Author 丨 Dawei Gu Yan
Takeaway, shopping malls, fresh supermarkets... Prepared dishes are appearing before our eyes more and more frequently. Behind this is the gradual acceptance of prepared dishes by consumers, as well as the intentional cultivation of capital after entering the market.
According to Feng Weihua, general manager of Qian Dama Company, the scale of the domestic prefabricated vegetable market has reached 300 billion yuan, and it is still growing at a compound rate of 20% per year. Mainland pre-made dishes penetrate only 0.19% at home and 3.69% in Japan, which means that there may be more than 20 times the domestic market to be tapped.
Behind these figures, IDG Capital, Jingwei China, Sequoia, Hillhouse and other head capital have bets, which is the new market that Lu Zhengyao is targeting after trading Luckin, and it is the 2 boards, 3 boards and even 7 boards of prefabricated vegetable concept stocks in the A-share market.
Pre-made dish, the first meal of capital in 2022.
The takeaway you order is actually a pre-made dish
You may not think that most of the takeaways you usually order are pre-made dishes.
"In the future, you should order takeout and try not to order pot rice and pour rice." A takeaway guy on Douyin said, "Because they basically use cooking bags." ”
The cooking bag is one of the pre-made dishes. According to data from Everbright Securities, it is estimated that the proportion of cooking bags used in takeaway is as high as 70%-80%, and many of the products with high public acceptance, such as brine meat rice, yellow stewed chicken, and rice bowl, are used in cooking bags.
Specifically, pre-made dishes are mainly divided into four categories: 1. Ready-to-eat products, that is, they can be eaten by unpacking, such as boneless chicken feet and Texas grilled chicken; 2. Instant hot food, that is, it can be eaten by heating, and the cooking bag belongs to this category; 3. Cooking food, usually semi-finished materials stored at freezing or room temperature, such as fries and fried chicken; 4. That is, the food, that is, the materials cut by the merchant, need to be fried by themselves.
The more advanced these four types of prepared dishes, the more complex the operation process required.
The catering industry has been facing the dilemma of "three highs and one low", high labor, high rent, high raw material costs, "which account for about 80% of the cost, while profits account for less than 10%." Douyin blogger "Chai Knows" said that if he does takeaway, he will also face a takeaway platform. Considering the cost and speed of meals, more and more takeaway merchants choose pre-made dishes to shorten the preparation time and increase the efficiency.
Although the use of prepared dishes will increase the proportion of ingredient costs from 30% to 36%, the labor costs and rent costs that have been greatly reduced at the same time are enough to cover the rise in food costs, and the profit margin of takeaway stores will increase from 4.5% to 6.5%.
For example, a takeaway of a 20 yuan brine rice includes about 90g of pork, half an egg, 20g of Shanghai green and 450g of rice. If the takeaway merchant chooses to buy their own ingredients and cook, the cost of the ingredients is about 6.5 yuan. Consumers who buy a marinated meat rice pre-made dish from Taobao cost about 7.5 yuan.
Not only takeaway businesses, but also many dine-in restaurants use prepared dishes. "Yanzhoufu food is the supplier of Hangzhou's grandmother's family, only a dozen pieces, green tea, new egret are also using their products." Douyin blogger "God Eater Supply Chain Docking Platform" said.
According to the data of the China Chain Store & Franchise Association, more than 74% of the chain catering enterprises in China have built their own central kitchens, of which more than 50% of the chain catering enterprises are developing standardized semi-finished dishes that can be heated and eaten, and distribute pre-made dishes to stores.
Among them, the proportion of prefabricated dishes used by the head chain catering enterprises has been high, and the use of prefabricated dishes in Meizhou Dongpo, Typhoon Shelter, Haidilao, Xibei Noodle Village, Harvest Day, Misan Ramen, Zhen Kung Fu, Yoshinoya, Xiaonanguo and other enterprises accounts for more than 80%, and the Jia Guolong Kung Fu dishes promoted by Xibei Noodle Village are also prefabricated dishes, which can be eaten when heated by induction cooker.
"Most shopping mall complexes do not meet the firefighting conditions for on-site processing of catering, which has led to most restaurants opting for the pre-made cuisine model." Li Pan introduced.
In recent years, the fast food brand Self-Hi Pot, which has frequently appeared in TV dramas, is also a type of pre-made dish. Since the hi pot was launched in 2018, the overall turnover of the self-hi pot in 2019 reached nearly 800 million, and the annual sales in 2020 totaled 2 billion, and the performance increased by 150%. During the Double Eleven period in 2021, the total sales of zi hi pot broke through 100 million yuan.
In addition, consumers, especially young people, are becoming more and more receptive to prepared dishes.
The epidemic has changed everyone's eating habits, on the one hand, due to the closure of most catering businesses during the epidemic, takeaway is weak, people can only cook at home; on the other hand, idle consumers have been stimulated to cook. Consumers began to shift from relying on takeaways to learning simple cooking. After the epidemic, consumption habits have been continued, and convenient and fast prepared dishes have become the first choice of consumers.
