Right now, there may be nothing more worrying for parents than pre-made dishes.
Recently, many places across the country have exposed the news of pre-made dishes entering campuses, from kindergarten to primary school, from middle school to university, which has also caused parents to be highly uneasy and anxious.
In order to let their children eat a mouthful of reassuring meals, parents have constantly negotiated with schools and education departments, and even resigned to deliver meals, and many school gates are crowded with parents delivering meals.
Prepared dishes are not new, they have been popular in the restaurant market for many years, why is there an uproar when they enter the campus?
The industry is mixed
Trigger parental anxiety
To discuss whether to enter the campus of pre-made dishes, the first thing to understand is what pre-made dishes are.
According to the group standard of "Prepared Dishes" drafted by the China Cuisine Association and a number of units, pre-made dishes are defined as "finished or semi-finished dishes made by pre-processing (such as slitting, stirring, pickling, tumbling, molding, seasoning, etc.) and/or pre-cooking (such as stir-frying, frying, roasting, boiling, steaming, etc.) with one or more agricultural products as the main raw material, using standardized flow operations.
According to the above definition, prepared dishes are usually divided into four categories: ready-to-eat (such as eight-treasure porridge, ready-to-eat canned food); Instant heat (such as quick-frozen rice balls, self-heating hot pot); ready-to-cook (semi-finished dishes that must be heated for cooking); Ready-to-serve (e.g. clean dishes that are not washed and cut without cutting).
The popularity of prepared dishes is inseparable from food industrialization and restaurant chaining.
Wen Zhihong, a senior chain industry expert, told China Newsweek that pre-made dishes are conducive to restaurants improving efficiency and stable production. In the past, the sorting, cleaning, cutting and matching of raw materials required a lot of labor costs, which on the one hand reduced the operational efficiency of the restaurant, and on the other hand, required a large kitchen, which increased the operating cost of the restaurant. The pre-made dishes are uniformly produced and processed by the factory, which can reduce the dependence on chefs, save labor and rental costs for catering enterprises, and improve operational efficiency.
According to the calculation of sample catering enterprises by the China Hotel Industry Association, catering enterprises that use pre-made dishes can effectively save labor costs, compress meal time, and the profit margin is expected to increase by 7%, while reducing the raw material procurement cost of restaurants by 10%.
At present, pre-made dishes have become the general trend of the catering industry. According to iMedia consulting data, the scale of China's prepared vegetable market in 2022 will be 419.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 21.3%, and it is expected that China's prepared vegetable market will maintain a high growth rate in the future, and the scale of the prepared vegetable market will reach 1,072 billion yuan in 2026.
It stands to reason that the public should not have such big doubts about such a mature product. After all, from the perspective of the food industry, the process technology to prevent microbial proliferation and corruption has long been mature.
Ruan Quang Feng, director of the science and technology communication department of Kexin Food and Health Information Exchange Center, said that many parents think that pre-made dishes are "cooking packages", but in pre-made dishes, ready-to-match and ready-to-cook are the mainstream.
"In some ways, ready-to-cook, ready-to-cook prepared dishes may be more food safe." Ruan Quang Feng further analyzed that the canteen is a place where foodborne diseases are prone to outbreaks, and the central kitchen that concentrates on processing prefabricated semi-finished products, because of the large production scale, high level of mechanization, and equipped with professionals, can more accurately control the ingredients, temperature and time of each link, effectively reducing food safety risks.
But parents' concerns are not unfounded.
In February 2022, the Consumer Protection Commission of Jiangsu Province released the Survey Report on the Consumption of Prepared Vegetables. It shows that consumers are most concerned about food safety issues for prepared dishes, accounting for nearly 30%, including the freshness of ingredients and whether the production process is clean and hygienic.
According to the results of this survey, some consumers reported that the pre-made dishes they purchased had deteriorated and spoiled dishes, the ingredients were not fresh, the dishes contained foreign substances and expired.
The root cause of these anxious and uneasy problems is that the standards of each prepared vegetable company are different.
Due to the low threshold of the prepared vegetable industry, and the fact that the mainland has not yet introduced a unified national standard for prepared vegetables, it is difficult to supervise it, so as the concept of prepared dishes becomes more and more popular, the industry is becoming more and more mixed.
According to the research of Essence Securities, due to the late start of the processing of prepared dishes in the mainland, more than seventy percent of the prepared vegetable processing enterprises are still in a small, weak and scattered state, many of which are individual industrial and commercial enterprises and workshops-style processing and production models, and have not formed a relatively complete business operation model, with single products, and cannot ensure product quality and food safety.
