Pre-cooked vegetables are rushing, and self-heating food ＂rice bowl＂ is hard to protect？

"The prefabricated vegetable market is hot, and everyone is cooking prefabricated vegetables now. In the future, the rice bowl of self-heating food may be lost!"

Recently, at a food exhibition, the operator of a food enterprise sent such feelings to the insight of prefabricated dishes. Is this really the case? Do prefabricated dishes really stand in the way of self-heating food?

The potential energy of self-heated food has declined, but the prepared food has been rising all the way.

Before exploring the above problems, it is necessary to look at the definition of self-heating food and prepared vegetables.

According to the Classification of National Economic Industries, foods made from rice, wheat flour, miscellaneous grains, etc., which can be used as staple food only by simple cooking, are called convenience foods.

Thus, both self-heating food and prepared vegetables belong to convenience food.

Because self-heating food also belongs to pre-packaged finished or semi-finished food, there are also views that self-heating food is a kind of prepared food.

However, in the eyes of most food producers and operators, self-heating food is a rice or vegetable package made of modern technology that can be stored for a long time. It can be eaten by heating with its own heating package, which is highly standardized and can achieve long-term preservation and longer transportation distance.

However, for some dishes with complicated cooking procedures, prefabricated dishes are convenient dishes formed by using modern standardized flow process to prepare the raw materials in the early stage, simplify the production steps, pack them in a hygienic and scientific way, and then heat or steam fry them.

It can be seen that self-heating food is more convenient than prefabricated dishes, and it can be completed without going through the kitchen and cooking, but prefabricated dishes often need to be cooked simply.

In fact, self-heating hot pot probably rose at the end of 2015, and broke out in the e-commerce platform in 2017. According to public data, on the day of Tmall double 11 in 2017, self-heating hot pot products sold 1.7 million copies; In 2018, the popularity of self-heating hot pot increased explosively, and double 11 sold 4.53 million copies of self-heating hot pot that day, up 1.7 times year-on-year.

The hot market has spawned brands that focus on the field of self-heating hot pot, such as self-cooking pot and Mo Xiaoxian. At the same time, it also attracted enterprises from Haidilao, Dezhuang, Uni-President, Jinmailang, Master Kong, Baixiang, Zhengda, Liangpin Shop and so on.

Therefore, self-heating hot pot was once the same, and even considered as a substitute for instant noodles. However, since the second half of 2020, the heat of self-heating food has begun to fade. With the influx of a large number of brands, while expanding the market, there have been a lot of low-price competition, homogeneous competition and even some safety accidents in the self-heating food market, which have had a bad impact on the whole industry.

An enterprise manager who provides heating packages for self-heating food factories once told Xinhua that since the second half of 2020, the heat of self-heating food has declined, and the orders for heating packages have dropped significantly. In the face of market changes, the factory has to adjust the product structure to avoid being more affected.

"A wave of people buy self-heating food for early adopters. After curiosity, the overall sales volume will inevitably decline." The person in charge of a self-heating food brand said.

The evaluation and notes of many consumers on social platforms also show that in recent years, everyone’s enthusiasm for self-heating food is gradually fading.

However, while the potential energy of self-heated food has declined, the prepared food has started to rise all the way.

According to statistics from Deloitte, the market size of China’s pre-cooked vegetables is about 550 billion yuan in 2021, and the compound growth rate in the next five years is expected to reach 13%, and the market size is expected to reach 1 trillion by 2026.

"It also meets consumers’ demand for convenient and fast food, and can also bring consumers multiple experiences of cooking and enjoying food at home. The fiery heat of prefabricated dishes will inevitably affect self-heating food." Some food producers and operators stressed this.

What’s more, it is believed that in the future, pre-cooked dishes will divide the market of self-heating food and gradually replace self-heating food.

Will prefabricated dishes take away the "rice bowl" of self-heating food?

Pre-cooked food insight believes that pre-cooked food and self-heating food are not competitive.

