【Editor's Note】
New consumption trends seem to be rushing into the fields, and the quality of fruits is the most obvious phenomenon.
The emergence of net red fruits in recent years is showing more possibilities for China's fruit industry - this is no longer a decentralized, relying on labor and wholesale market distribution industry, but gradually has a mature chain of seed cultivation, planting, platform procurement and marketing, and has also spawned many local explosive fruit categories and brands. This is our purpose of recording and searching for The King of Chinese Fruits, and we are eager to explore with you the possibilities and potential of the quality of China's fruit industry.
This time, we want to talk about not how the avocado became a superfruit, but how it became popular in China and penetrated into the catering side. Because in addition to the retail end, the catering channel is also an important flow of fruit. More importantly, product innovation and taste research and development in the catering channel are also an effective way to market fruits to some extent. Avocado is one of the most iconic examples.
Reporter | Ma Yue
Edit | Ya Han Xiang
"30-second small class, tell you the avocado fruit selection guide", more than 2,900 kilometers from Shanghai and more than 3,000 kilometers from Beijing, more than 3,000 kilometers from Beijing, local farmers in Yunnan are learning how to be Internet celebrities. They're like foreign fitness bloggers, posting videos of how to pick and eat avocados on social networks.
However, the difference is that in such videos or notes, you can also see how an avocado is planted, grown and picked - fresh fruit picked from plantation trees, after cleaning, drying, sorting and other links, is neatly coded into a carton and loaded into a refrigerated truck.
After two or three days, these avocados can reach the tables in Beijing and Shanghai and turn into an exquisite brunch.
"The new season will not be sold until October." A person in charge of Meng Lianxinmeng Agricultural Development Co., Ltd. told Interface News. They started growing avocados three or four years ago, and finally ushered in the harvest season in the first half of this year and planned to start official promotion, with fruit production ranging from tens to hundreds of tons.
Qi Jiazhu, general manager of Pu'er Green Silver Biology, another leading local company, said that the output value of avocados sold to Shanghai in 2021 will reach 30 million yuan.
In The small border town of Menglian in Yunnan, the super internet celebrity avocado that once came across the ocean is being localized in a way that you can't detect.
Today's Chinese are not unfamiliar with avocados, but this fruit that is not sweet, not sour, and not easy to enter, the initial consumption trend was imported from abroad, and with the help of social networks and star effects, it became synonymous with a certain middle-class lifestyle - associated with health, sports and fashion. Relying on the internet celebrity label, avocado has successfully opened the market in China, and its promotion strategy not only highlights the taste like butter, but also attaches to this foreign fruit, there are various nutritional values.
Since 2005, the import of avocados from Mexico, Chile, Peru and New Zealand has been opened up, and China's avocado market has been occupied by 100% of imported products. Imports soared to more than 30,000 tonnes in 2017 from 2 tonnes in 2010 and 43,900 tonnes in 2018.
But right now, the avocado market, which is completely monopolized by imports, is being broken.
If you want to localize a completely foreign fruit, finding a suitable production area is the first step.
Since 2007, Qi Jiazhu led the team to introduce Haas varieties that account for 80% of the world's total avocado trade to China for trial breeding, and in 8 years, experiments in different bases such as Guangxi, Guangdong, Hainan, sichuan and other places have found that the avocados in Menglian County, Pu'er City, Yunnan Province, have the best performance in terms of growth, disease resistance, productivity and fruit quality.
Thankfully, the localization of avocados is also accompanied by the rhythm of its opening of the market - in a sense, imported avocados have become the pioneers of market education and category cognition.
In 2015, after conquering the taste buds of Chinese, avocados also began to climb the hillside and try to promote cultivation in Menglian, Yunnan. Avocados grow in harsh conditions, suitable for environments between 40 degrees north and south latitudes, average temperatures of 20-26 °C, and not easy to accumulate water, and the conditions of this small border town are all in line, and compared to Mexico, it is closer to the Tropic of Cancer.
