Edit | Wu

There are still 1 many months before the Spring Festival, which is the golden age for merchants to consume "new year's goods". The New Year's Eve dinner, which should have been put on the table on the Spring Festival, also began to grab food.

Competitors include offline supermarkets such as RT Mart, e-commerce platforms such as Tmall JD.COM, food platforms such as "Elephant Chef" under Meituan Food Division, and time-honored restaurants such as Shanghai Meilong Town Restaurant and Lvyang Restaurant. The way they cook New Year's Eve dinner revolves around the key word "preparing food".

Prefabricated dishes are not new. The instant noodles and quick-frozen jiaozi that we are familiar with are actually the prepared dishes of 1.0 version. With the entry of diversified players, the prepared dishes have been expanded to the 2.0 version of the Buddha's Leaping Wall, clay pot rice and even New Year's Eve.

Various platforms and restaurants have begun to be keen on heating the ready-to-eat New Year's Eve dinner, which seems to have become an overview of the prefabricated vegetable market in the past two years: the prefabricated dishes that were originally mainly circulated on the toB channel began to move towards the toC stage, where various factions exerted their fists and feet, and the innovative taste and the operation mode catering to young people began to give the prefabricated dishes a fresh "taste".

The pre-made version of the New Year's Eve just meets the dual needs of young people for a sense of ceremony and "laziness" in the context of "celebrating the New Year on the spot".

Do the dishes prepared on the dinner table represent the maturity of the consumer? In fact, no matter for any participant, the track of prefabricated dishes has just begun.

When the Chinese New Year's Eve meets the prepared dishes.

Booking a New Year's Eve dinner is not an exaggeration to describe it as hot. The older generation who are good at cooking a big table for the whole family are "retiring" from the kitchen, while the younger generation is not qualified to fight such a big battle. In order to retain the sense of Spring Festival ceremonies such as New Year's Eve dinner, it is becoming mainstream to book a table for New Year's Eve dinner outside.

In the past two years, * * has disrupted the rhythm of offline New Year's Eve dinner, and at the same time has spawned the market for prefabricated dishes. The collision between the two naturally makes prefabricated dishes popular. "Eating New Year's Eve" has become the first choice for many young people who "celebrate the New Year on the spot" in different places. Netizens said that the Chinese New Year should also have a sense of ceremony.

In fact, under the trend of "celebrating the New Year on the spot" last year, the "New Year's Eve" began to show great growth. Hungry? The data shows that last year, from the 28 th to the 30 th of the twelfth lunar month, the take-out of semi-finished products of New Year's Eve increased by 4 times year-on-year, and the take-out of gift boxes of New Year's Eve increased by 2 times year-on-year. Nearly 200 merchant brands and more than 5,000 offline stores participated, increasing by 164% and 260% respectively.

This year, the pre-cooked version of the New Year's Eve dinner seems to be more obvious.

RT Mart, which launched the New Year's Eve dinner package in the third year, started the research and development of New Year's Eve dinner dishes in March this year.

Xiao Er, a merchant of RT Mart New Year's Eve, mentioned in an interview that the main target group of prepared dishes is young families who stay in other places for the New Year. This year, the consumption trend of "eating alone" has obviously expanded. Therefore, in product design, some product specifications of New Year's Eve dishes have also been adjusted, such as the small-capacity packaging of "Buddha jumping wall" and the packaging of five more independent bowls, all for the convenience of 1-2 people.

From the sales feedback, the popularity of small packaging products is obviously higher, among which the sales of "Buddha jumping wall" small packaging items account for more than 20% of the total sales.

"It is estimated that 65438+ 10 will enter the peak period of vegetable sales in the whole year. It is estimated that the total vegetable sales this year will increase by 50% compared with last year. " The above quotient two said.

Xu Bingchi, R&D Department of RT Mart Cooked Food, said that according to the sales situation in previous years, chicken soup with salted pork belly, eight-treasure duck and mutton cake are very popular, and these dishes have also become "reserved tracks" and included in this year's menu. In addition, this year, we specially developed "Peanut Stuffed Soft-hearted Pig's Feet", "Grilled Fish with Hot and Sour Litchi" and "Abalone and Sea Cucumber Buddha Jumping Wall".

Judging from the taste and name of new dishes, it is also to create a "traffic explosion" that caters to the interests of young people.

Outside RT Mart, many offline restaurants are also focusing on pre-made New Year's Eve dinner packages this year. For example, Meilong Town Restaurant has launched six New Year's Eve dinner packages, including classic dishes such as wine-flavored large yellow croaker, Buddha jumping wall and sea cucumber with abalone sauce, with prices ranging from 298 to 1888 yuan. According to the price of in-store package and private room fee in Meilong Town, per capita is in 280 yuan. The pre-cooked version of the New Year's Eve dinner lowers the price threshold to a certain extent, making it a more cost-effective choice.

The e-commerce platform has also become another position for the New Year's Eve. In Tmall search for New Year's Eve, there will be a variety of businesses, mostly offline old catering brands, including new players such as Mama Mai and Eclipse. On-line, the concept of New Year's Eve dinner includes not only traditional set meals, but also single items such as Buddha jumping wall and retort pouch.

The five-point world of prefabricated dishes

Prefabricated dishes are not new. We are familiar with instant noodles and quick-frozen dumplings, both of which are cooked food of 1.0 version. "Speed" is their biggest selling point. Simply heat it for 5 minutes and you can serve it.