First of all, the target consumers of pre-cooked vegetables and self-heating foods are not completely coincident. According to the data of Tmall, 47.75% of the consumers of self-heating hot pot are 18-24 years old, 19.61% are 25-29 years old, and nearly 50% are college students and white-collar workers who have just entered the workplace. Self-heating hot pot is more suitable for lazy economy and fast-paced life because it can be eaten anytime and anywhere without fire or plug-in.

The main consumer groups of prefabricated dishes (here only refers to C-end consumer groups) are those who can cook, pay attention to health, have high requirements for food safety, have relatively high quality of life and are relatively insensitive to prices. Among them, the majority are urban people who have families and children and pay more attention to health and quality of life.

Secondly, the application scenarios of the two types of products are also very different. To a certain extent, both prepared dishes and self-heating foods are convenient and quick solutions for people to have a meal. However, consumers choose to eat self-heating food, mostly in the scenes of eating alone, working overtime and staying up late, and traveling; However, prefabricated dishes are more common in family meals, dinners and other scenes. Therefore, compared with self-heating food, consumers will have higher expectations for prefabricated dishes, and the demand for "eating well" will be more obvious.

It can also be seen from the market sales of prefabricated vegetables. Data from JD.COM, Tmall and other platforms show that most of the pre-cooked dishes with high sales volume are common "hard dishes" on the dining table, such as braised pork with plum vegetables, pork belly chicken, fish with pickled vegetables, Buddha jumping over the wall and so on. Some insiders commented that the consumption of prefabricated vegetables reflects consumers’ pursuit of consumption upgrading and quality life on the basis of convenient life.

It can be seen that the pre-cooked food and self-heating food face different groups of people, and the demand they can meet is slightly different. They are not absolutely competitive, and it is basically impossible for pre-cooked food to completely replace self-heating food.

The key to the future development of prefabricated dishes is quality, richness and high cost performance.

Considering that the product attributes of prepared food and self-heating food are very close, the shackles encountered in the development of self-heating food are also worth thinking about and learning from. For example, the homogenization is serious, the quality is not guaranteed, and the cost performance is low.

"I bought a prefabricated Buddha jumping wall, which is not delicious and the price is not affordable. It is better to order takeout with this money! "

"It seems that there are only a few kinds of prefabricated dishes. Take pickled fish as an example. The tastes of products from different brands are not too different. If you eat more than a few times, you will get bored and you will no longer be interested. "

"Eating is the taste of industrial additives. Where is it delicious?"

……

On social platforms, it is not uncommon for consumers to comment on prefabricated dishes and the like.

How to improve the user’s eating experience? Prefabricated dishes insight has communicated with many people in the industry. It is generally believed that in order to break through the dilemma of self-heating food in the future, prefabricated dishes need to make great efforts in three aspects: product quality, dish type and product cost performance.

In terms of product quality, it is necessary to ensure the safety of ingredients and improve the taste of products. In order to meet consumers’ demand for "eating well", prefabricated dishes should be oriented towards "delicious, nutritious and healthy".

In terms of the types of dishes, the brand of prefabricated dishes can not only increase the SKU of products, but also develop more differentiated niche ingredients and special dishes according to the diversified needs of consumers, such as Anjing Food’s introduction of new prefabricated dishes of soft-shelled turtle and puffer fish in the world of Chinese fish, etc. There is still a lot of room for exploration in the variety of prefabricated dishes.

In terms of product price, under the trend of more and more obvious consumption degradation, the ultimate cost performance is also an important measure for consumers to choose products. In terms of price, if the price of prepared dishes is basically the same as that of take-away, or even higher than the take-away price, it will be difficult to attract consumers.

After the epidemic, the social economy is constantly recovering, consumers’ confidence in future income growth is still insufficient, and the wave of consumption degradation in the catering industry will continue.

Under such circumstances, imagine how many people would refuse a delicious, easy-to-cook and inexpensive prepared dish.

(Contributed by: Red Meal Industry Research Institute)