---
title: "Capital-Favored Pre-Made Dishes: Young People Not Buying It?"
description: "As the Chinese New Year approaches, pre-made dishes have become the new favorite for the New Year's Eve dinner. Despite capital enthusiasm and industry push, young consumers remain skeptical, often equating pre-made dishes with '料理包' (ready-to-eat meal packs), and the market is still in its early stages with supply-demand mismatch."
author: "习睿"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2022-01-27"
language: "en"
canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/capital-favored-pre-made-dishes-young-people-not-buying-it-f04b0b59/"
markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/capital-favored-pre-made-dishes-young-people-not-buying-it-f04b0b59.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/CY3OJdAwzbuh57BZ_dkv8A"
translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E8%B5%84%E6%9C%AC%E7%83%AD%E7%82%92%E7%9A%84%E9%A2%84%E5%88%B6%E8%8F%9C-%E5%B9%B4%E8%BD%BB%E4%BA%BA%E4%B8%8D%E4%B9%B0%E8%B4%A6-f04b0b59.md"
attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/capital-favored-pre-made-dishes-young-people-not-buying-it-f04b0b59/"
usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt"
---

# Capital-Favored Pre-Made Dishes: Young People Not Buying It?

> As the Chinese New Year approaches, pre-made dishes have become the new favorite for the New Year's Eve dinner. Despite capital enthusiasm and industry push, young consumers remain skeptical, often equating pre-made dishes with '料理包' (ready-to-eat meal packs), and the market is still in its early stages with supply-demand mismatch.

