On Pinduoduo, tens of thousands of orders of Chaoshan beef meatballs have been spelled, and some users commented that "authentic Chaoshan beef balls, flying from the south through air express transportation, bring Chaoshan food to our table, I like it very much." Based on the e-commerce platform, data from all over the country is also fed back to merchants, helping merchants further improve their products and further "go out of the loop".
From hot pot ingredients to large items on e-commerce platforms, Chen Jiayu, who is optimistic about the online prospects of Chaoshan beef meatballs, knows that Chaoshan beef balls are out of the circle again. Three years ago, he resigned to take charge of his brand's online business, and his sales grew from more than 7 million in the first year to more than 55 million last year, far faster than the offline channels developed by his father.
As a regional specialty delicacy, after Chaoshan beef meatballs entered the era of mechanical pounding, they achieved large-scale production and entered major supermarket channels, entering the vision of consumers across the country. Under the influence of the epidemic, the number of convenient and fast Chaoshan beef balls has increased, accumulating a large number of audiences and becoming a big hit in online pre-made dishes.
At present, the output value of Chaoshan beef meatball industry has exceeded 10 billion. Chaoshan people with high business acumen see more opportunities online. Leading enterprises introduce intelligent equipment to further improve beef meatball products and quality, and formulate relevant standards to promote the benign development of the industry. At the same time, brand enterprises have opened an omni-channel layout online, using short videos and content platforms to grow grass, while entering Pinduoduo to find new increments, trying to build Chaoshan beef balls into a phenomenal hit like snail powder.
The convenient and fast Chaoshan beef meatballs have become a big hit among online pre-made dishes. Photo: Tang Guxiao, Zhu Junyi
With the blessing of science and technology, beef meatballs have achieved large-scale production
Chaoshan people who do not raise cattle have improved the traditional "pounding" technique, integrated into Chaoshan food culture, used two special square mallets to pound beef into meat puree, added water, starch, salt and other appropriate amounts of condiments, stirred and kneaded with the palm of the hand, squeezed into balls by hand and boiled in warm water to set the shape, forming the unique production technique of Chaoshan hand-beating beef balls.
In the era of hand pounding, the production of Chaoshan beef meatballs was extremely limited. "A few cutting boards, plus a pulp beater, a workshop to produce more than 100 catties a day is already very good." Chen Zhibin, general manager of Chaoting Food, said that due to production restrictions, the consumer groups of Chaoshan beef meatballs are locals, as well as Chaoshan people outside, and have not yet "gone out".
Chaoshan people, who have business genes in their bones, have once again improved their tools and expanded production. Chen Zhibin integrates traditional craftsmanship with modern production process, introducing meat grinder, high-speed stenter machine, temperature CNC boiling line, air cooler, vacuum machine, metal detector, etc., with the blessing of these high-tech equipment, production efficiency is greatly improved, and standardized and large-scale production is realized.
Xu Dongfei, brand manager of Xipan beef meatballs, also remembers that his fathers made pure handmade beef meatballs, and each person only produced dozens of catties per day. In 1992, the factory introduced a small mixer, which was later replaced by a large machine and a fully automated production line. At present, the overall production capacity of the factory is about 50 times higher than in 2000, and it can produce 3 million jin to 5 million jin of beef balls a year.
In the beef balls production workshop, the molded beef meatballs are transported out by machine. Photo: Tang Guxiao, Zhu Junyi
In the beef balls production workshop of Chaoting Foods, workers first remove the tendons and fats of the hind leg meat, then cut the beef into strips and put it into the machine to "pound" at low temperature, and finally "jump" out of the three forming machines. During the "pounding" process, experienced teachers always pay attention to the state and color of the meat puree, judge whether it is in the best state, and be responsible for adding seasonings. This is also the core link that determines the elasticity of meatballs.
After the advent of automation equipment, the output has increased significantly, and Chaoshan beef meatballs have come out of the circle with technology, no longer just a souvenir of locals when visiting relatives and friends, but can go out of the Chaoshan area and go to the whole country.
From supermarkets to e-commerce, the dividend period is coming
At the beginning of the large-scale production of Chaoshan beef meatballs, it coincided with the golden age of hypermarkets. Chen Zhibin remembers that in 2008, buyers from Sam's Club came to Shantou to look for beef meatball manufacturers. At that time, Chaoting Foods, which had been established only three years ago, had passed the QS (Food Production License) certification of quick-frozen food, and the two parties reached a cooperation. "The first time Chaoshan beef balls came out of the circle was on the shelves of the supermarket channel. Before that, supermarkets were mostly low-priced flavor pills. ”
Chaoshan beef meatballs with higher unit prices have entered high-end supermarkets and then appeared on the tables of consumers outside Chaoshan Province, which directly promotes the development of the entire industry. In Chen Zhibin's view, the head enterprises settled in supermarkets and opened the market, more producers have confidence in the sales of beef meatballs, and there are more and more players. According to statistics, Chaoshan beef meatball enterprises have more than 3,000 large and small enterprises.
