On January 29, the National Meteorological Administration and other departments successively issued warnings, reminding relevant traffic, transportation departments and passengers to pay extra attention to various extreme weather conditions during the Spring Festival travel period. Some analysts pointed out that during this year's Spring Festival, the central and eastern regions will usher in the largest range of rain and snowfall since the beginning of winter, and this year is likely to encounter the most complex weather conditions since 2008.
Under the severe cold, not only people's travel is blocked, but also a series of industries such as logistics and catering consumption will be affected. It is more difficult to preserve and transport fresh products across regions, and the corresponding market ** may also fluctuate; Cooking by yourself is too time-consuming, and dining out is too crowded, which seems to create the conditions for pre-made dishes to take the lead role.
However, the opposite is true. Embracing the "lazy economy", the prefabricated dishes that have become popular in the Spring Festival consumer market in the past few years have cooled down significantly this year. The index shows that from January 1 to 30 this year, the overall daily average and moving daily average of the prefabricated food search index fell month-on-month respectively, and the attention did not increase with the approach of the Spring Festival, but worsened.
In the past few years, various new retail platforms and offline supermarkets that have long sought after pre-made dishes, such as Hema and Meituan, have not been as strong as in the past year.
This can't help but make people want to ask: Is there a place for pre-made dishes on the table of this year's reunion dinner?
The cooling of pre-made dishes can be found in many details.
For example, in the Hema Fresh store, pre-made dishes occupy most of the freezer, but there are all kinds of instant snacks and dumplings next door, and there is no separate display space. Open the app of each platform, and the pre-made dishes have a separate section, but the position is not high, and the amount of ** obtained is also limited.
Soon after entering the wax moon, the entrance to the New Year's Festival was added at the top of the homepage of the Hema app, rolling to display several main categories, including fresh fruits, nuts, snacks and even ** accessories. Click on the homepage of the New Year's Festival, and the top treasures in the official list are fruits, nuts, snack gift boxes and fresh meat, and there is only one pre-made dish on the list.
There is a similar situation in the New Year's Festival area of Meituan Little Elephant Supermarket and Pupu Supermarket.
At the top of the list of treasure items for the New Year Festival in Little Elephant Supermarket are Chilean cherry gift boxes, nut snack gift boxes, seafood and liquor, and there is no trace of pre-made dishes at all. In the category entrance at the top of the main page of the New Year's Festival, the entrance of the "Kuaishou Family Banquet" section where the prefabricated dishes are located ranks third from the bottom, only in front of the New Year's flowers and Spring Festival decorations.
In Pupu Supermarket's New Year's Festival, the recommended explosive products are mainly fruits, snacks, dairy products and fresh ingredients. In the partition entrance of the scrolling display at the top, the "Reunion Family Banquet" section where the pre-made dishes are located is ranked behind the wine and snack gift boxes, and the ranking can only be regarded as midstream.
From left to right, Hema is Hema Supermarket, Meituan Little Elephant Supermarket, and Pupu Supermarket).
In addition to the unsatisfactory position in this station, the platform's external publicity efforts have also declined, leaving the limited promotion budget for other categories.
On January 30, Hema promised that during the Chinese New Year, all Hema fresh stores and Shanghai Hema NB stores will not be able to maintain vegetables, focusing on promoting this "vegetable price protection action" covering the entire Spring Festival holiday. Earlier, high-quality ingredients such as aquatic seafood and meat, nut gift boxes and snack gift boxes produced by Freshippo's own brand, and even the Spring Festival home cleaning service have had a wave of publicity offensive.
Although prefabricated dishes will also be on the publicity page from time to time, the overall amount is decent, and there is no focus on promotion. Meituan Xiaoxiang Supermarket, Pupu Supermarket, etc. also did not focus on pre-made dishes in their promotions, and among the mainstream new retail platforms, perhaps only Dingdong spent some effort to advertise pre-made dishes.
It is reported that Dingdong has cooperated with more than 10 well-known catering companies and star-rated hotels to create a variety of pre-made dish gift boxes and shopping card coupons, and users can place orders with free shipping to their homes, or purchase gift certificates for exchange. According to Dingtone, pre-made food sales on the platform will peak in the week before Chinese New Year's Eve, and are expected to increase by about 60% month-on-month.