Source: Tech Planet (ID: tech618)
(Cover image: VCG)
As the year-end approaches, pre-made dishes have become the "new favorite" for the New Year's Eve dinner. "Dishes like abalone and Buddha Jumps Over the Wall are troublesome to prepare. Now I just buy pre-made dishes online and freeze them in advance," Shanghai auntie Li Ran told Tech Planet. This year, for the first time, she included pre-made dishes in her New Year's Eve dinner plans. Unlike previous years when she would book a restaurant for the New Year's Eve dinner, in 2022, pre-made dish sales surged during the Spring Festival. Both offline supermarkets and online catering brands launched pre-made dish sets for the New Year's Eve dinner; Hema Fresh even launched its New Year's Eve gift boxes as early as the end of December.
Fresh e-commerce platforms like Miss Fresh and Meicai.com also entered the pre-made dish space, and even Carrefour began vigorously promoting Spring Festival pre-made dishes. Auntie Li Ran became hooked on pre-made dishes last year. Her interest wasn't sparked by supermarket discounts but by the rise in pre-made dish concept stocks. "I'm a seasoned stock investor. Recently, pre-made dishes have been rising, so I wanted to try them to see what they're about," she told Tech Planet.
At the beginning of this year, pre-made dish concept stocks collectively surged. On the afternoon of January 12, companies like Guolian Aquatic Products, Fucheng Shares, Huifa Foods, Weizhixiang, and Dahu Shares all hit the daily limit up. The argument that pre-made dishes would be the next trillion-yuan market emerged. Subsequently, pre-made dishes experienced their "highlight moment" in history. According to Baidu Index data, on January 13, the search index for pre-made dishes exceeded 10,000 for the first time, reaching a peak not seen in recent years.
Over the past year, pre-made dishes have also been favored by capital. Companies across the pre-made dish supply chain, such as Zhenwei Xiaomeiyuan, Sancan Youliao, Xunweishi, and Wangjiahuan, all secured financing in 2021. The pre-made dish brand Weizhixiang, which focuses on this sector, successfully went public in 2021. The entry of Lu Zhengyao, original founder of Luckin Coffee, added more buzz to pre-made dishes.
At a time when various industries are contracting, the market is eager to make pre-made dishes the first trend of 2022. Whether it's Lu Zhengyao's Shejian Workshop, Xibei's Jia Guolong Kung Fu Cuisine, or the listed Weizhixiang, they all target the C-end market. Some market views suggest that the "stay-at-home economy" and "single economy" of young people can support the subsequent explosion of the C-end pre-made dish market.
But can young people really support the pre-made dish track? With capital enthusiasm and industry advancement, will young people pay? Can pre-made dishes, seemingly a consumption upgrade, really replace takeout and the wet market?
**Pandemic Heats Up Pre-Made Dish Demand**
Pre-made dishes are not a new concept. As early as 2010, with the chain-ization of the catering market, pre-made dishes appeared in B-end segments like corporate catering. Standardized pre-made dishes could meet the stability requirements of chain restaurant brands. However, with the rise of takeout in 2014 and the involution of various platforms, the development of pre-made dishes gave way to the hotter takeout market.
Although pre-made dishes had long been integrated into daily meals in various forms, the general public only became aware of them because of the pandemic. The 2020 pandemic forced people to cook at home, making pre-made dishes the first choice and they were once highly sought after. During the 2020 Tmall "Double 11" period, sales of pre-made dishes, including semi-finished and instant dishes, increased by about 2 times year-on-year.
Catalyzed by the pandemic, pre-made dishes, which had been in the B-end, broke into the C-end market. It was also in this year that a wave of pre-made dish layout enthusiasm quietly emerged. Emerging fresh retail platforms are the most visible players in the C-end layout.
In March 2020, Hema established the 3R division (Ready to cook, ready to heat, ready to eat). Hema CEO Hou Yi believed that after the pandemic, many consumers' living habits would change, and eating at home would become mainstream. Therefore, Hema would continuously develop products that meet consumer needs, with a focus on semi-finished products. Around the same time, Miss Fresh also launched the "Famous Restaurant Famous Dishes" channel, starting to deeply cultivate pre-made dishes.
In 2020, new-generation catering brands seeking survival also targeted this track: Xibei launched its pre-made dish brand Jia Xilong Kung Fu Cuisine. Haidilao also launched the "Kai Fan Le" series of pre-made products. Additionally, new pre-made dish brands focusing on e-commerce channels, such as Zhenwei Xiaomeiyuan, Xunweishi, and Benwei Xianwu, were also established around 2020. And Sancan Youliao, a representative of specialized pre-made dish retail stores, was also founded in 2020.
The response from the supply side seems more intense than the demand side, as they try to use the pandemic as an opportunity to pry open the C-end market and actively embrace pre-made dishes. According to data from Tianyancha, since 2011, the number of pre-made dish-related enterprise registrations has increased year by year. In 2011, there were 1,796 registrations, while in 2020, the number reached a decade high, with a total of 12,500 new registrations that year.
During the pandemic, this wave of pre-made dish brand creation was absorbed by capital. **It can be said that the current investment heat in pre-made dishes is a continuation of the pandemic's impact.** Zhenwei Xiaomeiyuan, Xunweishi, and Sancan Youliao all completed financing in 2021. And new players at the end of 2021 extended the enthusiasm into this year.
