Pre-prepared dishes take over the New Year's Eve dinner of young people

From convenience and speed to delicious taste, the rise of pre-prepared meals has not only changed the way New Year's Eve dinner is prepared, but also reflects young people's pursuit of fashion, health and efficiency. This article will delve into this trend and reveal how pre-prepared meals have become a new choice for young people's New Year's Eve dinner in busy modern life.

In the past, pre-prepared meals were criticized and banned, but unexpectedly this year they have become a popular choice for young people’s New Year’s Eve dinner.

The countdown to New Year’s Eve has not yet begun, but the topic of New Year’s Eve dinner has already become a hot search.

As in previous years, reservations for New Year’s Eve dinners at famous restaurants across the country are extremely popular, and there is even a phenomenon of “hard to get a table”.

At the same time, pre-prepared meals that can be prepared at home have also become an option for many consumers. On Weibo, the topic "70% of New Year's Eve dinner pre-prepared meals are consumed by young people" has received 38.61 million views and triggered more than 20,000 discussions; "Will you choose pre-prepared meals for New Year's Eve dinner" has also received 31.94 million views and 19,000 discussions.

The "2023 China New Year Gift Box Consumer Behavior Insight Report" released by iMedia Consulting shows that pre-prepared meals have become one of the top ten choices for Chinese consumers' New Year gift boxes for the first time. 26.91% of the respondents chose to buy pre-prepared meals as New Year's goods, and New Year's meals have become part of the ranks of "local specialties."

In fact, as people born in the 1980s and 1990s have become the main force of family consumption, they have gradually taken over the task of purchasing New Year's goods and preparing "New Year's Eve dinner", which has further contributed to the popularity of pre-prepared New Year's Eve dinner.

01 Pre-prepared meals are a big hit during the Spring Festival

According to the "Notice on the Arrangements of Some Holidays in 2024", there will be no holiday on New Year's Eve this year, which makes it impossible for many families to spare enough time to prepare New Year's Eve dinner.

This gives pre-prepared meals more room to play. Recently, an employee of Wumart, a large supermarket chain, told us that the sales of pre-prepared meals in the store have increased by 15% year-on-year compared with last week.

Walking into Wumart Supermarket, we can see pre-made products such as pickled fish, braised pork, pork with preserved vegetables, spicy crayfish, etc., roughly counting more than 10 varieties and nearly 20 brands. The sales staff revealed that "these pre-made dishes have been put on the shelves recently. As the Spring Festival approaches, the stock has increased and sales have gradually increased."

In addition to Wumart, Hema has launched the "New Year Goods Festival" in mid-January, and new Spring Festival limited edition products such as New Year's dishes, eight-treasure rice, cherries, etc. In addition, it has also launched ready-made New Year dishes such as seafood, fried hairtail, and pork ribs.

Dingdong Maicai has introduced glutinous rice balls and dumplings based on the dietary differences between the north and the south. The glutinous rice balls are stuffed with sweet-scented osmanthus wine and Fuping persimmons, and there are also glutinous rice balls in the shape of gold ingots and cartoon dragons; the dumplings are made of different colors with ingredients such as beet juice, pumpkin juice, spinach juice, and squid juice. It is reported that the sales of the dumplings have reached nearly 15,000 in about three weeks since the launch.

On e-commerce platforms such as JD.com and Taobao, promotions for pre-prepared meals related to New Year’s Eve dinner have been launched.

On Taobao, pre-prepared New Year gift boxes from brands such as Guangzhou Restaurant, Xinghualou, Songhelou, and Xibei have all entered the best-selling lists of their respective flagship stores. Searching for "pre-prepared New Year's Eve dinner" on Taobao, the prices range from tens of yuan to thousands of yuan. Stores with high sales have already received more than 2,000 people's confirmation. The highest-selling "New Year's Eve dinner" on JD.com has also sold tens of thousands.

Pre-prepared meals are also favored by consumers on emerging channels such as Xiaohongshu Mall and Douyin Mall. Xiaohongshu Mall shows that 900 people have purchased a ready-to-eat meatball called Little Lion's Head, and Ma Liuji's pork belly and chicken pre-prepared meals have sold 1,262 orders. On Douyin Mall, Dingding Lazy People's Cuisine's New Year's Goods Fresh Pickled Cabbage Fish has ranked first in the category, with a total of 2.35 million copies sold.

"Tmall New Year Goods Festival 2024 New Year Flavor New Trends" shows that among Taobao's current users who place orders for New Year goods, those born after 1995 account for more than half. Those born after 1995 are becoming the decision-makers for family New Year goods, gradually changing from "avoiding the New Year" to "willing to participate" and even "dominating the New Year's Eve dinner table."