During the same period, Baheli, founded in 2008, has since opened more than 100 Chaoshan beef hot pot restaurants in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and other places to promote Chaoshan cuisine and let more people know about Chaoshan beef meatballs.
Driven by short videos and e-commerce platforms, Chaoshan beef balls have entered a period of rapid growth in recent years. Photo: Tang Guxiao, Zhu Junyi
It is worth noting that driven by short videos and e-commerce platforms, Chaoshan beef balls have entered a period of rapid growth in recent years. Cai Bin, a Shantou e-commerce practitioner, believes that online live streaming of balls and balls is a group of Chaoshan young people trying new ways to play and planting Chaoshan beef balls to consumers with the help of videos to jointly promote the development of the entire industry.
He believes that beef meatballs have the genes of explosive pre-made dishes, with a wide audience, high degree of reduction, and many applicable scenarios. Different from other agricultural products, Chaoshan beef balls are cooked products, the taste is popular with the public, can be used for stir-frying, soup, hot pot, etc., applicable to many scenarios and convenient cooking. Coupled with the emergence of air fryers, Chaoshan beef meatballs have soared in sales on e-commerce platforms, and since the epidemic, they have grown into a big item in the industry, reaching consumers across the country.
"It's the dividend period for the beef meatball market." Xu Dongfei said that from the regional sales data, the proportion of sales of Xipan beef balls in non-Chaoshan areas has increased year by year, reaching 50%. Among them, the northeast has also become the fastest growing market for beef balls sales in the country after Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai.
On Pinduoduo, tens of thousands of orders of Chaoshan beef meatballs have been spelled, and some users commented that "authentic Chaoshan beef balls, flying from the south through air express transportation, bring Chaoshan food to our table, I like it very much." Based on the e-commerce platform, data from all over the country is also fed back to merchants, helping merchants further improve their products and further "go out of the loop".
Strive to Pinduoduo, 1 billion enterprises can be expected
The rapid growth of Chaoshan beef meatballs has attracted a lot of capital to enter the market. Chen Jiayu, after 95, found in 2019 that many new brands have emerged online. He noticed that these new brands that grew up online built professional teams that understood traffic and could market, and found companies in the Chaoshan area to manufacture production, and once broke into the top three of the list during the e-commerce promotion.
"We have our own factory, so we have a cost advantage in doing online." Chen Jiayu resigned decisively from Guangzhou, returned to Chaoting Food to set up an e-commerce team, and spent a lot of money to recruit operation talents from first-tier cities. Growth exceeded expectations, with sales increasing from more than 7 million in 2020 to more than 55 million in 2022 in just three years.
Optimistic about online, he expanded his e-commerce team from 4 to more than 70 people. In his opinion, the fathers brought Chaoshan beef balls into the era of machineization and opened up offline supermarket channels. However, data in recent years shows that offline growth tends to be stable, and in the future, Chaoshan beef balls should break through from online in order to truly get out of the circle.
Pinduoduo's sales have made them firm in their ideas. At the end of July last year, Chen Jiayu's team tried to settle in Pinduoduo, and after adding tens of billions of subsidies, the monthly sales at the end of the year exceeded 1.5 million. In order to accelerate the timeliness of products arriving in various places, Xipan has built 4 cloud warehouses across the country, and northern consumers can place orders before 10 o'clock on the same day and receive the goods the next day.
This year's New Year Festival, Pinduoduo invested 3 billion yuan in subsidies and traffic resources, united more than 1,000 high-quality agricultural production areas and millions of merchants, and promoted the direct connection of good goods from the source to the Spring Festival vegetable basket of consumers. As the head merchant of the Pinduoduo beef balls category, with the empowerment of the platform, Chen Jiayu achieved the goal of 100,000 daily sales, and a variety of beef balls were hot-selling.
At the Pinduo Multi-Year Goods Festival, a variety of beef meatballs were hot-selling. Photo: Tang Guxiao, Zhu Junyi
After opening the online market, Chen Jiayu, who usually loves to study popular categories such as dumplings and shrimp slippery, hopes to introduce various intelligent equipment for Chaoting in the future to minimize manual participation and improve the quality and production efficiency of beef meatballs. "The ideal is to build an unmanned factory, where robots are responsible for removing tendons and membranes and detecting the state of meat puree. After one end is fed into the meat, the other end comes out of the finished product. ”
At present, the Chaoshan beef meatball industry chain is constantly improving, and traditional production enterprises have begun to enter the intelligent stage, establishing central kitchens, intelligent cold storage, and updating production equipment. However, the market of Chaoshan beef ball brand is highly fragmented, with little difference in production capacity and sales, and the market share of leading companies is less than single digits, and the future is full of opportunities.
Fang Chaowu, president of Chaoshan Food Research Institute, believes that with the help of online platforms such as Pinduoduo, Chaoshan may have a head enterprise with annual sales of 1 billion. "More brands that understand traffic are playing online while keeping good quality, promoting Chaoshan beef meatballs to be out of the circle on the whole network, and becoming a phenomenal hit like snail powder."