"This paper mainly analyzes the prefabricated vegetable market from the following angles: 1. What is the essence and core value of prefabricated vegetables? 2. What is the development trend and competition pattern of prefabricated dishes? 3. What kind of prefabricated vegetable enterprises can "outperform" for a long time? 4. What is the social significance of the development of prefabricated dishes? Compared with fresh products, is prefabricated vegetables a short-term outlet for capital and epidemic, or does it really have long-term opportunities and growth potential?

article contents

1. the essence of prefabricated vegetables: the inevitable result of the development of food industrialization, the product of the general trend

2. the core value of prefabricated vegetables: stable production at the B end, cost saving, improved efficiency and better experience at the C end

3. the scale and development trend of prefabricated vegetable market: the market potential of one trillion yuan, and the market scale of 2C is hundreds of billions. The market concentration of quick-frozen dishes is higher

Fourth, the competition pattern of 2C prefabricated vegetable market: all kinds of players enter the market, and the business model has yet to be verified on a large scale

Fifth, the key factor for the long-term "winning" of prefabricated vegetable brands is to fight for products in the early stage, and to see the efficiency in the middle and late stage

Sixth, the externality of prefabricated vegetable industry: greatly promoting sustainable development

We are experiencing the test of epidemic situation round after round. In the inconvenient days, how to solve three meals a day by yourself at home has become a problem that everyone must face every day. At this time, prefabricated dishes have become the best solution: compared with fresh products, prefabricated dishes have a long storage time, are convenient and fast, and are more nutritious and have diverse tastes than traditional fast food products.

From the market point of view, the epidemic has indeed driven the growth of the prefabricated vegetable industry, and the education cost of consumers at the C end has naturally decreased. In 2122, the sales volume of Ding Dong's pre-made vegetables for the New Year's Eve dinner increased by over 411%, the sales volume of box horse's pre-made new year's vegetables increased by 345% compared with the Spring Festival in 2121, and the sales volume of "Ding Ding Lazy Dishes" served by Mumian Capital exceeded 51 million yuan in Tik Tok in a single month.

from the capital side, the investment and financing of prefabricated vegetables are also very active. According to statistics, there were 23 investment and financing events in the prefabricated vegetable industry in 2121, and the financing amount exceeded 5 billion yuan. The prefabricated vegetable chain enterprise "Weizhixiang" also successfully landed in A shares in 2121.

Is the prepared dish a short-term outlet for capital and epidemic, or does it really have long-term opportunities and growth potential?

if we look at it for a long time, we will find that prepared food has been a fast-growing industry in recent years. According to the data of Huachuang Securities, the compound annual growth rate of China prefabricated vegetable industry is about 21% from 2111 to 2121, and the prefabricated vegetable market has reached 231 billion yuan in 2121. According to the consulting data of Ai Media, the scale of the prefabricated vegetable industry in China will be 345.9 billion yuan in 2121, and it is estimated that the scale of the prefabricated vegetable market will reach 1,172 billion yuan in 2126, making the prefabricated vegetable industry the next trillion-dollar market in the foreseeable future.

main ideas

prefabricated dishes are the inevitable product of the development of food industrialization

social changes have prompted the continuous transformation of family kitchens, and consumers need better solutions for eating at home. With the progress of food industrialization, prefabricated dishes provide product solutions with better efficiency, better taste, better nutrition and better safety.

Prefabricated dishes are product-driven categories, and product-oriented companies will lead the development of the industry.

Prefabricated dishes are characterized by standardization, low loss and high turnover due to their remarkable industrial characteristics. Product companies have excellent product research and development capabilities, sustained brand potential, omni-channel penetration capabilities and efficient supply chain integration capabilities, and will occupy a more important position in the minds of users in the future, and have the opportunity to continue to lead the development of the industry.

The strategy of "big single product" is more effective, and it should be done step by step.