Wumart supermarket shelves, source: photographed by the author

Shang Rui, a post-95s youth, is keen on cooking, but she still faces difficulty in preparing meals for five people on New Year's Eve. She said that she had actually started trying pre-prepared dishes for the New Year's Eve dinner table a few years ago, but at that time there were few varieties, only fermented bean curd meat, four-happiness meatballs and so on. With the emergence of more varieties in recent years, she plans to prepare a "pre-prepared feast" this year. She has already placed an order for a pre-prepared New Year's Eve dinner gift box, which includes eight dishes such as black pepper beef tenderloin, sweet and sour pork, plum-flavored chicken steak, fish fillet in fermented sauce, farmer's thousand-piece buns, crab meat and fish gluten, pineapple duck slices, and blood glutinous rice eight-treasure rice pudding.

She believes that buying pre-prepared meals "can save time and energy, and you can prepare a sumptuous meal in 30 minutes. The combination of meat and vegetables is both beautiful and practical."

Like Shangrui, there are many people who choose pre-made meals to save trouble. Qian Lina, a girl living alone in Beijing, did not go home during the Spring Festival to avoid her family's urging to get married, and spent this year's New Year's Eve with her best friend. However, since both of them are "cooking novices" and they have to go to work on New Year's Eve, they were afraid that they would not be able to order takeout, so they bought a "pre-made New Year's Eve dinner" on an e-commerce platform.

02 Supermarket chains also set their sights on pre-prepared meals

The past 2023 was a highlight year for pre-prepared meals.

In February, the “Opinions of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on Doing a Good Job in Comprehensively Promoting Key Work for Rural Revitalization in 2023” was released, which mentioned “improving the standardization and regularization of industries such as clean vegetables and central kitchens, and cultivating and developing the pre-prepared food industry.” This is the first time that pre-prepared food has been included in the Central Government’s No. 1 Document.

Subsequently, various regions also issued intensive policies related to pre-prepared meals. In January, Guangdong Province established the Guangdong Pre-prepared Meal Industry Fund System; in April, Sichuan Province issued the "Several Measures to Support the High-quality Development of the Pre-prepared Meal Industry"; in May, Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province issued the "Implementation Plan for Accelerating the Development of Hangzhou Cuisine and the High-quality Development of the Pre-prepared Meal Industry (2023-2025)", etc. The introduction of these policies has effectively promoted the development of the pre-prepared meal industry.

KFC pre-prepared food products, source: KFC official WeChat

Driven by policies and markets, pre-prepared meals have attracted the attention of many giant players and cross-border players, including Lotus Health, Golden Dragon Fish, Fuling Zhacai, KFC, Nongfu Spring, Qiandama, Gree, Galanz, etc. These companies are preparing or have already made arrangements in the field of pre-prepared meals.

Some large supermarket chains and convenience stores have also set their sights on pre-prepared meals. It is reported that some FamilyMart and Lawson convenience stores in Shanghai have begun to add pre-prepared meal refrigerator areas. Among them, FamilyMart began to select residential business district stores with large customer traffic to test pre-prepared meals as early as the end of 2021. Starting in 2022, Hema's self-built central kitchens in Wuhan, Chengdu and Shanghai have been put into production one after another. In April 2023, Hema established a pre-prepared meal department. In June of the same year, Walmart China launched the celebrity chef project, which plans to cooperate with Chinese time-honored brands and powerful catering brands to launch dine-in-level signature dishes, including cold dishes, soups, main dishes, staple foods, desserts and other multi-scenario product combinations.

Huafu Securities predicts that the scale of my country's pre-prepared food market will reach 516.5 billion in 2023, with a CAGR of 26% from 2021 to 2025. The B-end market accounts for 80% and the C-end accounts for 20%.

Image source: Huafu Securities

From the perspective of the consumer side, dine-in meals have been decreasing due to the epidemic, and catering companies have launched pre-prepared meal products and promoted pre-prepared meal consumer education. The emergence of demands such as "small portions" and "meals for one person" has driven the maturity of the pre-prepared meal market.

At the same time, pre-prepared meals have also been favored by capital. Since 2021, many companies have obtained large amounts of financing. Among them, Dingweitai, Leyaoju, and Wangjiadu Food have all received financing of 100 million yuan; Zhenwei Xiaomeiyuan, Sancanyouliao, Frozen Food Wharf, Youyu Pre-prepared Meals, etc. have also received financing of tens of millions of yuan. Weizhixiang, a brand focusing on pre-prepared meals, was successfully listed in 2021. Most of these companies do both B-end and C-end business.

The big pre-prepared food items that have emerged in recent years, such as sauerkraut fish, pork belly and chicken, and crispy pork, are all typical products that have shifted from the B-end to the C-end.

