"The Foodaily Institute believes that the ultimate expression of traditional ingredients will bring unlimited possibilities for category creation."
Text: Cathy Wang
Source: Foodaily Daily Food (ID: foodaily)
When it comes to the creation of innovative categories of traditional Chinese ingredients, "jujube" must have a place. With the innovation of "jujube", local brands can say that they have laid the brand position with jujube as the core, and in 2021, the double 11 Li Jiaqi live broadcast room was snatched up within 5 minutes, with sales of nearly 10 million. In addition, milk dates and jujube walnuts have also become a phenomenon-level single product in 2020.
In addition, I believe that everyone has also noticed that in ancient China, it has always been regarded as a longevity ingredient "sesame", and in the past two years, it has once again ushered in its own "highlight moment". According to data from the Ministry of Commerce, in a certain e-commerce New Year festival in 2022, the sales volume of black sesame pills increased by 105.9% year-on-year.
China is rich in land and rich in products, what other ingredients are worth excavating and shaping in the new era of consumption? Foodaily is concerned that hawthorn has begun to become silently active in recent years, so is it also of medicinal value, and is there any hope of becoming the successor of "jujube" and "sesame"? What possibilities does it open for category innovation?
Why do we pay attention to the "hawthorn"?
All major categories are enabled, and hawthorn is so versatile
"It is said that the rock sugar gourd is sour, and the acid is wrapped in sweetness", mentioning hawthorn, I believe many people will think of the top of the food in childhood memories - rock sugar gourd.
The crystal clear rock sugar shell, wrapped in sweet and sour nucleated hawthorn, is mouth-watering from a distance, and the next bite is full of crispy sweetness.
Since it was often sold in the northern part of the mainland in the early days, the transparent shell of the mascot of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, "Ice Pier", was also made from the ice sugar gourd.
"Ice Pier" creative prototype "Ice Sugar Gourd" design manuscript
Image source: China News Network
With the passage of time, the sugar gourd is no longer limited by geography and seasons, and the variety is becoming more and more abundant. Hawthorn can also be seen in many categories such as beverages, snacks, baking, functional foods, dairy products, etc.
Hawthorn is frequently featured in many categories
According to the Decision Maker Retail Research Institute, hawthorn flavors accounted for 78.1% of food and beverage from 0.8% to 1.4% in 2017-2021.
In the beverage category, Yuanqi Forest launched a new "hawthorn flavored soda sparkling water" during 618 in 2021, taking into account the need to relieve the greasiness of the meal and the unique bubble taste; Good Hope Water introduced the concept of Traditional Chinese medicine food supplement, and entered the market with a new herbal boiled sparkling juice "Wang hawthorn"... Mintel's "2022 Hot Ingredient Inventory" shows that hawthorn has increased from 0.0% to 2.4% in the taste of carbonated beverages in the past 2-3 years, and the combination of hawthorn and carbonic acid has brought new growth space to the beverage category.
At the same time, with seasonal niche fruits becoming one of the breakthroughs in the development of new tea drinking circles, Naixue's tea, Lele tea and other brands have launched fresh fruit tea drinks with hawthorn as the main raw material in the winter when hawthorn is abundant; Changsha new tea brand Hawthorn is based on hawthorn as the core, bringing consumers more than 20 kinds of hawthorn fresh fruit drinks, desserts and snacks.
In addition, we found that hawthorn also has development potential in coffee and wine. Santen Half-Line Stores launched the Beijing limited drink "Hawthorn Pear", creating a perfect fusion of coffee high-grade texture and juice sweetness and lustrous juice. Youyou and Sophie series hawthorn wine, using purple hawthorn as raw material for fermentation, fruit wine alcohol ≥ 7% vol, slightly drunk can also fully feel the pure aroma of hawthorn fruit.
Image credit: Yuanqi Forest, Good Hope Water, NaiXue's Tea, Lele Tea, Hawthorn Heap, Three and a Half Meals
In the zero food category, innovative forms such as hawthorn milk balls, hawthorn lollipops, hawthorn circles and other innovative forms make hawthorn come alive; innovative flavors such as yogurt flavor, chocolate flavor, cheese flavor, nut flavor, durian flavor give hawthorn a new taste experience; healthy additive-free hawthorn products launched for children and pregnant women make the consumer population more segmented; probiotics and other functional ingredients are added to help hawthorn nourish and upgrade.