From planting to harvest, avocados take more than 5 years, and behind the local large-scale planting, it is inseparable from the government's policy support. In August 2019, Menglian County was announced by the Yunnan Provincial Government as a characteristic county of "one county, one industry" (avocado). In July 2020, the "Menglian Avocado" geographical indication certification trademark passed the national certification.
Yunnan Menglian has cultivated 23 avocado industry entities (3 enterprises and 20 professional cooperatives), the planting area of avocados has reached 60,000 mu, the production area has exceeded 10,000 mu, and the output will reach 6,000 tons this year - here has become the largest avocado planting base in China.
After localization, the next problem facing Yunnan avocado is how to persuade Chinese consumers and industrial customers to choose it better than imported ones.
In fact, in the early days of large-scale commercialization, domestic avocados also experienced an embarrassing situation of pretending to be imported avocados.
"At that time, it was only a small batch listing, and everyone sold it through their own acquaintance channels, blurring the place of origin, even if someone asked, it was not said to be domestic." A Yunnan avocado grower told Interface News that in the case of uncertain market acceptance, for this kind of fruit with high initial investment, everyone's first choice is to sell it first.
"Almost deceived, this avocado is actually domestic." Nowadays, in forums such as Baidu Tieba and so on, you will still find that on the discussion page around 2017, some people describe the difference between imported and domestic avocados, just like "Master Kang and Kang Shuaifu".
Imported avocados that entered the Chinese market earlier have an advantage in both channels and brand marketing.
For example, in 2016, the international avocado giant Mission Produce cooperated with Lantao International and Baiguoyuan to establish an avocado ripening center in Shanghai, with "Mr. Avocado" as the brand name, to carry out the distribution business of cooked instant avocados, and later opened a second ripening center in Guangzhou; South American vegetable and fruit company Campossol and Dole China sold Haas avocados to more than 80 stores such as Sam's Club, Ole Boutique Supermarket, and Carrefour.
Therefore, after the large-scale listing, the top priority of Yunnan avocado is to find channels while marking itself with a distinct selling point and differentiated positioning label that is different from imported avocados.
"Fresher". This is now a summary of the selling points of domestic avocados on social and e-commerce platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Douyin.
Generally speaking, imported avocados from the southern hemisphere for about a month, due to the need for long-distance transportation, are often picked and frozen when they are not ripe or preserved with preservatives, and then ripened; The domestic avocado has a longer fruit hanging time, from picking two or three days or a week or so to reach the hands of consumers, so that the maturity and flavor can be better.
Cooperation with e-commerce and fresh retail platforms has also become the key to yunnan avocado to expand the market and brand path.
In December 2021, Menglian County reached a strategic cooperation with Hema County. According to the data provided by Hema, in the sales volume of imported ready-to-eat avocados in 2020, the sales volume of avocados of Hema accounts for about 30% of the market, accounting for the first place in the domestic retailer channel. This also means that through Hema, it is easier to reach avocado consumers in first- and second-tier cities.
In addition to the specification size, dry matter has become an important criterion for measuring the quality of avocados. In general, the higher the dry matter content, the more mellow the taste of the avocado. Previously, many domestic and imported avocado quality comparisons were also tested with dry matter as the standard.
"The Menglian avocado on the box is relatively late in the market compared with other domestic channels, because the dry matter of the early products has not been able to meet our expectations." Hema fruit procurement Xu Caiyi told Interface News that the early procurement team tested samples in different production areas and finally chose Menglian's base, because the base is the largest, the most standardized management, and is willing to continuously cooperate with product sample adjustments according to the needs of the client. In the end, the base extended the fruit hanging time for more than 3 months, and did not take up shelves until the dry matter reached 28% in December.
"When domestic avocados are on the shelves, we also take into account consumer expectations - since they can be localized, should the price be reduced?" Xu Caiyi said.
