Migrant workers go to work to eat pre-made dishes, go to shopping malls to eat pre-made dishes, and now, even the Chinese New Year's Eve is also targeted by pre-made dishes. In order to compete for the traffic of Chinese New Year's Eve meals, various brands staged a war of pre-made dishes. But the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner has a rich meaning for Chinese, and the family sits around it, which is both a meal and a sense of ritual. Can pre-made dishes that constantly stir people's emotions squeeze the table for Chinese New Year's Eve?
Text |Cao Tingting.
Edit |Jin Za Xin Ye.
Operations |Circle.
Pre-made dishes invade the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner
The girl sat at a table at a Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, facing the screen and greeting her parents on the other end. Five dishes and one soup, all of which are pre-made dishes. The huge advertising slogan appears directly below, "This is a (pre-made) (year) (dish)".
Before the Spring Festival, this advertising picture of the girl eating pre-made dishes and "electronic reunion" with her family originally wanted to step on the hot spot of "no holiday on Chinese New Year's Eve" to promote pre-made dishes, but unexpectedly, it directly pierced the lung tube of the worker. "It's already more depressing if I don't have a holiday at thirty, but I still let me eat pre-made dishes alone during the Chinese New Year? "It's really miserable, and PUA hits people."
Screenshot of Xiaohongshu.
In 2023, prefabricated dishes have stinged everyone's most sensitive nerve endings several times: first, in June, a couple in Hangzhou found that the wedding banquet priced at nearly 6,000 yuan** may be seventy percent of prefabricated dishes, and the cost is only 1,000 yuan. In September, the topic of "boycotting prefabricated dishes on campus" appeared on Weibo hot search; At the end of the year, Simba said on the live broadcast that "pre-made dishes should be eaten by children the most", which once again caused controversy.
But this time is different, pre-made dishes directly invade the Chinese New Year's Eve meal - the last link of the year for ordinary people.
In fact, as early as October 2023, Guangdong held the first symposium of 100 leading enterprises in New Year's cuisine, and pre-made dishes were bound to Chinese New Year's Eve rice, turning into "New Year's dishes", and 2023 has since become the "first year of New Year's dishes". This also makes the Spring Festival of 2024, which follows closely, the first battlefield of New Year's dishes.
The flow of Chinese New Year's Eve rice has become the target of various brands to compete for eighteen kinds of martial arts. Enterprises that have entered the Chinese New Year's Eve Rice War include chain supermarkets Hema and Sam, fresh e-commerce Dingdong Grocery Shopping, Meituan Elephant, some traditional catering brands, and a large number of pre-made vegetable manufacturers involved in the supply.
According to FBIF food and beverage innovation incomplete statistics, in 2023, a total of 31 pre-made food-related enterprises will launch pre-made Chinese New Year's Eve meal gift packages, including 13 pre-made food enterprises, 17 catering brands, and even a condiment manufacturer called "Sichuan Flavor Museum". In addition to catering brands such as Guangzhou Restaurant, Tongqinglou and Xibei, Quanjude, which lost money for three consecutive years during the epidemic, continued to make efforts to pre-made dishes and launched Chinese New Year's Eve lunch gift boxes, priced at 398 yuan to 1388 yuan.
To enter the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner table, each brand first opens the volume in the category, focusing on gorgeous, sumptuous and complex production processes.
For example, Hema directly opened up the prefabricated New Year's dishes section, which has a column of New Year's dishes, listing 22 kinds of prefabricated dishes. In addition to conventional hard dishes such as Buddha jumping over the wall, it also focuses on a differentiation, launching king crab legs and army hot pot. The ** of king crab legs is 269 yuan, the net content is 810g, and it can be used when heated, as a "sharp weapon" for shooting Chinese New Year's Eve meals ** and sending to the circle of friends, which is easier to be planted by young people.
King crab legs with garlic. Figure Hema app
Dingdong Grocery focuses on regional characteristics, and the New Year's gift boxes include stewed pork ribs with Northeast goose, mutton from Yanchitan in Ningxia, and Cantonese pigeon. It also co-branded with more than 10 well-known offline restaurants and hotels to launch classic New Year's gift box coupons, such as Jinjiang Hotel, International Hotel, Shanghai Old Hotel, etc., the gift box can be redeemed with one click and delivered to your home free of charge, which captures the needs of young people for the New Year in other places. Meituan's Little Elephant Supermarket has also partnered with traditional catering brands to launch Tongqinglou's custom-made New Year's gift boxes.