It's just that this growth rate is still much inferior to previous years. During the Spring Festival last year, the sales volume of pre-made dishes on multiple platforms increased exponentially. It is not difficult to see that all major platforms are focusing on exporting fruits, leisure snacks and fresh ingredients this year. The strength of the prefabricated dishes is a little shabby in the New Year's Festival that is publicized by various families.
In addition to the discount in publicity, the platform has not put as much thought into product design as in previous years.
In the case of Hema as an example, there are not many hard dishes that should be the main event, and there are only a few types of poon choi, such as the Golden Soup Buddha Jumping over the Wall, the perfect family portrait, the Hong Kong-style poon choi with rare seafood, and the iconic Boston lobster prefabricated dish of Hema and the iconic Boston lobster pre-made dish.
Ask the clerk to know that Buddha jumping over the wall, beef offal pot, etc. are all conventional products in cooperation with **business**, and they have been there for a long time**, not developed separately for the New Year's Festival, and there are not many special dishes for the New Year's Festival. Last year, Hema will develop special dishes and limited products for the New Year's Festival according to the dietary habits of different regions.
Not to mention the small elephant supermarket, Pupu supermarket, etc., the former's own brands such as chef salt baking and seafood pre-made dishes are all perennial ordinary items. The prefabricated dishes promoted by the latter's "Pupu Ju Good Cuisine" section are also the regular products of Hai Wenming, Cong Kitchen and other first-class merchants, such as the golden soup Buddha jumping over the wall with Hema collision, as well as plum cabbage button meat, braised pork knuckle, etc.
Left: Meituan, right: Pupu Supermarket).
It is undeniable that pre-made dishes still have a place on the shelves of retail platforms such as Freshippo, Meituan, Dingdong Grocery and Pupu Supermarket, as well as large supermarkets led by Sam's. It's just that the momentum is getting weaker than in previous years, and it's no longer like the stars holding the moon.
Why aren't pre-made dishes popular? Changes in the general environment are one thing, and their own problems are also worth reviewing.
If we want to talk about the changes in the consumption scene of this year's Spring Festival, we have to return to the general trend of personnel flow and consumption concepts.
Compared with the years when prefabricated dishes became popular, this year is the most freewheeling and unimpeded year for Chinese people to travel. Whether it is the scale of returning home during the Spring Festival or the scale of family travelers, it is inevitable to refresh the record in recent years.
So here's the problem: pre-made dishes are not all aimed at home users, and a large part of the potential audience is limited in cooking skills and cooking conditions, and pursues efficiency and freshness.
Generation Z living alone in first- and second-tier cities. Hema statistics show that the consumer groups of prefabricated dishes are mainly 30-45 years old.
Residents in first- and second-tier cities, the proportion of women is slightly higher than that of men, which is highly overlapping with the user portrait of Freshippo.
But according to this year's trend, there are certainly fewer young people spending the New Year alone in big cities than in previous years, and whether these young people are returning to their hometowns or traveling, pre-made dishes will not be the first choice for consumption.
People who have returned to their hometowns miss the purest local flavor, and naturally prefer to cook in person or local old shops, rather than choose prefabricated dishes produced on the assembly line. Travelers will choose specialty restaurants to taste the local flavors – of course, whether the restaurant uses pre-made dishes or not is out of the consumer's control.
It can only be said that pre-made dishes have never really entered the lives of these young consumers and become an unobtainable part. Once there are better options, they will be left behind.
Of course, in addition to the changes in the general environment, the problem of prefabricated dishes is even greater. Since its popularity, pre-made dishes have been accompanied by various controversies. To sum up, it is always impossible to avoid the keywords of safety, taste and **.
Considering the eating habits of Chinese people and the almost obsessive pursuit of "wok qi", the taste of pre-made dishes cannot be compared to those stir-fried at home and in restaurants. Various platforms and manufacturers are also well aware of this, and have been promoting the standardization and cost-effectiveness of pre-made dishes in the past, instilling in consumers the concept of "spending the most reasonable money and tasting the most cost-effective food in the least amount of time".