According to the "2021 Tmall Jujube Candied Fruit Dry freeze-dried Consumption Trend Report", hawthorn products have a compound growth rate of more than 40% in 2020-2021, and the average number of repurchases ranks first in the tonic preserves.
Image source: Guangming x Great White Rabbit, Quan Fude, Yida
In the baking category, Daoxiangcun's sweet and sour hawthorn pot helmet is one of the representative works of Beijing-style traditional cakes; Xianghe Rao shop will be a traditional Chinese pastry "old taste new work", launched a fluffy soft, fruity aroma of heguo • rock sugar hawthorn; Wufangzhai on the new peach cheese hawthorn soft heart green dough, wormwood sticky aroma, fruit filling, soft heart bursting pulp, to meet the young group's hunting psychology and quality needs.
Image source: Daoxiang Village, Xianghe Rao Shop, Wufangzhai
In the functional food category, Tongrentang boils hawthorn and a variety of herbal ingredients to make ready-to-eat cream food, eliminating the need for cumbersome decoction before eating traditional Chinese medicine soup recipes; minayo rich iron fudge and other functional candies are also added to the recipe of hawthorn.
CBNData's "2020 Meal Replacement Light Food Consumption Insight Report" shows that in addition to the basic nutrition and energy supply, meal replacement has also begun to add more different elements to meet different functions and nutritional health needs. The consumption growth of meal replacement products with hawthorn, ginger, collagen, probiotics and other ingredients is more prominent.
Image credit: Tongrentang, Minayo, Ozark
In addition, we also find hawthorns in the dairy category. Ausnutria Children's Milk Powder specially adds ingredients such as hawthorn, poria and chicken inner gold to regulate children's spleen and stomach and enhance physical health.
Why can a small hawthorn stand out from the crowd and become an all-round ACE that plays with multiple categories? From the traditional snacks of the past to today's multi-category applications, what kind of development has hawthorn food experienced? How much innovation is possible in the future? Next, let's walk into the treasured ingredient of hawthorn.
Medicine and food are of the same origin, and small hawthorn contains great energy
Hawthorn, also known as red fruit, sour dates, mountain red and so on. The earliest mainland records of hawthorns can be traced back to the Han Dynasty's "Erya". Initially mostly wild, it was gradually cultivated and eaten during the Ming and Qing dynasties.
At present, mainland hawthorn is mainly produced in Hebei, Shandong, Shaanxi, Henan, Northeast China and other places. According to data from the China Research Institute of Industry, the cultivation area of hawthorn in China in 2020 has reached 7 million mu, accounting for about 10% of the total area of fruit trees on the mainland, with a total output of 2.106 million tons.
Image source: unsplash
For the first time, the medicinal and food homologous catalogue was published, and hawthorn was included
In terms of medicinal value, famous doctors such as Zhu Danxi in the Yuan Dynasty and Li Shizhen in the Ming Dynasty found that hawthorn is slightly warm, tastes sour and sweet, enters the spleen, stomach, liver meridian, and can be used in medicine after drying, which is a good medicine for healthy spleen appetizer, digestion stagnation, blood circulation and phlegm.
Modern medical research has shown that hawthorn also has the effect of lowering blood lipids, blood pressure, strengthening the heart, and anti-arrhythmia. Flavonoids in hawthorn have a certain effect on inhibiting the growth, proliferation and invasion and metastasis of cancer cells in vivo.
In 2002, the National Health and Family Planning Commission published the catalogue of medicinal and food homologies for the first time, and hawthorn was one of them.
In terms of edible value, hawthorn is rich in flavonoids, organic acids, vitamins, proteins, pectin, calcium, iron and so on.
Among them, the calcium content ranks first among various fruits; the vitamin C content is 2-3 times that of citrus fruits; the vitamin E content is second only to mulberry; and the carotene content is 17 times that of apples.
Medicinal edible value is both, and more and more brands are beginning to tell stories around hawthorn. So, how did hawthorn, which is full of treasure, transform into a popular ingredient used in multiple categories? What stages of development have they gone through?
From street food to multi-category applications,
Hawthorn Food's Commercial Assault Road
Hawthorn Food 1.0: Rock sugar gourd, The top stream of Beijing snacks
Legend has it that during the Southern Song Dynasty, Song Guangzong's favorite noble concubine had a thin face and did not think about eating. Tai medical treatment of many expensive drugs, but did not see any improvement, had no choice but to open the list to seek medical treatment.