Startups should adopt the strategy of "big single product" in the initial stage, and choose products that cover the most pain points of users and can make a single breakthrough, which is more conducive to gathering resources on the marketing side and gaining scale advantages and R&D depth on the supply side faster.

Video e-commerce channels have accelerated the popularization of pre-cooked dishes

At present, traditional channels and self-built channels have to pay high user education costs. Video e-commerce is the best platform for educating users of pre-cooked dishes at present, providing the most efficient expression and the most matching decision-making scenarios. Start-up companies should quickly establish brand awareness in advantageous channels and complete the mental construction of users.

scale effect is the long-term loser, and enterprises should lay out the upstream supply chain as soon as possible.

The high cost performance of prefabricated vegetables determines that the premium space is limited, so it is very important to build a supply chain by itself and extend it to the upstream of the industry. At present, the industry is in the introduction period, and its own high-quality production capacity will be in the first-Mover advantage position in the future competition.

1. the essence of prefabricated dishes: the inevitable result of the development of food industrialization, and the product of the general trend

the definition of "prefabricated dishes" is the finished or semi-finished products made from raw materials such as agriculture, livestock, poultry and aquatic products through pre-processing (such as cutting, stirring, pickling, rolling, molding and seasoning) and debugging with auxiliary materials. The production of prefabricated dishes comes from two forces, one is the evolution of food processing industry, and the other is the continuous higher requirements of catering industry for supply chain. As a collection of categories, prefabricated dishes have grown into a huge food processing industry at a high speed. The core added value in the process lies in the industrialization of semi-finished vegetables through industrial sterilization, washing and cutting (export of clean vegetables) and pickling and seasoning.

The industrialization transformation promoted by the scientific and technological revolution is repeated in every basic category of human life. "Food, clothing, housing and transportation", as the just need of human life, has experienced a continuous wave of upgrading in the long history. In the 1961s and 1971s, sewing machines were the necessary "bulky" furniture for every household. With the development of industrial garment technology, consumers can more conveniently buy extremely rich and affordable garment products. "Living" and "traveling" are also constantly being upgraded, from bungalows to buildings, from manual decoration to assembly decoration, from walking to bicycles, from automobile popularization to aircraft high-speed rail and so on.

As far as "food" is concerned, the way of making and eating meals is constantly changing, and the functions of traditional family kitchens are constantly being deconstructed and upgraded:

The first time is the rise of eating out, and the penetration rate of catering is constantly improving. The rapid development in the past 21 years has made the penetration rate of catering in the food consumption market reach 41%; The second time is the rise of take-out based on information technology, which provides consumers with a new choice other than cooking. In the past 11 years, the penetration rate of take-out compared with dining hall food has reached more than 1.5%.

With the intensification of urbanization and the change of social structure, consumers need a better solution for eating at home, taking into account the needs of efficiency, taste, safety and nutrition. We believe that on the basis of the maturity of 2B prefabricated dishes, 2C prefabricated dishes will become the development direction of process simplification and efficiency upgrading in family kitchens.

We can understand the pre-cooked food industry as food industrialization at the bottom, achieving the optimal solution of efficiency on the basis of upgrading food safety, and the added value lies in the reduction of taste, nutrition and consumer satisfaction. The process of food industrialization is unstoppable, and we believe that prefabricated vegetables will usher in huge market opportunities. Industrialized food is more standardized (such as liquor, condiments, dairy products, bean products and meat products), and after industrial sterilization, it has the characteristics of long transportation distance, long shelf life and safety, so food companies can incite large-scale growth by using standardized channel operation and brand investment.

second, the core value of pre-cooked dishes: B-end products are stable and cost-saving, and C-end products improve efficiency and better experience

Pre-cooked dishes have different calibers and definitions in different contexts, and are generally divided into three categories in a broad sense: normal-temperature cooking packages, refrigerated clean vegetables and frozen prepared foods. Among them, the categories of quick-frozen dishes, mainly pickled fish and pork belly chicken, are growing rapidly, which is also the most common narrow classification of prefabricated dishes in the market at present.