However, with the promotion of all parties, the current version 2.0 of pre-cooked dishes has undergone several changes: 1, category innovation, innovative pizza dumplings, square buns, taro dumplings, rice burgers, clay pot rice and so on. ; 2. Have a more accurate insight into packaging; 3. Cooperate with more detailed crowd division and scene operation, such as low-fat set meal and New Year's Eve dinner. These upgraded versions of pre-cooked dishes don't pay attention to "fast" and take longer to heat, but emphasize that several "good-looking" dishes can be copied without great effort.

All kinds of "semi-finished dinner" are a scene of prefabricated vegetable market.

Precast dishes, like masks, are all areas that * * has done. In April this year, the first pre-cooked dish went on the market, welcoming 10 daily limit. Precast food enterprises such as Wangjiadu Food, Sancan Youliao and Xunwei Lion have successively obtained financing, the amount of which basically exceeds 10 million yuan, and most of them are nearly 100 million yuan. Missing and Xibei have opened special offline stores around prefabricated dishes, and Xibei's "Jia Kung Fu Cuisine" has opened more than 200 stores.

Just in the recent double 1 1, prefabricated dishes have also become the "explosion" of major e-commerce platforms. Tmall data shows that during the double 1 1 period this year, the turnover of prefabricated vegetables increased by about 2 times year-on-year.

Prefabricated dishes have become the next "trillion market" in public opinion. According to the analysis of an industry insider, there are currently five groups of prefabricated dish players, each with its own advantages:

Quick-frozen school: a traditional quick-frozen food brand represented by Sanquan and Missing, which has the advantages of production and processing;

Hotel factions: Haidilao, Jia Kung Fu cuisine, delicious fragrance, etc. Based on offline traditional catering brands and channels;

Retail School: Box Horse, Ding Dong Shopping and Sam are all making self-operated goods based on retail channels, and Qian Ayi also went online to prepare dishes before the Spring Festival;

Raw material school: Guolian, Hengxing, Zheng Da and other traditional companies engaged in fish and shrimp farming are in the most upstream position in the whole chain, and are currently looking for the direction of industrial upgrading through prefabricated dishes;

Avant-garde: pioneers in the early stage, delicious little Li Ziyuan, rice, online background, although there is no factory, but they have the ability to integrate operations.

Before the birth of the new school, pre-cooked dishes were more oriented to toB channel. In order to ensure the consistency of taste and taste, national chain restaurants generally produce semi-finished products through factories or central kitchens, and then transport them to stores all over the country for deep processing.

The essence of prefabricated dishes is an intermediate format between food and catering, and the difference between them lies in the distance from consumers. It is a group of new brands that better understand consumers' needs and are better at operation that take the lead in promoting business thinking from toB to toC.

"From the perspective of online performance, the pre-cooked vegetable market is mainly driven by operators." Yan Jin pointed out that the organizational structure of traditional pre-cooked dishes merchants is too heavy, the proportion of online transactions is small, and the production cycle is difficult to adjust. Most of them will support their toB customers first, and will not consider making great efforts to do online.

Xiao Yanjin, the fresh food of Tmall, gave an example. Almost 90% of the eels in the world are raised and exported from China. Under the influence of * *, eels began to export to the domestic market. The original raw material price was 90- 1 1 10,000/ton, which was as low as 40,000/ton at that time. Some businessmen who are good at business seize this window period, cut the packaged eel that used to be hundreds of grams into one person, and add ingredients such as egg rolls, laver and sesame seeds to make semi-finished eel rice.

It looks hot, but it's just beginning.

The popularity of prefabricated dishes naturally comes from the continuous maturity of the supply chain system. This is the underlying logic of almost every industry that constantly breaks the circle. However, R&D and categories are easy to imitate, and the degree of industrialization at the production end is not high, so the core of competitive differentiation is channel efficiency.

Pre-cooked dishes also ushered in a channel dividend in the C-end retail. Fresh e-commerce, community group buying and new hot pot supermarket are good landing scenes for prefabricated dishes. According to the data, the sales ratio of Aauto quickless cuisine on Box Horse Fresh Line has exceeded 60%, and there are many products of Box Horse's own brand, including Tik Tok, Aauto quickless, Ding Dong and so on. They are all building online scenes of prefabricated dishes.

In fact, the pre-cooked dishes that look loud are still in their infancy. Different from other new consumption trajectories, a vertical demand corresponds to a category and a new brand. In the pre-cooked food market, consumers' cognition is still in the cultivation period.

Yan Jin mentioned that pre-cooked dishes, including clay pot rice and snacks, are admirable. They are not only doing category education, but also doing their own brands.

Yan Jin gave an example of category education. Last year, the merchants who took the lead in making one-person eel packaging seized the market price dividend period, but did not create a bigger market. In addition to the supply chain constraints such as limited eel production, merchants have not well refined what the selling point of eels is. On the other hand, the annual eel festival in Japan (7. 19-7.2 1) highlights that eel is a seasonal nutritious food, which has well realized category education.

Prefabricated food is a business that "replaces hotel chefs" at home. There are many hard dishes in several major cuisines in China, and the track of eating goods is also quite broad. For every subdivided food, there will be opportunities to prepare food in the future.

However, the consumption education of C-end prefabricated vegetables is still early, and the demand for marketing investment is high. Moreover, due to the short shelf life of prefabricated vegetables, the actual pricing is more difficult to manage systematically. In Yan Jin's view, even so, at this stage, prefabricated vegetable merchants must not fall into the strange circle of "price war", and ensuring profits is the basis for the stable development of the industry.