It doesn't matter if you eat it or not
Prefabricated New Year's dishes have "preempted" the Spring Festival table
The topic of #预制菜 Chinese New Year's Eve rice # has once again sparked heated discussions, and topics related to "prefabricated dishes" have frequently appeared on Weibo hot searches.
The prefabricated dishes, which are in the two days of ice and fire, have been pushed to the forefront again after more than a year of "verbal criticism".
A few days ago, the #Tmall prefabricated Chinese New Year's Eve dish advertisement caused controversy #的广告一经推出便迅速引起争论, which once made many people emotional. Some netizens complained, "I don't reject pre-made dishes, but this advertisement is a person who celebrates the New Year and wants to eat pre-made dishes, which is too social and causes discomfort." "Because according to this year's statutory holiday, Chinese New Year's Eve has to go to work, and the core group of this wave of advertising is facing office workers, but the advertisements have hit the hearts of countless workers, and the sense of desolation arises.
Some people also think that this may be related to the previously rumored Ma Yun's foray into prefabricated dishes. Although it has been officially denied before, it is worth noting that Ma Yun's new brand "One Meter Eight" has been launched in the agricultural field, and there are not many types.
Not to mention whether the restaurant's Chinese New Year's Eve meal is a pre-made dish, from the Chinese New Year's Eve gift boxes and sales data launched by many brands alone, it can also be seen that everyone complains, and everyone's market demand for pre-made dishes is actually not small.
According to the customer service of a brand Taobao, their Chinese New Year's Eve lunch gift box package has reached more than 10,000 sales just by pre-ordering. On Taobao, Jingdong and other e-commerce platforms, search for Chinese New Year's Eve rice keywords, and the first ones in the heat are "Chinese New Year's Eve rice pre-made dishes, Chinese New Year's Eve rice semi-finished products" and so on.
From the brand point of view, there are not only Anjing and Zhengda food companies that have launched prefabricated New Year's dishes, but also catering companies such as Dadong, Xibei, Guangzhou Restaurant, Tongqinglou, Quanjude, Ziguangyuan, and Laocheng Yiguo.
In order to cater to the festive theme of the Spring Festival, brands have worked the naming of New Year's gift boxes, such as Xibei's Dragon and Phoenix Chengxiang Noodles Gift Box, Longteng Four Seas Kung Fu Cuisine Gift Box, Xianglong Xianrui Gift Box, Quanjude's Jude Baiwei Joy Gift Box, Guangzhou Restaurant's Good Luck Chinese New Year's Eve Dinner, Fulu Buddha Jumping Wall Poon Choi and so on.
Judging from the sales and evaluations shown, most of them are praised, and some people even say that the pre-made dishes are deeply rooted in my heart, and after really tasting them, I feel that the high-quality prefabricated New Year's dishes are not bad in terms of dishes and taste.
Nei Sanjun visited the offline and saw that the major supermarkets were full of prefabricated New Year's dishes.
According to Cai Danping, the person in charge of the Hema New Year's Festival, this year Hema has launched more than 200 Spring Festival gift boxes with high quality and price ratio to meet the different needs of consumers. Among them, "plating instructions" are also prepared for consumers, mainly considering that consumers have the social needs of drying Chinese New Year's Eve meals, refining the reheating order and plating standards of dishes, and restoring the taste of dishes while also restoring the "appearance".
From supply chain enterprises to catering brands, from e-commerce platforms to offline supermarkets, pre-made Chinese New Year's Eve lunch gift boxes have long covered a larger market and more consumers, and the popularity continues to rise, and it occupies the table of the Spring Festival family Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, and its role is becoming more and more important.
Customers resisted, complained and spurned
Restaurants are forced to "refuse pre-made dishes",
How unbearable is pre-made food?
In fact, the voice of doubt about prefabricated dishes has lasted for more than a year, and the reason why people "talk about the color change of prefabricated dishes" is based on the food safety problems that have occurred, which endanger people's diet and physical safety, especially when it comes to students, which will become extremely sensitive.
From "boycotting prefabricated dishes on campus" to "Yuan Jiyun dumplings were exposed to be prefabricated dishes" and so on, as long as there are incidents related to prefabricated dishes, they will attract special attention and cause strong controversy.
This is mainly at the level of C-end consumers, perhaps based on different concepts, cognitions and understandings, in the minds of some consumers, prefabricated dishes are even beaten into the image of "human feed, not junk food but garbage".
