The "China Catering Ingredients Development Report 2024" points out that focusing on large single products and laying out prefabricated dishes, the food ingredients industry has a lot to offer.
Catering ingredients have gone through the era of synthesis and subdivision, and have entered the era of "large single products".
As the supply chain side of the catering industry, looking at the development of the prefabricated food industry, the "large single product" strategy is not new.
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industry scale growth,
The environment for large items is excellent
As an important industry for rural revitalization and a new model for the integrated development of rural primary, secondary and tertiary industries, prefabricated food has received great attention from local governments in recent years, and favorable policies for the industry have been introduced one after another.
In 2026, the scale of China's prefabricated food industry is expected to reach 769.1 billion yuan, with a CAGR of more than 20%.
Which products are likely to become big items?
Japanese experience: Japan's main demand is to save time and effort, and the C-end is "instant noodles", sacrificing the number of categories and focusing on products with good fresh food reduction effect, such as fried rice, udon, dumplings, siu mai, croquettes, pork cutlets and other large items.
Experience in Taiwan, China: Extending with famous stores and famous products as the center. Taiwan's prefabricated dishes were developed in the 90s, originating from the retailization of catering, and well-known restaurants and dishes were sold in the form of pre-packaging from the B-end, some of which met the gift scene and some of which met the non-hotel consumption scene.
Which big items can come out in the future?
The first category is a single product with universal characteristics, which is suitable for prefabricated food products with different regional eating habits and different cooking forms, and this product is less restricted by geography, such as traditional catering products such as fish-flavored shredded pork and kung pao chicken;
The second category is the well-known products of the eight major cuisines, which have cognitive foundations, consumer groups, and taste bases, such as Hokkien ginger duck, Cantonese-style salt-baked chicken, Sichuan-style plum cabbage and pork, etc.;
The third category is popular dishes of pre-made dishes that sell well in catering, such as pickled cabbage fish, grilled fish, topping noodles, barbecue, plum cabbage and pork, home cooking, and crayfish.
The fourth category, gift box pre-made dish products, focuses on gifts, banquets and other people, with a wider audience, such as Buddha jumping over the wall, eight bowls, Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, etc.
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Existing pre-made dishes are classified as large single items
At present, the largest sales volume of super large items in the market, whether it is the B-end market or the C-end market, the performance is very bright.
According to the category, it can be divided into meat and poultry, aquatic products, quick-frozen pastries, cold dishes, etc.
Among them, the super large items of meat and poultry include grilled sausages, small crispy meat, fat sausages, fan bones, plum cabbage button meat, etc., lamb scorpions, fried yellow beef, beef brisket pot of beef and mutton, fried chicken, chicken cutlets, chicken rice flowers, etc., Western-style prefabricated dishes and Chinese dishes such as kung pao chicken and fish-flavored shredded pork.
Aquatic products include sauerkraut fish, grilled fish, crayfish, bullfrogs and other large items. Quick-frozen noodles include glutinous rice cakes, steamed buns, dumplings, glutinous rice balls and other snacks and staple food products.
In addition, there are various products such as seaweed and wakame.
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In the era of large single products,
What to do for prefabricated food companies
With the intensification of competition in the prefabricated food industry, enterprises need to have a more accurate insight into consumer trends if they want to win, and the strategy of large single products is more conducive to enterprises to concentrate on "firepower" to open breakthroughs.
At the same time, it also requires enterprises to make more efforts in product innovation, so as to form differentiated products and higher competition thresholds, and build a real "moat" for enterprises.
It is an unavoidable law in the industry to fight the world with explosive models and to talk about heroes with super single products.
Many prefabricated food companies have taken the large single product strategy as the main direction of the enterprise, such as Ding Ding Lazy Food, which has been rapidly out of the circle in the past two years, and their choice in product development strategy is very clear: focus on sauerkraut fish.
As the founder of the brand said: "We believe that sauerkraut fish will be able to make billions or tens of billions of large single products in the future, so Ding Ding lazy food is still spending more than 70% of its energy on the core product of sauerkraut fish, and our development direction is: I hope that Ding Ding lazy fish is equal to sauerkraut fish, and the brand is the category, or the category is the brand." ”
In addition to focusing on the product itself, reducing costs and increasing efficiency, brand marketing will greatly help enterprises get out of the circle and build core competitiveness.
First of all, reduce costs and increase efficiency: the focus of cost reduction is not to lay off employees, but to improve human efficiency, optimize personnel structure, and improve productivity. A factory in Japan, with 36 employees, creates annual sales of 100 million yuan.
6 management personnel 1 sales, three shifts of production, perennial production of only one single product, high degree of automation, most of the mechanized production, production, research and development, technology and cost are controlled to the extreme. The products have strong market competitiveness, stable customer relationships and stable sales.
Second, do a good job in brand marketing. Today, with fierce market competition and oversupply of products, it is essential for prefabricated food companies to occupy the minds of consumers (brand building) if they want to live for a long time. However, building a brand is a long road.
The reason why a brand is a brand is that it has an exclusive memory that distinguishes it from other companies or products in the market in the minds of the audience, for example, when it comes to hot pot products such as fish balls, Yasui comes to mind.
According to brand strategy professionals, 60% of the success of a brand depends on corporate strategy, 30% comes from brand positioning, and 10% comes from brand slogans.
Based on the industry characteristics of prefabricated food brands, while brand marketing, it is necessary to return to the logic of "product is king", and the quality-price ratio of products is the key to achieving sustainable development.
Therefore, focusing on single products, reducing costs and increasing efficiency, and brand marketing are both independent and mutually beneficial.
As the saying goes, "the aroma of wine is not afraid of deep alleys", good products are "good wine", reducing costs and increasing efficiency to help good wine get out of the "deep alleys", and brand marketing will spread the "aroma of wine".
The new era of prefabricated dishes will be the era of "intensive cultivation".
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