Because the upfront input cost of avocados is high, the cost is not cheap compared to imports. So Hema will Yunnan Menglian avocado, positioned in the domestic boutique, in addition to the upgrade of dry matter, in the specifications have also been upgraded - the mainstream avocado on the market is a single about 130 grams, and even some are only 100-110 grams, but Hema's domestic avocados only do super fruits, and the single fruit reaches 240-260 grams, which is twice as large as imported.
"The balance between quality and price not only satisfies the interests of farmers, but also gives consumers a good price." In the end, the "Yunnan Green Silver Domestic Ready-to-Eat Avocado Giant 2 Packs (480g)" on the box horse rack was priced at 29.9 yuan / box.
For more consumers who don't understand avocados, "how to eat and how to pair them to taste better" has also become a factor affecting their purchase.
As a super Internet celebrity in the fruit industry, avocado appears in other channels other than fruit shops and supermarkets, which is also a reference for its value overflow. With the improvement of the presence of avocado in catering, new tea and even skin care products, and fashion industries, the demand for it in the entire market is also increasing.
In recent years, the marketing gimmicks of fruit origins have added a premium to the net red fruits, such as sunshine rose green tip from Japan, strawberries from Dandong, China, and so on. However, for the current domestic avocado, the place of origin is not enough to produce a cognitive connection in the minds of consumers, let alone the brand.
One of the most fundamental reasons is that the market time of domestic avocados is still too short, and the overall output is still too small, and its market value has not been fully reflected - Yunnan Menglian avocados have only replaced 6% of the import supply share.
Many Yunnan avocado growers told Interface News that the sales of catering channels are still mainly concentrated in Yunnan. Judging from the results of the communication between Interface News and the heads of multiple catering stores from Beijing and Shanghai, the catering industry still knows very little about the existence of domestic avocados.
Wang Yong, the chef of Beijing Saffron Restaurant, told Interface News that the avocado used in the production of salads and other dishes is from Baiguoyuan, the products come from Mission Produce's "Mr. Avocado" brand, and the production areas are Chile, Mexico and Peru, and the listing at different times can meet the demand of the whole year.
The quality of the domestic avocado he had tried before was not satisfactory to him, and the same was a hard fruit for comparison, and the taste of the domestic fruit was weaker than that of the imported fruit. "Sometimes when buying some domestic fruits, it is hard at first, and when it is soft, after opening the fruit, you will see some local positions that will be blackened, the surface will be soft, and the flesh near the fruit will be hard."
The reason for this impression is largely due to the uneven products of different domestic avocado producing areas, different enterprises and farmers.
In the view of Xu Caiyi, the fruit procurement of Hema, a problem with the current domestic avocado is that some fruit farmers in order to pursue efficiency, the fruit grows up to be all picked and sold at one time, some mixed in imported fruits to sell, some good and bad without grading directly sold, so it is difficult to establish a quality image of domestic avocados in the consumption center.
A person in charge of Menglian Xinmeng Agricultural Development Co., Ltd. also admitted that the difficulties encountered in the development of the domestic avocado industry at present also include low social awareness, consumers' lack of understanding of the comprehensive value of avocados, few sales points, and insufficient market promotion.
New tea drinks are also a channel worth trying. However, from the perspective of the overall market of avocados, the category of avocado drinks is still in its infancy.
Brands including Hey Tea and NaiXue's Tea have launched avocado drinks, but they have not used it as a main product, but have tried it seasonally. According to the report of the self-media coffee door, Wang Zemo, director of leaf and tea research and development, believes that avocados are dense oily fruits, which are not suitable for random collocation (such as oranges, too much moisture), and can choose similar types of fruits to match (such as bananas), and to choose the right tea soup to play to a satisfactory taste.
How to go further in flavor and be able to balance costs and supply chains has become the key to the innovation of niche fruit products in new tea drinks and has become a blockbuster. And how domestic avocados can tear open their mouths in this channel may take time.