But no matter how well the slogan is written, no matter how beautiful the story is, it is useless, because the real price of pre-made dishes does not make consumers feel the ultimate cost performance. According to the "2023 Spring Festival Prefabricated Dish Consumer Behavior Monitoring Report" released by iiMedia Consulting, 249% of users think that pre-made dishes are "small in portion and low in cost-effectiveness", which is less than 3 percentage points less than those who criticize "average taste".
It is worth noting that 2023 is also the year that consumption downgrade has swept the country. The best positioning of prefabricated dishes, especially the various hard dishes and poon choi prepared for the Spring Festival, runs counter to this trend. Platforms such as Freshippo, Meituan Elephant Supermarket, and Pupu Supermarket are resolutely implementing discount reforms, trying to consolidate users' minds with low prices, and it is reasonable to no longer promote pre-made dishes that take the ** route.
It can be said that "cost-effective", which has been vigorously promoted by manufacturers and retail platforms in the past few years, has long been reduced to a slot point for prefabricated dishes in the eyes of consumers. Since the two advantages of taste and cost performance are not compatible, it is not to blame young people for not paying for pre-made dishes anymore.
All kinds of problems have been put on the table, and the next thing is to see how practitioners solve them.
Despite the challenges, the prepared food industry is not as bad as it seems.
According to wind statistics, as of the first half of last year, 74% of the listed companies included in the A-share prefabricated food concept stock sector have achieved revenue growth, and head brands such as Anjing Food and Ziyan Food have achieved bumper revenue and profits. Broader statistics show that there are currently at least 60,000 enterprises engaged in the prefabricated food industry in China, and they have continued to grow in the past year.
The numbers don't lie, and no matter how controversial or bad the word-of-mouth is, at least from the perspective of business benefits, pre-made dishes are still a business with potential. Where there are interests, there will be followers; If there is a business that can make money, it means that there is demand; The more companies that come in and the greater the investment, the more they will find ways to create more demand for consumers.
In general, the advantage of prefabricated dishes is still on the B-side, and more efforts are needed to open the C-end market. As for the issues that C-end users are most concerned about, health and safety will inevitably be greatly improved after the relevant departments have successively formulated clear regulatory rules and standards for the definition of prefabricated dishes. However, on the issue of taste and cost performance, manufacturers also have their own difficulties, so they can only try their best to change.
Taking cost performance as an example, it is not as easy as imagined to reduce the price of pre-made dishes. Data from the same wind shows that although most of the prefabricated food companies are making money, the gross profit margin is not optimistic. The gross profit margin of leading enterprises such as Anjing Food, Delisi, Huifa Food, and Longda Food has hovered around 10% for a long time, which is not even as good as that of traditional catering companies.
In 2022, Yasui Foods explained at the performance briefing that the raw materials, production, transportation and storage costs of prefabricated dishes are a large amount. At present, the most popular crayfish products on the market have a pitifully low gross profit margin. If you want to expand to the C-side, it is inevitable to increase publicity and marketing spending, which adds another layer of pressure to the enterprise.
At this time, it may be necessary to have a retail platform that is good at dealing with consumers, has traffic and understands marketing, and contributes to the promotion of pre-made dishes - provided that they are still willing to accept manufacturers and have confidence in pre-made dishes.
In the C-end user group, the popularity of prefabricated food manufacturers is very low, unless it is a few chain brands and time-honored brands that are already popular and have offline promotion channels, such as Nonggeng Ji and Guangzhou Restaurant. In the past few years, prefabricated dishes have gradually become famous on the C-side, thanks to the help of platforms such as Meituan and Hema behind it. It is reported that Meituan has even launched a pre-made food member purchase area on the APP.
In fact, the platform also needs prefabricated food manufacturers, even Meituan, Freshippo, Dingdong Food, and Pupu Supermarket all have their own prefabricated food brands. Because this cooperation model can not only share the risk and reduce the cost pressure of the platform, but also provide rich SKUs in the shortest possible time.
If the two sides can find a better form of cooperation, such as one party is responsible for R&D, production, and improving taste, and the other party opens up channels, does a good job of publicity, and works together to solve the problems of transportation and storage to reduce costs and provide space for price reduction, it will be a happy ending.
All in all, pre-made dishes are not so popular, but it's not time to give up. As long as all parties work together, there is a chance to change the fate.