Capital is in place, players are deployed across online and offline channels, ready to go, imagining they can carve out a trillion-yuan track. But the enthusiasm of capital is not matched by consumers. **As life gradually returns to normal and offline dining recovers, the pre-made dish consumption demand heated by the pandemic is fading, and the public is moving away from extreme reliance on pre-made dishes.** Undeniably, because of the pandemic, C-end consumers have gained basic awareness of pre-made dishes, but that awareness has only been for two years. The consumption habits cultivated over many years cannot be changed overnight.
The pandemic caused explosive growth on both the demand and supply sides, but as the pandemic normalizes, it is consumers who first cool down on pre-made dishes.
**Most Consumers Equate Pre-Made Dishes with "料理包" (Ready-to-Eat Meal Packs)**
In reality, the public does not yet have a systematic understanding of the basic concept of pre-made dishes. From Tech Planet's interviews with several young people, the vast majority equate pre-made dishes with "料理包." "Pre-made dishes can be eaten after heating, no different from takeout. And they are frozen for a long time, so they feel unhealthy." A practitioner who has been in the B-end supply chain of pre-made dishes for many years said that 料理包 is a relatively gray area in the catering industry, but pre-made dishes and 料理包 are completely different things.
According to a report by Guosen Securities, pre-made dishes refer to products made from agricultural, livestock, poultry, and aquatic products, with various auxiliary ingredients, centrally produced using modern standards, pre-processed through steps like cutting, mixing, marinating, shaping, and seasoning, and then preserved using quick-freezing technology or other preservation methods, either as finished or semi-finished products. In fact, pre-made dishes are roughly divided into finished pre-made dishes that only need heating, and semi-finished pre-made dishes that require cooking.
"Current technology can restore the taste of finished pre-made dishes," the above practitioner told Tech Planet. "And finished pre-made dishes are industrialized at every stage, which is different from 料理包. 料理包 can't even be considered an industry." But because of takeout, 料理包, which costs as little as a few yuan, is heated with hot water, and has no nutritional value, has taken the lead in penetrating consumer minds. This makes it harder for consumers to accept pre-made dishes.
Hema, as a retail platform that entered pre-made dishes early, still feels consumer skepticism in its B2C process. "Many consumers think pre-made dishes contain many additives, especially preservatives," Zhang Qian, procurement director of Hema's 3R product sourcing center, told Tech Planet with some helplessness. "I've been in food for over a decade and have been responsible for pre-made dishes at Hema. This is really painful; we have to constantly explain."
Xibei's pre-made dish brand Jia Guolong Kung Fu Cuisine focuses on finished pre-made dishes. The stores have no kitchens or chefs; staff directly serve heated pre-made dishes to customers. There are over 200 stores, but the impact is minimal, and consumers are not buying the so-called Kung Fu dishes. Despite official claims of using -40°C quick-freezing technology to "lock in the taste of freshly cooked food, just heat and eat at home," consumers cannot accept paying a hundred yuan for dishes served in tin foil boxes. "100 yuan per person for frozen boxed meals," some customers joked. On social media, many consumers complained it was like airplane food or canned food, with a dining experience of "eating takeout together in a restaurant."
Jia Guolong overestimated the market's acceptance of pre-made dishes. Currently, the first Jia Guolong Kung Fu Cuisine store has added dishes cooked on-site in the kitchen, and the proportion of pre-made dishes has significantly decreased.
Another reason for the low acceptance of finished pre-made dishes is "hard to please everyone." Currently, the market often compares the penetration rate of pre-made dishes in China with that in Japan and the US. But unlike Japan and the US, domestic dining habits are extremely regionalized. There is a certain conflict between the standardization of pre-made dishes and the personalization of diets.
Zhang Jun, who has been in pre-made dish supply chain management for many years, told Tech Planet, **Pre-made dishes play a role in reducing costs and increasing efficiency in the B-end, but C-end consumer demands are fragmented and cannot be unified. Without standardization, it will put pressure on the scaling of pre-made dish enterprises.**
**Pre-Made Dishes Can't Cure Young People's "Takeout Addiction"**
In Tech Planet's small-scale survey, semi-finished pre-made dishes have relatively higher acceptance. Zhang Qian, procurement director of Hema's 3R product sourcing center, also told Tech Planet that they found young people currently have two main demands for pre-made dishes: "The first type of consumer is someone who can cook but doesn't want to cut ingredients; the second type is a kitchen novice who can't cook but wants to eat well."
Jiale, born in 1998, is an office worker in Shanghai with a 9-to-6 job. She and her friends discuss pre-made dishes in WeChat groups. "Friends who cook for themselves seem to have bought them online," Jiale told Tech Planet. After a two-hour commute, Jiale has no energy to prepare ingredients, and pre-made dishes just meet her needs. "Pre-made dishes are mainly convenient; I can't taste much difference," Jiale said. (Photo provided by interviewee)