Take crispy pork as an example. According to research data from Shangpu Consulting, the sales volume of crispy pork products has tripled from 139,000 tons to 431,000 tons from 2020 to 2022. It is estimated that by 2025, the sales volume of crispy pork in China will exceed 1.2 million tons. Among them, Meihao Crispy Pork has become a super single product in the field of pre-prepared dishes, with sales exceeding 1 billion yuan in 2022.

03 The biggest obstacle is the "trust crisis"

At present, the profitability of participants in my country's pre-prepared food market is under pressure due to low product barriers and little brand premium.

As social trends converge, the changes in Japan's consumer era have important implications for the development of my country's pre-prepared food industry.

The Japanese pre-prepared food industry is a "long slope and thick snow" track. With the improvement of the cold chain, the overall rhythm shows the rhythm of the B-end starting and the C-end relaying. From the 1970s to the 1990s, Japan's catering service industry expanded rapidly, and industrial trends promoted the accelerated penetration of B-end pre-prepared food, while the C-end was in its infancy. From the 1990s to the beginning of this century, Japan's quick-frozen food, driven by the double-click of the B and C ends, grew much faster than the catering industry. After 2000, Japan's economy was sluggish, the B-end fell into a state of weakness, and the aging, low-birth, and single population and family structure prompted the C-end pre-prepared food to take over and continue to expand.

Image source: iiMedia Research

During this process, the Japanese prepared food industry has experienced rapid expansion, industry reshuffle, and concentration improvement, and finally developed into a mature stage, with a high CR5 share and fierce competition among oligopolies. In 2016, the CR5 market share was nearly 80% (Maruha Nichiro, Nichirei, Kabukichi, Ajinomoto, and Nihon Suisan). Although the oligopolies firmly occupy the top five positions in the industry, the rankings of the leading companies still rotate frequently.

In order to further promote the popularization of pre-prepared meals on the C-end, during the Tokyo Olympics, the Japanese government provided an endorsement of the safety of pre-prepared meals. Coupled with the implementation of the "School Lunch Law" policy, many Japanese students have been exposed to pre-prepared meals since childhood, and C-end awareness has gradually improved.

At present, the perception of pre-prepared meals among Chinese consumers is still that they are take-out meal packages, contain a lot of preservatives, are cheap and unhealthy. How to resolve the "trust crisis" and make pre-prepared meals truly "safe meals" has become an urgent problem to be solved.

On the other hand, if we can improve the C-end image of pre-prepared meals through government endorsement like Japan, it will also be expected to stimulate a large demand for pre-prepared meals.

Zhu Danpeng, vice president of the Guangdong Food Safety Promotion Association and Chinese food industry analyst, pointed out in an interview with the media that by 2024, the pre-prepared food industry should improve in at least two aspects.

First, the pre-prepared food industry urgently needs to establish unified national standards and specifications. In terms of food safety, the pre-prepared food industry has a low entry threshold, many entrants, many industries involved and common OEM situations, but lacks unified national standards. Although since 2022, a number of group standards on pre-prepared meals have been issued, and pre-prepared meal-related industry alliances have been established, from the current point of view, the formulated standards are at most industry standards, which may play a guiding role in the development of the pre-prepared food industry, but they are not unique or mandatory. The formulation of unified national standards and specifications for the pre-prepared food industry should be accelerated to solve the current situation of the small, scattered and chaotic pre-prepared food industry, as well as possible food safety issues. From the industry perspective, national standards are the "stabilizing force" for industrial development.

Second, safeguard consumers’ right to know. Among the hot topics of public opinion on consumer rights protection in the third quarter of 2023 released by the China Consumers Association, there is “consumers are worried about infringement due to the lack of transparency in the sales of pre-prepared dishes”. The China Consumers Association stated that the relevant incidents reflect that some catering businesses or school canteens have failed to fully protect consumers’ right to know and right to choose, and consumers have distrust in the food safety and green health of pre-prepared dishes. How can consumers “buy with confidence and eat with peace of mind”? From the perspective of sustainable development of the industry, consumers should be informed whether the product is a pre-prepared dish or a “private label” product, so that consumers’ right to know can be further protected. If pre-prepared dishes are always “covered with a veil”, consumers will be more resistant.

References:

[1] “2023-2025 China’s Pre-prepared Meals Industry Operation and Investment Decision Analysis Report”, iiMedia Research

[2] “White Paper on the Development of China’s Pre-prepared Meals and Crispy Pork Industry in 2023”, NCBD

[3] “The Implications of Japan’s Pre-prepared Meals Development on the Domestic Market”, Huafu Securities

[4] “2023 China’s Digital Consumption Report on Pre-prepared Meals”, Ele.me

*This article is based on public information and is only for information exchange purposes and does not constitute any investment advice

Author: Tang Fei, Editor: Liu Jingfeng

Source: Public Account: Value Planet (ID: ValuePlanet), discovering company value and telling capital stories.