A jianghu langzhong unveiled the list into the palace, and proposed that as long as he was tormented with rock sugar and hawthorn, he would eat five to ten pills before each meal, and he would be fine within half a month. At first, everyone will still believe that the noble concubine will be suspicious, and the noble concubine will recover as scheduled after taking it according to this method. Later, this practice spread to the people, and the people skewered it to sell, and there was the original rock sugar gourd.
During the Qing Dynasty, rock sugar gourds were popular throughout the country. Long-established shops such as Kowloon Zhai, Shin Yuen Sai and Bulao Quan have sprung up. Kowloon Zhai created the yam ice sugar gourd, in the most lively Qianmen Street in the capital, selling candied fruit in winter and sour plum soup in summer, which has been famous for a long time; Xinyuan Zhai chose the liuli factory where the literati and scholars gathered, and sold individual ice sugar hawthorn or begonia fruits in paper boxes with oil paper, so as not to lose dignity for the literati to eat with long bamboo sticks on the street.
Image source: Fang Yan
In the Republic of China period, according to the description of the literary scholar Liang Shiqiu in his essay "Sour Plum Soup and Sugar Gourd", the rock sugar gourd sold in the market was mainly divided into three types: maltose boiled syrup, red and yellow in color, up to five feet long sugar gourd; "snow red fruit" and "sugar snowball" fried hawthorn after white sugar boiling; and authentic rock sugar gourd boiled into a thin sugar shell.
Image source: Fu Tao nine points full
Hawthorn Food 2.0: Rough processing of hawthorn products, setting off a brief "hawthorn fever"
Before the 1970s, there was little scientific research on hawthorn in the mainland, hawthorn fruit was not fully exploited, only a small amount of hawthorn was used in medicine, and the hawthorn processing industry developed slowly.
Since the reform and opening up, the development of the food industry has gradually entered the right track, and the hawthorn processing industry has also ushered in the spring of development. Hawthorn flakes, hawthorn cakes, fruit dan peels, hawthorn sauce, hawthorn canned hawthorn products are favored by consumers for their sweet and sour taste and health effects. Food companies competed to process hawthorn, and in just a few years, they set off a "hawthorn fever" nationwide.
At the same time, due to the strong regionality and seasonality of hawthorn and the constraints of storage conditions, the actual processing time is mainly concentrated in 3-5 months after hawthorn harvest, which is a huge challenge for continuous production enterprises. Therefore, most of the domestic hawthorn product brands are small and medium-sized enterprises in the north, and the proportion of leading and large enterprises is relatively small.
In the following ten years, the processing technology and production equipment of hawthorn products mostly stayed at the traditional workshop-style production level, and the speed of product renewal and iteration was slow, which could not meet the growing consumer demand of consumers; hawthorn cultivation lacked planning, resulting in the intensification of the contradiction of oversupply.
Around 1987, the nationwide "hawthorn fever" turned sharply to "cold", hawthorn products were slow to sell, and the enthusiasm of fruit farmers and processing enterprises was greatly frustrated.
Hawthorn Food 3.0: Multi-category application, Hawthorn ushered in a highlight moment
In the early 1990s, the advent of hawthorn fruit tea, which mixed hawthorn pulp with one or more pulps such as apples/pears/peaches, marked the beginning of hawthorn deep processing. However, due to the large viscosity, poor palatability and high sugar content of the drink, camellia fruit tea has basically disappeared from the market around 1995.
Huiyuan, Wahaha, Unification, Master Kong and other head brands have also launched hawthorn juice drinks, but due to the product niche, lack of positioning, promotion strategies and immature century issues, they have finally been delisted.
After 2010, consumption upgrading has promoted the transformation of the food and beverage industry, and the progress of modern processing technologies such as fermentation, lyophilization, membrane separation, and industrial enzyme preparations has made hawthorn products undergo revolutionary changes.
Under the Guanfang hawthorn tree, in view of the drinking needs of modern consumers in the catering scene, the hawthorn juice drink with no added pigments, preservatives, and the original juice pulp content ≥ 60%, bringing consumers a new choice for degreasing meals, and in recent years, the domestic hawthorn juice market occupies a certain market share.