Luxury dishes have almost become the main strategy for pre-made dishes to raid Chinese New Year's Eve dinners, ** almost all concentrated around 2,000 yuan.
Da Dong's Chinese New Year's Eve family banquet of Buddha jumping over the wall, Tmall price is 1888 yuan, known as the same big dish in Da Dong Michelin store. Songhelou's "Golden Jade Mantang Nafu Banquet Chinese New Year's Eve Dinner Gift Box" is priced at 2,288 yuan, including 6 cold dishes, 8 hot dishes, and 4 dim sum. Further up, there is the most expensive "Fortune Golden Abalone High-end Gift Box" in Heyuan Restaurant, 3999 yuan of poon choi, 7 pounds of weight, luxurious ingredients, there are 10 ** dried abalone, 10 9A dried sea cucumber, 150 grams of deep-sea fish maw......
Picture: Xiaohongshu @ Da Dong Gourmet Dong arrives at home.
Regarding the luxury of Chinese New Year's Eve rice rolls, Hema once explained to Banshu Finance: "New Year's dishes need to grab the ** chain, because the sales cycle is very short, and its price is relatively high. If this kind of big dish is not put on the shelves in the specific scene of the Spring Festival, no one may buy it, so you will find that when it comes to the New Year's Festival, Buddha jumps over the wall and fish maw chicken all come out. ”
The major brands also rolled up their names and tried to link them to the dragon. Such as Xibei's dragon and phoenix auspicious pastry gift box, dragon Teng Sihai kung fu dish gift box, auspicious dragon Xianrui gift box. Quanjude pushes the Jude Baiwei Joy Gift Box, Guangzhou Restaurant is good luck and Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, Fulu Buddha jumping over the wall poon choi and so on. In short, good words are used, but there is no mention of pre-made dishes, and they are all replaced by New Year's dishes or gift boxes.
After rolling the name, you have to roll the service. In most parts of the country, consumers can place orders through Hema Yunchao, and New Year's dishes such as black truffle cheese king crab legs, abalone fish maw chicken, and Hong Kong-style seafood poon choi can be delivered directly to their homes free of charge. Hema even attaches a "posing instructions" that carefully mark the order of reheating and the standard of plating, taking into account various needs to the greatest extent.
In addition, the pre-made dishes for Chinese New Year's Eve still target young people, and online traffic is naturally an important area for brands to compete for. Open Tmall and search for "pre-made high-end household Chinese New Year's Eve meal", and the free shipping category is as high as more than 5,000 pieces; A search for "Chinese New Year's Eve Rice Pre-made Dishes" on Jingdong also showed more than 3,000 items.
On other social platforms, such as Xiaohongshu, enter the Chinese New Year's Eve pre-made dishes, and various brand directories will appear below, including Dadong, Xibei, Tongqinglou various brands, click into the subset, you can see a large number of related ** shares.
In addition to the familiar big brands, in the past two years, some new prefabricated food manufacturers have emerged. Their sales share is small, and their plan is more conservative for the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner scene.
Last year, Li Xiaoling and a few friends co-founded a pre-made food brand. They have been making quick-frozen pasta for many years, and in recent years, they have noticed that the development of quick-frozen pasta has reached a bottleneck, and they have made up their minds to turn to the hot prefabricated food track. Li Xiaoling's prefabricated food brand is mainly supplied to catering enterprises. For the Chinese New Year's Eve rice market, they specially launched the pre-made dish category of "Eight Small Bowls" that do not go home for the New Year. The serving size is suitable for 1 to 2 people, and the unit price is lower. This single item is mainly sold to the company as a New Year's benefit for employees.
The Spring Festival is also the date when the banquets are concentrated. After netizen Xiaole returned to his hometown, he found that even the flowing water seats in the village had been invaded by prefabricated dishes. A plate of roast duck, when served, the dough is still in a plastic bag, and you have to tear it by yourself. The whole fish that is often served at the banquet is only drizzled with a layer of sauce. The pre-made dishes on the banquet are not shy about it, and the production address and expiration date can be seen clearly. Moreover, in the local area, whether it is in the rural market or small shops, these pre-made dishes can be bought.
She ate this meal tastelessly and returned disappointed.
Pre-made dishes, with Chinese New Year's Eve dinner?
Is that pre-made dish worthy of Chinese New Year's Eve dinner?
The answer for some is no.