Xia Jing, chairman of the "first stock of pre-made dishes" Weizhixiang, is a little worried about the "popularity" of pre-made dishes. In his view, although the prefabricated vegetable track is hot, the future development is still unclear, and a large number of enterprises that do not know the truth will inevitably have various problems after pouring into the track.
Perhaps this is the source of consumer concern.
Campus logistics supervision is difficult
Parents have no choice
Even putting aside the safety and nutrition of prepared dishes, another factor that causes parents to be anxious is that parents and children have no choice in the face of school meals.
Wen Zhihong analyzed that the campus market and the mass catering market are two completely different consumption scenarios. The restaurant is not delicious, you can give a bad review, you can complain and you can choose never to go again. But schools can't, especially primary and secondary schools, parents and children have little choice, or even no choice, so they can't force companies to make adjustments by "voting with their feet".
According to China Newsweek previously reported, because some schools use pre-made dishes as meals, many parents have to choose to deliver meals to their children during lunchtime.
From some videos posted by parents on social media, it can be seen that because parents cannot enter the campus, and there is no place to eat after the canteen on campus is closed, the school gate is crowded with parents delivering meals, and many students can only squat or stand at the school gate to eat lunch quickly with the lunch box in the hands of parents.
At the same time, the high opacity of the campus logistics system and the difficulty of supervision further exacerbate parents' distrust.
Nowadays, the campus market is the largest consumption scenario in the institutional catering industry, accounting for 35%-40%. However, compared with social catering, the group catering industry is still in a relatively primitive stage, and one of its major characteristics is that enterprises mostly rely on resources to obtain orders, which is very common in the entire industry. "To say it well is not very market-oriented, and to say it badly is that there are more things under the table." Meng Qinggang, founder of Zhizhizhi (Shanghai) Commercial Management Co., Ltd., told China Newsweek.
She Zongming, a senior researcher at the Digital Economy Think Tank, also agreed, "School logistics is a very transparent system, and those who can contract school canteens are either the principal's sister-in-law, the secretary's brother-in-law, or other related people." ”
Wen Zhihong further explained that in the past, there were not many problems disclosed in the form of business such as campus meals, but this does not mean that there are no problems with campus meals, on the contrary, the problems may be very large.
The analysis of the epidemic characteristics of food poisoning incidents in China in 2017 showed that schools were important places for food poisoning incidents according to the nature of the occurrence units, of which the school collective canteen was the main place for school food poisoning incidents, and the number of incidents and poisoned people accounted for 65.5% and 59.91% of the total number of food poisoning incidents and poisoned people in schools, respectively.
On the other hand, catering is a very professional thing, and the school and the education commission are both education and teaching departments, and "whether it will care" also needs to be a question mark.
Meng Qinggang pointed out that the supervision of campus meals has two focuses, one is the operator, that is, the cook, and the other is the supplier, responsible for delivering the food. At present, the supervision of campus meals focuses on the front end, such as bright kitchens, bright stoves, sanitation, etc., that is, for cooking.
"But in fact, the supply chain is the core, such as where the ingredients are bought, how to enter the canteen, and whether a cold chain is needed in the process, which is the top priority." Meng Qinggang said.
In the case of poor supervision, under the profit-seeking nature of businessmen, how to ensure that school canteens can produce safe, healthy and delicious meals is not a small challenge.
Ruan Quang Feng suggested that if pre-made dishes are used, the first thing to distinguish is which pre-made vegetable products can improve food safety, such as packaged meat foods, which can be eaten simply by cutting and heating, which is much less safety risk than raw meat. Second, strengthen the popularization of food safety and nutrition science. Strengthen the popularization of food and nutrition science for students and parents, and help students and parents rationally understand prepared dishes. Third, strengthen the qualification audit of suppliers to ensure that prepared dishes meet the standards of nutritious meals. When choosing, it is recommended to involve a nutrition professional to ensure that daily meals are nutritious and healthy.
She Zongming is not optimistic about the introduction of prefabricated dishes into the campus at this stage. "Support the expansion of the prepared vegetable industry, but oppose the introduction of prepared vegetables into the campus at this stage, at least the conditions are not mature at this stage."
If the campus logistics system is not open and transparent, there will always be the next "pre-made dish" that parents boycott.
The material comes from the Internet invasion and deletion
Source: Volkswagen.com, China Newsweek
Edit: March