The core value of prefabricated dishes can be seen from two aspects: B-end and C-end:

B-end: the core value of prefabricated dishes for catering enterprises lies in stable production and cost saving. The use of semi-finished dishes can reduce the number of kitchen staff and kitchen area for enterprises, and effectively save costs based on the advantages of centralized procurement and loss reduction, while meeting the needs of customers' taste, nutrition and dining experience.

C-end: the core value of pre-prepared dishes for consumers at c-end lies in providing a better dining plan, being able to enjoy a relatively complicated dish efficiently, aiming at meeting the dining needs of consumers for 15-31 minutes at a price of 21-45 yuan, and providing a certain sense of pleasant experience at the same time of high convenience. The rise of C-end consumer demand conforms to the general trend of miniaturization of family size, increase of female labor participation rate and urbanization rate.

third, the scale and development trend of the prefabricated vegetable market: the market potential is trillion yuan, the 2C market scale is hundreds of billions, and the market concentration of quick-frozen dishes is higher

According to the research report of Huachuang Securities, the scale of China's prefabricated vegetable market has reached 231 billion yuan in 2121, with a compound growth rate of 21% from 2111 to 2121, and it is expected to reach nearly one trillion yuan in the next decade.

Compared with the mature overseas markets, China's prefabricated vegetable market has great growth potential:

In 2121, the market size of the United States will be about 211 billion US dollars (1.2 trillion yuan), and that of Japan will be about 9.8 trillion yen (511 billion yuan). At present, the market size of China's prefabricated vegetable industry is about one-sixth of that of the United States and one-third of that of Japan.

if we split the B-end and the C-end, the ratio of B-end and C-end in China's prefabricated vegetable market is about 8:2, and that in Japan is about 6: 4.

due to the higher complexity of Chinese cuisine and the more abundant SKUs, we believe that the market penetration rate of prefabricated dishes in China will exceed that of developed markets such as the United States and Japan, especially the C-end market, which has significant development potential.

According to the calculation of the penetration rate of prefabricated dishes in catering ingredients of 15%-21%, the scale of 2C prefabricated vegetable market can reach several hundred billion yuan in five years. Referring to the quick-frozen permeability of the United States and Japan, and based on the quick-frozen permeability of China's prefabricated vegetables in the future of 11%-15%, quick-frozen dishes (narrow-sense prefabricated vegetables) will also have a market space of hundreds of billions. In the end, trillions of fresh markets will be gradually replaced by prefabricated vegetables, and the prefabricated vegetable market itself will reach trillions of volumes, becoming the main solution for home cooking and restaurant chefs.

from the perspective of market concentration, we believe that the supply and demand structure of the prefabricated vegetable industry will have a certain impact on the promotion of market concentration because of its timeliness of procurement, sudden demand and diversity of supply, and may be closer to leisure snacks, fresh food and other industries.

we believe that the market concentration of quick-frozen prefabricated vegetables with standardized and long-term preservation will be higher than that of non-standardized and short-term preservation, and the core lies in the higher possibility of industrial scale, and the cost advantage of development is better than that of short-term preservation. Due to the complex material composition and the difficulty of supply chain coordination, the development space of a single enterprise is limited. Because there are great differences in taste requirements in different regions, and the transportation distance of short-term preserved prefabricated vegetables is limited, and the distribution is more borne by store-based enterprises, so it is more likely that short-term preserved prefabricated vegetables will present the final regional competition.

4. The competition pattern of 2C prefabricated vegetable market: all kinds of players enter the market, and the business model needs to be verified on a large scale.

