"after Laba is the New year." With the approach of New year's Eve, the business of New year's Eve dinner has also been put on the agenda. At present, takeout has become an indispensable part of the daily life of urbanites. What is more important is the policy of "celebrating the Spring Festival on the spot" brought about by the uncertainty of sporadic outbreaks in many places a year ago, and the ability to order a set meal for New year's Eve at a cheaper price. It has also spawned the demand of young people for prepared dishes.

Similarly, capital and enterprises have a keen sense of smell. The prefabricated food industry has become a tuyere, and a lot of capital has come in. First, "the first share of prefabricated dishes" Wei Zhixiang landed in the A-share market, and then there were start-up companies such as taste lion, delicacy Xiaomei Garden, steel circle food and exchange, and three meals with materials, and the amount of financing reached 10 million yuan. Behind this, there is the support of IDG Capital, Source Capital, Meituan Dragon Ball and other well-known investment institutions. Recently, it has even been reported that the tongue Tip Technology Group founded by Lu Zhengyao is incubating a new project called "tongue Tip Workshop". A number of research institutions said that at present, the market scale of prefabricated food is expanding at a rate visible to the naked eye. It is estimated that the scale of prefabricated food industry is expected to exceed 400 billion yuan in 2026, and CAGR will reach about 15% in 2021-2026, of which the size of B-end prefabricated food is more than 300 billion yuan, and that of C-end prefabricated food is more than 100 billion yuan.

The normalization of the epidemic situation has led to a rise in the demand for prefabricated vegetables.

Prepared food is nothing new. In fact, global prefabricated food has a history of more than 80 years, and large-scale prefabricated food enterprises with great influence have grown up in overseas countries such as the United States and Japan, such as Sysco, ConAgra, Tyson, Sun Leng, Kobe products and so on. In China, the concept of prepared food started in the millennium. The vigorous development of the takeout industry in 2014 pushed B-end blowout, and household consumer demand accelerated due to the epidemic in 2020. Before 2020, prefabricated food is more likely to be "loud in thunder but less in rain", but after 2020, enterprises related to prefabricated food have sprung up like bamboo shoots after a spring rain. Under the normalization of the epidemic, the number of dining scenes at home has increased, and the rise of new retail channels such as Box Horse and Dingdong (Cayman) Limited has also accelerated the popularity of prefabricated dishes, and the industry has also expanded from a very small number of categories such as quick-frozen rice noodles to a variety of dishes.

Third-party market research data show that users in first-and second-tier cities in China buy more prefabricated dishes, while customers in East China have a large number of customers. More than 80% of the surveyed users consume prefabricated food products every week, and customers mainly buy prefabricated dishes to save time. At present, the scale of the prefabricated vegetable market is more than 200 billion yuan, and there are more than 70, 000 related enterprises. It is worth mentioning that in the Singles' Day holiday in 2021, prefabricated dishes proved the popularity of the market through the data. Tmall data show that during the Singles' Day, classic cuisines such as Cantonese cuisine, Sichuan cuisine, Hunan cuisine and northwest cuisine all launched semi-finished dishes, including semi-finished dishes and fast food, with sales of prefabricated dishes booming, with turnover about three times higher than the same period last year. With the Lunar New year approaching, the New year's Eve dinner in 2022 has once again boosted the demand for prepared dishes. According to Dingdong (Cayman) Limited data, this year's New year's Festival, kaishou-related food increased by more than 400% compared with last year.

At the same time, it is now in the window of the pre-announcement of the annual report, and there is a lot of good news in the prefabricated food sector. On January 11, the League of Nations Aquatic products announcement cooperated with Box Horse to carry out in-depth development and marketing of prefabricated dishes such as prawns, tilapia, crayfish, and so on; on the same day, Delis disclosed the record table of investor relations activities, the volume of prefabricated vegetables in the narrow sense (excluding low-temperature meat products) had reached more than 400 million in 2020, revenue growth was rapid in 2021, and revenue from prefabricated vegetables was expected to be about 1.2 billion yuan in 2022. In addition to the League of Nations aquatic products, there are many listed companies are also in the layout of prefabricated food field. Xiangjia shares mentioned in the investor relations activity record sheet disclosed on December 24, 2021 that the development of cooked food and prepared vegetables is a further extension of the company's industrial chain and a trend for the future development of the industry. Delis pointed out in the investor relations activity record sheet disclosed on January 11, 2022 that the company's prefabricated food business accounts for 7:3 on the B side and C side of the business.

In addition, Longda Food said on the interactive easy platform that the company has carried out prefabricated product business for many years and developed well, and there are more than 100 kinds of prefabricated products. As of January 5, the annual sales of prefabricated products for single catering customers have exceeded 100 million yuan. Keming Food said on the interactive easy platform that the company is currently carrying out research work on the prepared food industry. At the same time, Henan Business Daily also reported that in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, in order to reduce the impact of the epidemic, the catering industry in Zhengzhou actively sought change, and some catering enterprises launched a New year's dinner delivery service and a large gift box of prepared dishes before the Spring Festival.

Huge market space the concept of prepared food has soared in an all-round way.

According to data from Ai Media Consulting, the size of China's prefabricated vegetable market in 2021 is estimated to be 345.9 billion yuan. Under the externalization of diet and economic development, China's catering has great potential for development, driving prefabricated dishes for 10 years to 700 billion, of which quick-frozen dishes are about 100 billion. According to open source securities, from the point of view of supply-side catering enterprises, prefabricated dishes can effectively reduce the rent, raw materials, labor and other costs of catering enterprises, while ensuring the consistency of chain catering products and high operational efficiency; from the demand side, prefabricated dishes are cost-effective and taste good, effectively reducing the cooking burden of consumers and improving the quality of life. At present, the regional characteristics of the industry are obvious, the competition pattern is scattered, and it is still in the stage of horse racing enclosure. The market scale of China's catering supply chain is over one trillion yuan, and the huge market space is waiting for gold. Institutions are also optimistic about the long-term development prospects of the prefabricated food industry. With the in-depth development of the industry, prefabricated food and related enterprises in the upper reaches of the catering supply chain still have strong investment opportunities. In terms of investment targets, Shanxi Securities believes that prefabricated dishes that can ensure the taste of dishes are the first choice for family cooking, and it is recommended to pay attention to the special production of prefabricated vegetables, and to set foot in Guangzhou Restaurant and Tongqing House, semi-finished catering enterprises. enterprises with food manufacturing business Anjing Food, Barbie Food, Longda Food. From the perspective of competitiveness, it is recommended to pay attention to the old quick-frozen leading Anjing food, while the prefabricated food upstream supply chain can pay attention to the leading Qianwei central chef.

In the secondary market , in the new year, the concept of A-share prefabricated food broke out in an all-round way. Many shares such as Guolian Aquatic products, Jinling Hotel, Fucheng shares, Spring Snow Foods and Geshi Foods of the Northern Stock Exchange have been crazily popular with funds, and the market mood continues to be hot. On January 13, the prefabricated food concept plate broke out again, and the plate rose by more than 6%, leading a strong rise in the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets. By midday, 300094.CN Aquatic products (300094.CN) rose by the daily limit, while Spring Snow Foods (605567.CN), Xi'an Diet (000721.CN), Haixin Foods (002702.CN), Tongqing House (605108.CN), Huifa Foods and other stocks rose by the daily limit, while most of them rose for the second trading day in a row. In addition, stocks such as 605089.CN, 001215.CN and 002186.CN rose nearly 8 per cent.