"Pre-made dishes are especially friendly to us young people, and few people now cook except for their parents' generation." A pre-made dish consumer said, "Takeaway is not affordable, the delivery fee is so high, most of the food is bought is pre-made dishes, it is better to buy (prepared dishes) directly."
The person in charge of the Meituan Buy Vegetables Prefabricated Vegetable Project recently said that its prefabricated dishes in 2021 will grow rapidly, four times higher than that of 2020.
According to the survey data released by Hema in December last year, the respondents' acceptance of pre-made New Year dishes has been increasing, 82% of respondents have a certain understanding of "New Year dishes", and about 65% of users have the willingness to try to buy.
Xiao Liu (pseudonym), founder of the prefabricated dish platform "Liu Feng Nian", told whips that in mid-2019, the sales volume of the platform began to grow, and the flow of water changed from 500,000 or 600,000 per month before to about 2 million per month now. Previously, he tried to do offline community stores, found that the cost was too large, and returned to only do the B-end at the end of last year. "The B-end market is becoming more and more mature." The main customers of Liu Feng Nian are restaurants and hotels.
"The training of the C-end requires a lot of investment in funds and personnel." Xiao Liu said that C-end consumers pay attention to brand and packaging, and once the packaging is expensive, it loses the advantage of low cost. At present, most consumers of prepared dishes recognize low prices.
Pre-made dishes have long penetrated our lives. The entry of capital will push the prefabricated vegetable market to a further climax.
Capital is eyeing prefabricated dishes
On January 13, 2022, the concept stock of prefabricated vegetables broke out into a "rising tide".
Guolian Aquatic Products, Jinling Hotel, Xi'an Catering, Haixin Food, Chunxue Food, Tongqinglou, Huifa Food, Delis, Fucheng Shares are all two consecutive boards; on January 14, Guolian Aquatic Products, Jinling Hotel, Haixin Food Three Boards; on January 17, Fucheng Shares Four Boards; on January 20, Delis even ushered in seven boards.
The prefabricated wet market has completely exploded, and the capital has long been ambushed.
In April 2021, the "first share of prefabricated dishes" Weizhixiang was successfully listed, ushering in 10 up-and-down boards. In September, Qianwei Central Kitchen, a prefabricated dish company that provides supplies for Pizza Hut, KFC and many other pre-made dishes, went public, and pulled 7 up and down boards.
In fact, prepared dishes are very mature in Europe, the United States, Japan and other regions, the penetration rate of the U.S. and Japanese prepared vegetable markets is more than 60%, and two "Godzilla" at the top of the food chain have been cultivated: one is the U.S. company SYSCO, and the other is the Japanese company Kobe Properties.
In China, the gap in the field of prepared dishes is very large. Today, the penetration of mainland prepared dishes in the home end is only 0.19%, and in Japan is 3.69%, which means that there are still more than 20 times the domestic market to be tapped.
According to enterprise investigation data, as of 2020, there are more than 71,900 prefabricated vegetable-related enterprises in the mainland. The overall market size has grown from about 100 billion yuan in 2017 to about 260 billion yuan in 2020. According to Ai media data, the size of China's prepared vegetable market will be 345.9 billion yuan in 2021, and it is predicted that this figure will exceed 500 billion yuan in two years.
"There is a great possibility that the intermediate channel will produce giants." Su Wei, an investor in Qingsong Capital, said, "The upstream and downstream of prefabricated dishes are extremely dispersed, the gross profit margin reaches more than 50%, the upstream and downstream price differences are very large, and there is enough space for integration." ”
Upstream and downstream enterprises such as fresh food and catering have also entered the market. Meicai.com, Meituan, etc. have also sold prefabricated cuisine-related enterprises. In 2017, Hema began to lay out prefabricated dishes, trying to use it to open up upstream agricultural products, and at the end of 2021, Meituan bought vegetables on the new "Elephant Chef" X "Must Eat List" special area, and joined forces with catering brands such as Guangzhou Restaurant and Tao Taoju to tap the prefabricated vegetable market.
IDG Capital, Jingwei China, Sequoia, Hillhouse and other head capitals have bet on prefabricated dishes. Companies in all aspects of the prefabricated vegetable industry, such as Zhenwei Xiaomeiyuan, Wangjiadu Food, Taste Lion, and Three Meals with Ingredients, have successively obtained tens of millions of financing.
(Data from Everbright Securities Research Institute)
Lu Zhengyao, the founder of Shenzhou Car Rental, has set his sights on the prefabricated vegetable track after the successful trading of Luckin, and its incubated "tip of the tongue workshop" is catching up with the prefabricated vegetable outlet.
At present, the tip of the tongue workshop has opened 10 stores across the country. "The task of these direct stores is to test the product and consumption patterns, and only do franchises in the future." Li Yingbo, CEO of Tongue Technology, said that its franchise will be rolled out from the end of February to March, and more than 3,000 franchisees have signed contracts across the country.
Aunt Qian, who recently withdrew from the Beijing market, is also laying out pre-made dishes. In December last year, Aunt Qian launched a short-term prefabricated dish project called "Aunt Qian's Chef Dish" at the South China headquarters, and launched 12 pre-made dishes in stores, online mini programs and vegetable bars.