1. Many types of 2C brands have their own advantages, and actively grasp the development trend of the industry.

The current prefabricated vegetable brands are roughly divided into five types: product type, channel type, raw material type and catering type.

product type: it represents the brand's taste, taste, lazy food, wheat mom, etc. It started with specialized production of all kinds of prefabricated dishes, without the shackles of thinking at the catering end or the supply chain end. The brand can often grasp the user population and usage scenarios more accurately, and reshape the product shape, specifications, pricing and other dimensions with the user's thinking.

channel type: representing brands such as box horse, Ding Dong grocery, pot ring, etc. The advantage of channel brand lies in the high overlap of main consumers, the brand has trust at the customer end, and it is closer to users in delivery time or physical space distance.

frozen product type: on behalf of the brand Anjing Food, it launched the sub-brand "Mr. Frozen Product", giving full play to the synergistic effect of the original channels and the infrastructure capacity of the cold chain, with 7 warehouses and more than 1,111 dealers nationwide.

raw material type: it represents the brand New Hope and Guolian Aquatic Products. Its advantages lie in the stable supply of ingredients and cost advantages, which are highlighted in the industrialized single products, such as the beautiful crispy meat of New Hope. In 2121, the sales of single products will exceed 1 billion yuan. For a wider range of dishes, the product research and development needs to be transformed.

catering type: the representative brands are Jia Guolong Kung Fu Cuisine under Xibei, Kaifan in Haidilao and Wangjiadu in Dongpo of Meizhou. Prefabricated dishes can help the original brands to expand the home scenes of existing customers, and the advantage of catering brand lies in the high degree of taste reduction. Observing its product ideas, we can see that its signature products and cuisines are basically the extension of restaurant cuisines, such as the beef bones of Jia Guolong's Kung Fu dishes and the braised pork of Meizhou Dongpo.

2. The channels are diversified, and Tik Tok has become the dominant channel for the spread of 2C prefabricated dishes.

At present, the purchase channels of fresh food are extremely convenient, and offline KA and farmers' markets, online shelf e-commerce, video e-commerce and fresh e-commerce are all optional channels for prefabricated dishes. So what channels should enterprises give priority to?

We believe that the video e-commerce represented by Tik Tok is the best platform to educate users of pre-cooked food brands at present. Because users have not yet established a clear category awareness of prefabricated dishes, it is difficult for traditional shelf stores and shelf e-commerce to stimulate users' consumption needs. The advantage of video e-commerce is that it can quickly complete consumer education with content-oriented marketing. Pre-cooked dishes such as pickled fish, crayfish and pork belly chicken directly turn cold packaged pre-cooked dishes into sensible dishes through video presentation, which not only brings strong sensory stimulation to users, but also completes the category education of how users should use pre-cooked dishes. Pre-cooked dishes and video e-commerce have natural adaptability, and the consumption decision-making scenarios are highly matched.

for the brand of pre-cooked food, the best way to play at this stage is to take advantage of the "east wind" of Tik Tok e-commerce. From October to September, 2121, the GMV of e-commerce in Tik Tok increased by 7.9 times year-on-year, and the overall GMV will be close to 1 trillion yuan in 2121. According to a huge amount of engine data, the penetration rate of China live e-commerce is expected to be 14.3% in 2121, which means that the growth of Tik Tok e-commerce based on 651-711 million monthly activities is still in its early stage.

Take "Ding Ding Lazy Dishes" as an example. Based on the insight into the crowd and channels of pre-cooked dishes, the company chose all in Tik Tok channel at the beginning of the dish. At present, the monthly sales in Tik Tok has exceeded 51 million yuan. "Ding Ding Lazy Dishes" quickly established a compound growth path of self-broadcasting and talent matrix within half a year. On the one hand, it used talent matrix as a growth lever to establish content assets that effectively resisted the convergence of bidding model; On the other hand, self-broadcasting is used as the basic disk to complete closed-loop traffic harvesting.

Prefabricated vegetable market

3. Multi-SKU is the mainstream solution, but we think the big single product strategy is the best solution

It is observed that players in the current market generally adopt multi-SKU strategy, trying to cook a table of dishes well. For example, Wei Zhixiang SKU 211+, Mr. Frozen Product SK