Qiu Shengyue, who lives in Zhuhai, once brushed the Chinese New Year's Eve pre-made dishes on the short ** platform, and was also attracted, "ten liao ginseng, ten abalone, ten prawns", with a gorgeous and hearty **, a price is less than 300 yuan. She was tempted for a while, but when she thought that there were still old people and children at home, "the food should not be high in cholesterol, and it should also be fresh", so she turned her head and exited the page.
The shelf life of pre-made New Year's vegetable products is generally 6 months to 12 months, and even if it is shorter, it can be stored for 60 days. This means that additives are essential. New Year's dishes, if you are not careful, they really become New Year's Eve dishes, which will also make Qiu Shengyue worried.
Wang Anxue from Chongqing resolutely refuses to let pre-made dishes enter the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner table, in her perception, pre-made dishes are "equivalent to secondary processing", freezing and thawing, and each link of the operation increases the risk. In order to avoid pre-made dishes, she even has to carefully screen for an hour before ordering takeout, and the important thing is to point out comments, only look at bad reviews, especially the ** that is sent, if it is packed in a tin foil box, it is more likely to be a pre-made dish."
There is a more direct reason: the pre-made Chinese New Year's Eve meal, which is not delicious.
Chen Yuwen from Guangdong once bought a Buddha jumping over the wall, and she opened a restaurant, but she tasted it fresh enough. For example, the shrimp that is essential in poon choi, the fresh shrimp meat is crispy and sweet, and the shrimp in the pre-made dish is usually soft and has no taste at all.
There is no pot gas, which is the original sin of pre-made dishes are not delicious. Zhang Yuanyuan in Tianjin, once ate the pre-made dishes and croquettes issued by his father's company for a Chinese New Year's Eve dinner. This dish, my mother will make every year, although the homemade meatballs are not standardized in size, but after the fresh green onions, ginger and garlic stir-fried, Zhang Yuanyuan feels that there is an indescribable fragrance. Pre-made meatballs, not only do they not have this aroma, but sometimes they have a fishy smell.
The Chinese New Year's Eve dinner has a special meaning for Chinese, focusing on a companionship. This year, Qiu Xingyue continued to take his children back to his hometown for the New Year. In her family, it is often a family, busy with Chinese New Year's Eve dinner from thirty to afternoon, and her four-year-old son will also participate, chatting and cooking while enjoying the time together. She feels that the purpose of eating pre-made dishes is to save time and reduce manpower, but the Chinese New Year's Eve meal, time is the most sufficient, and people are also the most sufficient. Therefore, Chinese New Year's Eve dinner is not a typical consumption scenario for pre-made dishes.
Last year, Qiu Shengyue's family participated in the production of the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner. Figure provided by the interviewee.
Another reason is that different regions have their own unique Chinese New Year's Eve meals. When migrant workers return to their hometowns, the bite they want to eat the most is always the taste of their hometown. However, the pre-made dishes on the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner almost can't avoid the "old three" of Buddha jumping over the wall, fish maw chicken and king crab, and "I don't want to go to the ** to eat the same Chinese New Year's Eve meal", which has also become the reason for some people to refuse to make pre-made New Year's dishes.
Under all kinds of emotions, to swallow the flow of this year's Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, the pre-made dishes look a little weak. According to the "2024 China New Year Gift Box Consumer Behavior Insight Report" released by iiMedia Consulting, there are 145% of consumers said they would choose pre-made gift boxes, compared to 23 in 20234%。
This Spring Festival, at the same time, upstream suppliers feel a colder reality. According to Banshu Finance and Economics, a practitioner who does cold chain wholesale lamented that during the Spring Festival this year, her prefabricated food sales were significantly worse than the previous year, and downstream customers have been shouting that they could not be sold.
People who are willing to choose pre-made dishes
In fact, the presence of pre-made dishes in the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner is not new.
For example, Poon Choi in Guangdong, Babao rice in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai and other regions have many production processes, and many people will buy the prepared dishes in advance to take home. In Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao, poon choi is an important memory for many people about Chinese New Year's Eve. As the Spring Festival approached, scheduled advertisements for poon choi began to appear frequently at the door of restaurants and on social platforms.
The so-called poon choi is to put different ingredients in the pot layer by layer, which means "reunion, pot full of bowls", and Hong Kong people also call eating poon choi "food pot".