Image source: Under the Hawthorn Tree
Hawthorn, become the darling of children's snack innovation
Foodaily observed that the "national tide" culture prevailed, consumers began to re-emphasize the concept of Traditional Chinese medicine food supplements; under the general trend of pursuing the natural health and freshness of fruits and vegetables, consumers put forward a higher order demand for convenience and experience of hawthorn.
The regional traditional brand Yida takes Chengde's unique high-quality "Iron Hawthorn" as raw material, inherits the century-old secret craft, and increases the online channel to achieve brand renovation. It has successively launched products such as net red flavor hawthorn balls, colorful flavor rock sugar gourds, national tide hawthorn barrels, lactic acid bacteria hawthorn gift boxes, etc., to modernize traditional hawthorn products and cater to the consumption trend of young people.
At the same time, as the "fourth meal" in addition to the three meals, snacks can provide important energy and nutrient supplements, which play an important role in the physical and mental growth of children. From "refusing children to snack" to "choosing healthy snacks" has become the consensus of many "millennial parents".
Sweet snacks have a natural appeal to children, but many lollipops on the market are made in proportion to white sugar, flavor, preservatives, and sweeteners, and excessive intake can easily lead to caries and obesity.
The good food fairy uses hawthorn as the main raw material of lollipops to reshape the mind of the lollipop category. Hawthorn fresh fruit pulp, light baking and slow roasting, erythritol instead of sucrose, nourish the spleen and stomach while inhibiting the growth of oral bacteria, to meet the "millennium parents" fine feeding needs.
Image source: Good Food Fairy
Traditional ingredients, tricks to interpret the new Chinese tonic
At a time when healthy consumption has expanded from the "vulnerable group" in the past to the popularization, and the core of health product purchase is younger, the homologous characteristics of hawthorn medicine and food have created a natural consumer base for it. Brands continue to empower hawthorn with Internet thinking and open a new trend of nuggets' natural health.
For example, Tongrentang Zhima Health launched the national tide health coffee drink - hawthorn tangerine peel American, digging deep into the health value of each herb, combining hawthorn, tangerine peel and coffee, bringing consumers a new experience of Chinese nourishment. According to CCTV financial reports, hawthorn tangerine peel American, black goji berry latte, motherwort rose latte and other medicinal and food homologous herbal series of coffee can sell thousands of cups in a day when it is most popular.
Image source: Little Red Book Vegetables do not eat carrots
brief summary
In recent years, the new wave of consumption has been wrapped in various cultural views, aesthetics, life concepts, and food concepts. Foodaily Research Institute believes that no matter what era, the word "health", for the people, for the home, for the country is a fundamental need, consumers' pursuit of health has always stood firm.
Driven by macro factors such as the acceleration of aging, the "Healthy China" strategy, and the prevalence of the "National Tide" culture, capital has accelerated to the field of great health, modern scientific research has been continuously improved, consumer health care needs have been fully awakened, and the innovative application of traditional medicinal and food homologous ingredients has been full of vitality.
As a classic medicinal and food homologous ingredient, hawthorn has the advantages of diversified health functions, popularization of consumer groups, and daily consumption scenes. In view of the increasingly segmented health needs of consumers, the upstream and downstream parties of the industry have fully tapped the market potential of hawthorn and skillfully applied it to various categories of food and beverage, bringing personalized and humanized health solutions to consumers.
In the future, hawthorn food will show what kind of innovative development, let us look forward to it together!
Reference Articles:
[1] Status quo and development suggestions of hawthorn processing industry in Mainland China[J]. China Fruit and Vegetable, 2020, 9(40),36-39.
[2] On the current situation and development path of hawthorn processing industry in mainland China[J]. Journal of Henan Vocational Technician Institute, 1991, 4(19), 36-40.
[3] Nearly 80% growth! Yuanqi Forest, Jiangzhong Food Therapy Bet, "Hawthorn" ushered in a highlight moment! Retail Research Institute for Decision Makers, 2022-3-29.
[4] Sour snacks, how to make young people addicted? E-commerce Online, 2022-4-2.
[5] How was the mascot "Ice Pier" born? It turns out that the creative prototype is it! China News Network, 2022-2-11.
[6] Old Beijinger's favorite: rock sugar gourd. China Archives Daily, 2019-4-12.