The asset-light operation model of prefabricated vegetables is the key to attracting capital to the market.
The founder of Zhenwei Xiaomeiyuan revealed in an interview that his initial implementation was "buyer thinking", "there is no self-built factory, the production is handed over to a third-party factory, and he concentrates on building a brand, developing products that are more suitable for consumer needs, and opening up the market." ”
What Lu Zhengyao's tip workshop is doing is to integrate channel providers, on the basis of existing products, and complete sales through brand packaging. The same way of playing is the pot circle food exchange, and its upstream ODM factory has reached more than 500.
Without the need to establish their own raw material base, cold chain, and front warehouse, you can achieve a prefabricated dish brand, and this model has low cost and occupies less capital.
On the grounds that he wanted to customize the prepared dish, the whipper contacted multiple factories on 1688, all of which said that they could be OEM production, and even customized according to the needs of buyers. Taking a sauerkraut fish manufacturer as an example, its 450g standard sauerkraut fish, starting at a batch price of 15.5 yuan, containing 250g of fish, 120g of sauerkraut, soup 80g, its content can be adjusted according to the cost, the larger the customized output, the price will also be discounted.
Capital enters the market, entrepreneurs surge, but the rapid development of the prefabricated vegetable business, in fact, reefs are everywhere.
What are the pits of prepared dishes?
"After experimenting with so many prepared dishes, it was found that the logistics problem was a very important problem for the prepared dish." The pre-made dish evaluation blogger "will not do but eat the food chef king" told the whip, "The Guyan prefabricated dishes I bought before have encountered situations where food deteriorated due to logistics. ”
Since the raw materials of prepared vegetables need to be transported to the manufacturer for processing, the processed prefabricated vegetable products also need to be cold chain transported to dealers, supermarkets and e-commerce platforms, and then in a certain scenario, consumers also need cold chain distribution when purchasing.
It can be said that prefabricated dishes need cold chain transportation in all links, so cold chain transportation is a prerequisite for the development of prefabricated dishes.
On the other hand, although cold chain transportation can guarantee timeliness, its cost is higher. How to choose is also a difficult problem for merchants.
Xiao Liu introduced that the biggest problem for C-end consumers is the thawing of pre-made dishes: "95% of pre-made dishes are frozen products, there is no fresh logistics, food is frozen, and consumer cognition is not fresh." “
"And the B side doesn't care too much about this problem." This is also the reason why Xiao Liu gave up doing the C-end, he now uses Zhongtong Express, "labor, packaging, express delivery (cost) accounted for 40-50% of (gross profit)".
Due to the cold chain transportation that prefabricated vegetable products rely on, logistics costs and product freshness requirements limit the distribution radius of processing enterprises. This means that it has greater limitations in raw material procurement and product transportation, the geographical location of customer groups will be relatively limited, and the taste and style of products will also be affected by the eating habits of the geographical location, which limits the expansion of the number and scope of customers to a certain extent.
In addition, the eating habits and tastes of residents in various regions of the mainland are quite different, which is also the reason why the general prefabricated vegetable enterprises have more obvious regional characteristics, which increases the difficulty of the pre-made dishes of the public taste and also restricts the national development of the pre-made vegetable enterprises.
In the field of prepared dishes, the current competition has been very fierce.
Taking Weizhixiang as an example, as of the end of 2020, there are 1117 franchise stores with a cumulative sales amount of 320 million yuan, the sales of franchised stores account for 52.06%, the average monthly revenue of each store is 12,400 yuan, and if calculated according to 40% gross profit, the average monthly gross profit is only about 5000 yuan.
During the peak period of 3 months, it has frantically expanded the pot circle food sink of 3300 stores, and its stores are densely distributed, in a second-tier city, almost every street has a pot circle food sink, the passenger flow is limited, and the competition is large. "I have a friend who joined a pot ring, but because there are too many stores nearby, the business is not good." "The king of gourmet food who will not do but eat" said.
On the other hand, food safety remains a top priority for consumers who want to buy prepared dishes.
Although the current food preservation technology has matured, it is difficult to ensure that the producer of pre-made vegetables strictly controls hygiene problems during the production process. In fact, many media have secretly visited the prefabricated vegetable processing plant, and its workshop-style production conditions are worrying.
In 2019, in the Youku video "Secretly Visiting the Takeaway Bag Processing Factory and Surprised the "Universal" Screwdriver", the Longhui Food Factory reported by it was one of them. In the video, the operators are not dressed in a standardized manner, not even gloves, and directly get started. The screwdriver in the video is used by the operator to remove freshly cooked food, but also to clean up the oil on the machine and scrape the dirty things in the sink.
These reported processing conditions are not unique. According to the data of Anxin Securities, nearly 70% of the processing of prepared vegetables in the mainland is still in a small, weak and scattered state, and many of them are individual industrial and commercial households and workshop-style production and processing models, which cannot guarantee product quality and food safety.
Capital inbound, merchant subsidies, consumer habits... The prefabricated vegetable industry is still in the period of "horse racing". Will the increasingly hot prefabricated market become a bigger outlet in 2022? Or is it a chicken feather after capital profits? We will continue to follow up.