Approaching the Spring Festival, the topic of Chinese New Year's Eve dinner is hot. This year's Chinese New Year's Eve dinner table has begun to be pre-made dishes.
Recently, topics related to "prefabricated dishes" have frequently appeared on Weibo hot searches. On Weibo, the two topics of "Chinese New Year's Eve Meal Pre-made Vegetable Consumption, Seventy Percent Are Young People" and "Will You Choose Pre-made Dishes for Chinese New Year's Eve Dinner" have triggered more than 70 million readings and nearly 40,000 discussions.
For young people, pre-made dishes do not require superb cooking skills, eliminating complicated preparation, as long as simple cooking, you can make a table of Chinese New Year's Eve meals full of color and aroma. So for young people, pre-made dishes are in high demand.
Some netizens believe that buying pre-made dishes to make Chinese New Year's Eve meals saves effort and worry, and some "big dishes" really can't be made by themselves.
Of course, there are also some young people who maintain a wait-and-see attitude towards pre-made dishes, saying that even if they usually eat pre-made dishes, they still hope to cook with their families during the Chinese New Year, and only what they make at home will have the flavor of the New Year.
Regardless of the choice of young people, pre-made dishes from major platforms have become the focus of sales this year. From fresh food platforms such as Dingdong and Hema to e-commerce platforms such as ** and Jingdong, pre-made dishes have also become hot products.
And as a consumer, can you accept pre-made dishes on the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner table?
The platform pushes new products, and pre-made dishes are hot
This year, major fresh food platforms and e-commerce platforms have launched a series of pre-made dishes for Chinese New Year's Eve.
Cai Changqing, the private brand of Dingdong pre-made dishes, debuted a fresh, freshly made traditional freshly stuffed sausage and hand-cured salted meat in East China. On the platform, consumers can also directly purchase pre-made seafood dishes such as "King Crab Three Eats", Garlic Vermicelli and Cheese Baked Boston Lobster.
Hema launched a series of king crab legs this year, and in addition, the sales of Jintang Buddha jumping over the wall and abalone fish maw chicken are also good.
According to official data from Freshippo, the sales of Freshippo's semi-finished New Year's dishes increased by 20% month-on-month in the past week. Among them, black truffle cheese king crab legs, golden soup Buddha jumping over the wall, and abalone fish maw chicken are the most popular. In addition, at present, many consumers who are ready to go home for the Chinese New Year have bought New Year's dishes through Hema Yunchao, and Shanghai accounts for the highest proportion of such orders, reaching 35%, followed by Beijing with 31%.
Mao Ruichao, the person in charge of Freshippo's semi-finished New Year's dishes, said that it is expected that the sales of semi-finished New Year's dishes will reach a peak after the New Year, and the proportion of semi-finished New Year's dishes during the New Year holiday will reach 70%. Hema has prepared the goods and chains in advance to ensure that the hot-selling dishes are sufficient.
In addition, Hema also prepared "plating instructions" for consumers.
Little Elephant Supermarket has launched a cooperative research and development with traditional catering brands such as Qinglou and Taotaoju, and customized production of New Year's gift boxes.
Open ** search for the keyword "Chinese New Year's Eve" and find that most of the top sales are Buddha jumping over the wall pre-made dishes. For example, Uncle De abalone Buddha jumped over the wall for Chinese New Year's Eve rice big pot choi, which has sold more than 10,000 servings.
On Pinduoduo, a semi-finished gift box for Chinese New Year's Eve dinner of about 160 yuan, including 12 dishes such as squirrel fish, clear fish fillet, and kung pao chicken, has been spelled into 280,000 pieces.
Jingdong has joined the ranks of self-operated prefabricated dishes, and its self-operated *** Hai Wenming "has launched five series of products based on Hong Kong-style fish maw chicken and Buddha jumping over the wall, which contains 6 cans of Buddha jumping over the wall Fu culture red top F39 Jingdong to hand price as high as 3798$1.
In addition, in the recent New Year Festival, the "pre-made Chinese New Year's Eve lunch gift box" of multiple brands took turns on the live broadcast room of anchors such as Li Jiaqi, Make a Friend, Lie'er Baby, and Chen Jie.
From the brand point of view, there are not only Anjing and Zhengda food companies that have prefabricated New Year's dishes, but also catering companies such as Dadong, Xibei, Guangzhou Restaurant, Tongqinglou, Quanjude, Ziguangyuan, and Laocheng Yiguo.
In terms of supermarkets, Walmart has launched Chinese New Year's Eve pre-made dishes from major catering brands. For example, the "Overlord Turtle Chicken" launched by the Fire Palace, and the Golden Soup Buddha jumping over the wall gift box launched by the Fujian brand Juchunyuan.
With the help of this Spring Festival, pre-made dishes are menacing and extremely hot.
High growth is accompanied by controversy
Half fire, half seawater.
For consumers, pre-made dishes are being accepted by most people. According to the "2023 China New Year Gift Box Consumer Behavior Insight Report" released by iiMedia Consulting, there are 234% of Chinese New Year gift box consumers will choose to buy pre-made dishes, which is also the first time that pre-made dishes have become one of the top ten types of Chinese consumers' New Year gift boxes.
According to iiMedia Consulting's "2023-2025 China Prefabricated Food Industry Analysis Report", the size of China's prefabricated food market in 2022 will be 419.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 213%, it is expected that China's prefabricated food market will maintain a high growth rate in the future, and the market size of prefabricated food will reach 1,072 billion yuan in 2026.
While the market is growing, there are also many consumers who have disputes about pre-made dishes. "Our family's Chinese New Year's Eve dinner definitely does not have pre-made dishes, mainly because we don't like pre-made dishes. I'm not completely averse to pre-made dishes, provided it's clean and reassuring. Nowadays, restaurants have a lot of pre-made dishes, but restaurants don't tell consumers that they are pre-made dishes, and they are very annoying. Wang Kunkun said.
Previously, the survey report on the consumption of prefabricated dishes previously released by the Jiangsu Provincial Consumer Protection Commission showed that 6232% of consumers said that pre-made dishes tasted average.
In response to these problems, Zhu Danpeng, vice president of the Guangdong Provincial Food Safety and Security Promotion Association and China food industry analyst, analyzed in an interview that with the current domestic fresh-keeping technology and cold chain technology, it is completely possible to achieve long-term freshness and quality preservation of prefabricated vegetable products, but not everyone can do it. He suggested that consumers should try to choose prefabricated food products from standardized listed companies or brand stores, so as to ensure their own healthy diet.
Previously, it was 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.
From the perspective of market development, prefabricated food is still in the blue ocean stage, Guohai ** believes that the prefabricated food industry is expected to usher in rapid development driven by the B-end cost reduction and efficiency increase and the change of C-end consumption habits, and the industry is still in the early stage of penetration, and the future can still accelerate growth.
At this stage, for prefabricated dishes, how to make consumers slowly accept it is the key proposition.
Synthesized from China ** Daily, Xiaoxiang Morning News, Workers**, etc.