But in fact, some consumers have such a cognition, on the one hand, the public does not understand prefabricated dishes, and follows the mainstream voice, that is, prefabricated dishes are unpalatable and unhealthy; on the other hand, there are indeed black-hearted merchants who are opportunistic and take advantage of the loopholes of prefabricated dishes, producing dishes with poor quality and hidden food safety hazards, and too many unregulated and low-cost prefabricated dishes, and even "cooking packages" directly into the market.
For example, various low-cost additive cooking packages on takeaway platforms, "10 yuan big bag of egg fried rice" and so on. How can such so-called "pre-made dishes" circulate to the market and even schools, and at the same time gradually discredit the image of truly high-quality pre-made dishes.
Some people questioned, "I can buy pre-made dishes to eat at home, but why do I have to eat pre-made dishes at a restaurant? Is it so difficult to eat freshly stir-fried dishes?"
Whether it is due to pressure and helplessness, or based on customer panic about pre-made dishes, or simple marketing methods to attract traffic and please customers, many restaurants have recently cited the "boycott pre-made dishes, refuse pre-made dishes, do not make pre-made dishes" brand. Regarding this move, Nei Sanjun has conducted an in-depth analysis in the previous manuscript, and this phenomenon is full of helplessness on the part of the business.
But judging from the popularity of prefabricated New Year's dishes, prefabricated dishes have quietly risen in a scolding.
Because, no matter what people's controversy is, prefabricated dishes are always a product of the fast-paced consumption era, and they are the industry of the food industry, including quick-frozen food, dumplings, buns and even McDonald's fritters and pizza are all industries of the food industry.
The pre-made Chinese New Year's Eve lunch gift box contains a wide variety of dishes, and some are not daily dishes, so people can try and experience different special dishes, which is convenient and fast to operate, saving time and effort, and solving the disadvantages of young people who cannot cook and are in a hurry.
Some customers say that there are hard dishes such as Buddha jumping over the wall, abalone peppercorn chicken, and fried crab in typhoon shelters, which may be a trial series in most families' Chinese New Year's Eve dishes, whether it is for personal use or gifts, it is very valuable, and consumers' attitudes towards pre-made dishes are changing.
The national standard may be introduced, and there are many entrants
The pre-made dishes that are in the whirlpool are turning over?
Perhaps, pre-made dishes may usher in the dawn.
It is reported that the draft of the national standard for prefabricated dishes has been released, and the results will be available within half a year at the earliest. One of the biggest highlights is the prohibition of the addition of preservatives and the need for cold chain transportation. In February last year, pre-made dishes were written into the No. 1 central document for the first time.
With the maturity of future development, the reputation of prefabricated dishes may be pulled back little by little, and people's strange eyes will also be convinced by higher quality and good taste prefabricated dishes.
Focusing on the prefabricated food industry, there are mainly the following types of enterprises that have laid out prefabricated dishes:
Upstream agricultural, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery enterprises represented by New Hope and Zhengda as the representatives of raw materials, vertical prefabricated food enterprises represented by Weizhixiang, traditional quick-frozen enterprises expanding the layout of prefabricated food product lines, catering enterprises, chain supermarkets, fresh e-commerce, etc.
With the increase in entrants, we can jointly promote and strengthen the introduction of prefabricated food standards, and establish brand barriers and industry benchmarks with high-quality prefabricated products, but at the same time, we will also face more fierce competition.
Recently, Guolian Aquatic Products released a performance announcement, which is expected to achieve revenue of 4.9 billion to 5.3 billion yuan in 2023, and an estimated net profit loss of 360 million to 470 million yuan, which is further expanded compared with the previous year. Although prefabricated dishes are an important part of Guolian aquatic products, from the current revenue, they account for only a quarter, which is not enough to reverse the sluggish performance. As for 2024 and beyond, Guolian Aquatic said that it will insist on focusing on prefabricated dishes to upgrade its business model, and accelerate the transformation of its product side to catering ingredients and marine food based on prefabricated dishes.
Previously, Pu Wenming, the founder of Zhenwei Xiaomeiyuan, said in a public interview that with the deepening of consumers' awareness of C-end prefabricated dishes, the product research and development capabilities of operators also need to be further strengthened. In the future, reducing the cost of trial and error of products and improving the incubation rate of explosive products will become the key to determining the success or failure of players entering the game.
It's just that when C-end consumers slowly accept prefabricated dishes, the market gradually stabilizes, and the pressure on prefabricated food companies really begins.