For the Chinese people, the tradition of the Chinese New year remains unchanged for a thousand years, but the lifestyle and consumption habits related to the "New year" are always keeping pace with the times and bringing forth the new. The new consumption fashion of this year's Spring Festival is nothing more than the popularity of "prepared dishes".

The Spring Festival holiday has officially begun, searching for "premade dishes" on several platforms, and all kinds of meals can be bought, from high-end to ordinary home-cooked dishes. Such as: "Buddha leaping over the wall", "Fulu Babao Duck", "plum vegetable buckle meat", "Kung Pao chicken" and so on, and the price is not expensive, normal delivery during the Spring Festival, very popular.

Under the obvious advantages of simple production and low price, prefabricated dishes quietly conquer the young consumers controlled by takeout. But the ambition of the merchants is much more than that. The "New year vegetable Series Gift boxes" priced at 1,000 yuan have been sold out less than a month after they have been on the market. Behind the yellow croaker, Dongpo meat and lion's head is the "food grab" of the market track.

Missfresh Limited recently released a report on the consumption trend of the Spring Festival in 2022, saying that the red series, auspicious lantern flowers and "Haoqi" high-end prepared dishes on its platform are expected to more than double during the Spring Festival.

Capital has already been distributed.

Prefabricated dishes have changed from unfamiliar to familiar, and the capital has already been laid out in advance. From 2020 to now, the field of prefabricated food is favored by capital, a number of enterprises have obtained financing, and listed companies such as golden dragon fish are also rushing to the tuyere to enter the bureau.

A number of enterprises in the field of prefabricated food have obtained financing.Many investment institutions include Qingsong Fund, 01 Venture Capital, Donghe Capital, Yuanwei Capital, Innovation works, Xingtuo Capital, Qingke Capital Management, Shengsheng Capital and so on.

The industry continues to heat up, and the pain points are gradually exposed-compared with overseas developed markets, China's prefabricated food industry as a whole is still relatively backward, and a number of enterprises are still in the stage of "horse racing enclosure".

In addition, in the A-share market, the concept of prepared food has also stepped out of a wave of accelerated growth ahead of schedule from December 2021 to mid-January 2022. Wind data display去From December 2000 to January 14 this year, the prefabricated food sector rose nearly 20% in 30 trading days, outperforming major stock indexes and being strongly sought after by funds.

Trillions track: the battle for prepared food has begun.

Anxin Securities Research report shows that China's prefabricated vegetable industry has begun to take shape, with a market size of about 210 billion yuan, and is expected to grow to about 600 billion yuan by 2025. In addition, there is no lack of optimistic forecasts by enterprises.With the gradual maturity of China's prefabricated food industry, with reference to Japan's 60% penetration rate, China's prefabricated vegetable industry is expected to achieve a scale of more than 3 trillion yuan.

Li Jinglei of Guojin Securities is optimistic that the proportion of food at home and abroad continues to rise, and suggests paying attention to the investment opportunities brought about by the standardization of catering supply chain.In view of the food and beverage end market of prepared dishes, it is considered that all four types of enterprises have opportunities:

1. Professional prefabricated food enterprises: strong product development ability and certain channel advantages

2. Quick-frozen enterprises: business extends horizontally, leading scale procurement, land sales capacity, cold chain transportation, channel resources and other supply chain layout can be reused, or the whole country can be realized more quickly.

3. Agricultural enterprises: the raw material end has natural advantages, the channel resources of head agricultural enterprises have reusability, and there is a high probability of birth of the leader in the field of conditioning meat products.

4. Catering enterprises: enable their own catering business and supplement income, have the advantages of brand endorsement and store channels, and are expected to form business coordination, but there is a scale threshold for vertical integration. At present, most of the prefabricated food business of head catering enterprises is in the initial stage.

There is an urgent need for trade rules to avoid inferior food materials.

For the general public, low prices and long shelf life inevitably make people wonder, "Why can it be so cheap", "will it be unhealthy", and whether the prepared dishes with a unit price ranging from a few yuan to dozens of yuan or even hundreds of yuan are delicious in the end? "

In this regard, a number of industry insiders saidFrom the source, the freezing technology of professional manufacturers can ensure that the ingredients are successfully locked and do not add preservatives, which is actually the same concept as quick-frozen dumplings.In addition, the food R & D center team is professional and experienced chefs, essentially guaranteed, but difficult to say, no one's products should be able to satisfy all tastes.

Zhu Danpeng, an analyst of China's food industry, saidAt present, the pain points in the market of the prepared food industry are mainly reflected in two aspects: on the one hand, there is no national standard; on the other hand, the consumer's recognition and acceptance of the prepared food may not be high.Some consumers will think that the loss of nutrition of prepared food or the lack of freshness of ingredients will cause hidden dangers to food safety. In the future, how to match and meet the core needs of consumers will be an urgent problem and problem for the whole prefabricated food industry.

"in recent years, there has been a tendency for the prefabricated food industry to flock together. Too many enterprises have turned to self-service hot pot, but they have not invested much in stir-frying in major cuisines with different styles, higher technical content and more complexity.This industry needs special industry self-regulatory organizations to agree on industry rules to prevent some enterprises from using inappropriate ingredients and processes in order to pursue low cost and good taste excessively.Gao Haiping, an analyst at Gao Gang Consulting, said.