Shen Yuanzi, 27, works in Hong Kong. She still remembers the experience of buying pre-made poon choi two years ago. At that time, she was still in graduate school, and several of her roommates were from the north, so because of the epidemic, everyone could only stay in school for the New Year. On Chinese New Year's Eve, several girls went to the supermarket to buy pre-made poon choi, and bought flour and meat filling, while making dumplings, while *** concert **.
A few days ago, Shen Yuanzi photographed an advertisement for poon choi on the streets of Hong Kong. Figure provided by the interviewee.
That Spring Festival, because he couldn't go home, Shen Yuanzi was originally a little depressed, but the memories of getting together became a precious life experience.
There are also some young people who understand the hard work of their families in cooking Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, and are willing to accept adding pre-made dishes to the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner table.
Zhang is from Tianjin, and in his memory, the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner is always his mother Zhang Luo. My mother worked as an accountant in a restaurant, and one year for the Chinese New Year, it was not too early to get home from work, but the next day there were relatives at home for dinner, and I needed to prepare time-consuming dishes such as meatballs in advance, so my mother, who had just gotten off work, had to continue to be busy in the kitchen. At that time, he also took the initiative to do more housework.
Meatballs and sliced meat are basically the necessary dishes for Zhang Yuanyuan's Chinese New Year's Eve dinner. The taste of the prefabricated meatballs distributed by my father's company is far inferior to that made at home. My father also understood his wife, and also specifically inquired about which pre-made meatballs were more delicious, but the taste was always poor, and I could usually make do, and when it came to the Chinese New Year's Eve meal, I still couldn't do without my mother's craftsmanship.
The turning point occurred in the first two years. During the Chinese New Year, relatives who knew each other at home came to the house as guests, and as the host, Zhang Yuanyuan's mother took on the most kitchen chores and was so busy that everyone ate on the table. "If I had been sitting with everyone many years ago, I wouldn't have wanted to do that anymore. Zhang Yao recalled.
Later, when he grew up and began to work, he realized that trivial housework, like trivial work, is a drain on a person's vitality. This also somewhat constitutes his expectation of pre-made dishes - if there can be a healthy, "stable and delicious" pre-made dishes, which can not only meet everyone's needs for taste for Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, but also liberate the family, he feels that this is a good thing.
Young migrant workers are no strangers to prefabricated dishes, and their daily contact has also made everyone's attitude towards prefabricated dishes have undergone some changes. But for Zhang Yaoyuan, at the beginning, eating pre-made dishes was a kind of helplessness.
Figure Visual China.
He works as a freelancer and earns most from projects. Although there is no commuting fee, you have to pay rent and live at a cost. Working hours are volatile, and once projects are stacked, they often need to squeeze the time they have indefinitely, "with no energy and no time to cook for themselves".
Most of the time, he still relies on takeout for three meals a day. Initially, he also boycotted pre-made dishes, and went to the Internet to rummage through posts, "how to avoid pre-made food restaurants", and learned lightning protection from them. In the end, he also reconciled with himself: if he has trust in the brand and can take into account the taste, pre-made dishes are acceptable.
People's fears often stem from the unknown. He now recalls that the initial boycott was due to his lack of understanding and distrust of pre-made dishes, and that in many moments, he was forced to eat pre-made dishes without the right to know.
Li Linwei, who was born in the 95s, is also willing to accept pre-made dishes in appropriate scenarios. After work, she insisted on bringing her own lunch for a while, but because she was busy with work and her cooking skills were not good, she soon gave up. At present, the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner at home is not her turn to be the chef, but she has already planned that when she gets married, "if you need to make a large table of meals temporarily, I will also buy some pre-made dishes in advance."
Now, although the family's Chinese New Year's Eve dinner has not yet been pre-made, because of the leftovers to be eaten in the next few days, she describes it as "Chinese New Year's Eve dinner has become a pre-made dish for the next few days."
The good news is that the concept of pre-made dishes will also be regulated. According to China News Weekly, 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, the biggest highlight of which is the prohibition of adding preservatives, and at the same time stipulating that cold chain transportation must be required.
Before the appearance of pre-made dishes that satisfied him, Zhang Yuanyuan decided to cook the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner by himself this time, and last Spring Festival, he took the initiative to take over the stick from his mother and make a Chinese New Year's Eve meal for his family. This year, his cooking skills have improved a bit, and he is ready to continue contracting Chinese New Year's Eve dinners. He enjoys moments like this, "At the end of the year, eating, is a big thing at the moment".
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