But for kitchen novices, pre-made dishes still don't change their takeout fate. "Pre-made dishes are indeed convenient, but if you don't have time to cook, you still don't have time," Liu Wen told Tech Planet. Liu Wen, who works at a major internet company, has always wanted to stop eating takeout for health reasons, but frequent overtime leaves him no time to cook. Last June, Liu Wen tried buying pre-made dishes online. "I bought things like sour cabbage fish and boiled pork slices," Liu Wen told Tech Planet. "The taste is indeed similar to restaurant food, but it's not suitable for bringing to the office." To continue his health plan, Liu Wen tried buying semi-finished dishes at offline stores to save prep time, only needing to stir-fry them. Liu Wen told Tech Planet, "Offline stores have more choices for home-style dishes; online purchases are mostly for big dishes." But to meet the Spring Festival deadline, Liu Wen's team worked overtime for a week straight. Exhausted when he got home, he reluctantly took the pre-made dishes out of the fridge and cooked them to avoid wasting ingredients. In the end, Liu Wen returned to eating takeout. In his view, "It's okay to occasionally try big dishes on weekends, but relying on pre-made dishes to cook every day is still a bit difficult."
During its visits, Tech Planet found that **compared to relying on young consumer concepts like the "stay-at-home economy," middle-aged and elderly groups might become a stable demand group for semi-finished pre-made dishes.** When Tech Planet visited Lu Zhengyao's Shejian Workshop offline store in Shanghai, during the noon period, the store gathered more middle-aged and elderly people, and purchases were mainly made by them. (Shejian Workshop Shanghai store)
Zhang Qian also said that besides young people, middle-aged groups like aunties and mothers also have high demand for pre-made dishes. "Because families are less willing to fry with large oil pans now, and family structures are changing. Previously, one meal could feed many people. So, time-consuming items like egg dumplings and spring rolls sell well as pre-made dishes."
According to Zhang Jun's observation, the current driving force for C-end consumers to buy semi-finished pre-made dishes is still novelty. "The current one-time purchasing power is not enough to support the C-end market; the key is the repurchase rate, which is the data that really matters."
**Capital Blindly Chases, Final Competition Returns to Supply Chain**
The mismatch between supply and demand is the main awkwardness of the current pre-made dish To C market. **Zhu Danpeng, a Chinese food industry analyst, also said that China's pre-made dish market has not truly entered a "prosperous production and sales" situation. Both the capital side and the industry side are enthusiastic, but they have not fully met the core needs of various segmented consumer markets.** Overall, the current pre-made dish market has always been dominated by the B-end. According to Guosen Securities' report, in 2021, the C-end accounted for only 20%, and by 2026, the C-end share will rise to 30%.
As a veteran in the industry, Zhang Jun said that calling pre-made dishes a new trend is the biggest misreading of the industry. "Recently, because of Lu Zhengyao's project, everyone thinks pre-made dishes are novel. In fact, pre-made dishes have been in the B-end for many years. This industry requires a calm and down-to-earth approach."
The current awkward pattern of pre-made dishes To C still needs "early runners" to change. Zhang Qian also said that the pre-made dish market is still in a very early stage. "More of our peers are studying consumer habits and needs, and then solving consumer pain points will be simpler. I think this part is really just beginning." Compared to the B-end market, due to the higher acceptance threshold of pre-made dishes, players in the C-end need to increase market education for users. "Consumption habits are definitely cultivated. Now, if you ask us to accept buying mapo tofu at the supermarket, you might not be used to it. But in the future, as this becomes more common, this habit will definitely be formed. I think that's beyond doubt," Zhang Qian said.
In Zhang Jun's view, some capital is blindly chasing pre-made dishes, but what the industry really needs are companies and people who settle down to build the supply chain. "If you truly work on the supply chain and achieve scale and standardization, you can reduce costs and ultimately achieve profitability." Whether semi-finished or finished pre-made dishes, raw materials are the biggest cost. Additionally, the most impactful factor downstream is cold chain capability. Zhang Jun said, "New entrants' costs for raw material procurement will not be lower than the market average. Companies with fresh supply capabilities will have an advantage."
Another practitioner in the pre-made dish industry also said that pre-made dishes are just beginning, and the refined needs of the C-end are yet to be explored. There will be more new combinations in the future, but pre-made dishes are essentially an intermediate business between food and catering. Ultimately, the competition in pre-made dishes will return to the supply chain.
But some current players are not focusing on the supply chain. They see pre-made dishes more as a lifeline to improve overall profits. They need the concept of pre-made dishes more than young people do. In this regard, Zhang Jun also said that pre-made dishes are an industry that requires heavy upfront investment. Without scale, early profits cannot exceed 20%.
**The trillion-yuan market for pre-made dishes may still need some time.** (Note: Names in the article are pseudonyms)
_-END-_


---

## Copyright and AI use

This article is sourced from New Distribution. Search, quotation, summarization, and model training are permitted, but every use must credit New Distribution and retain the canonical source URL.

Contact: zhaobo258@gmail.com · +86 158 5481 7671