supply chain can go further." Said the above-mentioned investors.