Pre-made dishes remain at the forefront of public discourse. In the first half of this year, topics such as "New Year's Eve pre-made dishes," "pre-made dishes entering schools," and "315 exposure of Meicai Kou Rou" frequently trended on social media, followed by extensive discussion, controversy, and criticism. Despite this, pre-made dishes continue to conquer markets at an astonishing pace. According to iiMedia Research data, the market size of China's pre-made dish industry in 2023 was 516.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 23.1%. Looking ahead, "China's pre-made dish market will maintain a relatively high growth rate, with the market size expected to exceed 1 trillion yuan by 2026." From an industry perspective, food industrialization is an inevitable trend, and standardized, high-efficiency pre-made foods are representative products of this trend. What I'm curious about is: under such a major trend, how do consumers actually view pre-made dishes? Where is the acceptable 'limit'? And what implications do these have for brands? Last month, we launched a mini-survey titled "Can You Accept Pre-made Dishes?" Using quantitative research methods, we collected 1,767 valid samples, with 500 samples from Kurundata. Below are the specific findings from this survey. What Do Consumers Consider Pre-made Dishes? First, it's necessary to clarify what "pre-made dishes" mainly include in this survey. In March this year, six departments issued the "Notice on Strengthening Food Safety Supervision of Pre-made Dishes and Promoting High-Quality Industrial Development," which for the first time defined pre-made dishes at the national level. This definition is relatively narrow, excluding frozen foods and other categories: "Pre-made dishes are pre-packaged dishes that are edible after heating or cooking, excluding staple foods such as frozen noodles and rice products, convenience foods, boxed meals, rice with toppings, steamed buns, pastries, roujiamo, bread, hamburgers, sandwiches, pizza, etc." In the past, the industry typically divided pre-made dishes into four categories:

Ready-to-eat foods: open and eat, such as eight-treasure porridge, canned food, braised dishes, etc.; Ready-to-heat foods: need heating before eating, such as frozen dumplings, instant noodles, etc.; Ready-to-cook foods: undergo seasoning, coating, pre-frying, etc., and need to be cooked in a pan, such as sauerkraut fish, Buddha jumping over the wall, Meicai Kou Rou, beef ribs, etc.; Ready-to-prepare foods: clean vegetables that have been sorted, washed, cut, and packaged, such as shredded vegetables, original-cut steak, fish fillets, etc. From the survey results, consumers' definition of pre-made dishes mainly includes the first three categories in the industry definition: 85% of respondents believe that ready-to-cook small crispy pork and sauerkraut fish are pre-made dishes; 71.1% define ready-to-heat foods like frozen dumplings and convenience store boxed meals as pre-made dishes; 56.2% include ready-to-eat eight-treasure porridge in the scope of pre-made dishes. It should be emphasized that in broader daily discussions, disputes often arise because people have different definitions of pre-made dishes. However, in this survey, people of different genders, ages, and city tiers had similar definitions of pre-made dishes, so cross-analysis of specific questions is largely unaffected by "different definitions leading to different choices." Next, let's first look at people's acceptance of pre-made dishes in different scenarios. Over 90% Accept Pre-made Dishes Outdoor Camping Has the Highest Acceptance Despite strong opposition on social media, only 9.1% of people do not accept pre-made dishes in any scenario, less than one in ten. The key to acceptance lies in the scenario and context. For example, for the "New Year's Eve pre-made dishes" scenario that trended earlier this year, over 80% do not accept it, but for daily meals or late-night snacks, acceptance is significantly higher. Data shows that people have the highest acceptance of eating pre-made dishes in outdoor camping scenarios, at 52.8%. In fact, since the outdoor craze began in 2022, the trend of "camping + pre-made dishes" has emerged. Camping food has evolved from common snacks and canned goods to barbecue, hot pot, pizza, and various self-heating instant foods. Brands have also launched related products: Hema had the "bag-carrying barbecue" series in 2022, Guoquan Shihui launched "camping pot hot pot" and "Guoquan crayfish" for camping scenarios in 2023, and Dingdong Maicai also has dedicated outdoor camping meal sets. From a demographic perspective, people in higher-tier cities have higher acceptance of pre-made dishes. In contrast, their acceptance of eating pre-made dishes for three meals a day (breakfast, lunch, dinner) is significantly higher than those in fourth- and fifth-tier cities. By age group, the notable difference between those under 35 (post-00s, post-95s, post-90s) and those over 35 (post-85s, post-80s) is in the breakfast scenario, with the latter having lower acceptance of pre-made breakfasts. This may be related to the different lifestyles of different age groups. Post-95 @陆离 commutes every day at "8 a.m." and her breakfast basically relies on convenience stores near her company; post-90 @天天 buys frozen pastries as breakfast to save time: "It's good enough to have time to eat breakfast, let alone whether it's freshly made." Lower-Tier Cities Have Higher Budgets for Restaurant Pre-made Dishes On social platforms, a major controversy about pre-made dishes revolves around public dining places: whether school cafeterias and mall restaurants should offer pre-made dishes. Earlier, we analyzed the ingredient traceability incident of Laoxiangji and concluded from social media data that positive evaluations of pre-made dishes mainly focus on good taste, while negative evaluations mainly focus on the negative cases exposed during 315, such as gutter oil meat and Meicai Kou Rou. The largest proportion, however, is neutral evaluations, focusing on "informed consent": for example, openly labeling pre-made dishes and traceable ingredient sources. This survey also reached similar conclusions. Besides basic safety and health, what matters more is openly labeling the degree of pre-preparation to inform consumers. In addition to the right to know, over 30% of people believe that if cafeterias or restaurants use pre-made dishes, prices should be lowered. Education blogger @刘晓光_恶魔奶爸 also pointed out this issue on Weibo, giving an example: "I used to order a fried egg, freshly made, 3 yuan each. The egg costs 1 yuan, labor costs 1 yuan per egg, and the merchant earns 1 yuan from me. I thought that was acceptable.

But now, when I go again, it's still a fried egg, but it's pre-made. A pre-made fried egg costs 0.8 yuan on Taobao, and wholesale is cheaper, as low as 0.7 or 0.6 yuan. Previously, the cost was 2 yuan; now it's 0.8 yuan. So shouldn't the price also drop, selling to me for 1.5 yuan? Quite the opposite.

It's still sold to me for 3 yuan. The merchant used to earn 1 yuan, but now earns 2.2 yuan from me, doubling their profit. This is the problem with pre-made dishes: I pay the same price as before but receive much lower quality. The same applies to pre-made dishes in schools; school meal prices won't decrease at all. And all this is based on the assumption that pre-made dishes are completely hygienic and free from food safety concerns." In the questionnaire, we further asked about people's budgets for eating pre-made dishes in these places. An interesting conclusion is that most people in first-tier, new first-tier, and second-tier cities can accept eating pre-made dishes in restaurants, but their budgets are low, with over 95% only accepting pre-made dishes priced at 50 yuan or less. Conversely, despite lower prices in lower-tier cities, respondents from third-, fourth-, and fifth-tier cities have higher budgets for eating pre-made dishes in restaurants/cafeterias. Although a quarter of people do not accept eating pre-made dishes in restaurants/cafeterias, about 60% have an upper price limit of 50 yuan or more for "one pre-made meal," and about a quarter have an upper limit of 100 yuan or more. This may indirectly demonstrate the recent trend of dining "going downmarket": when it comes to eating and drinking, consumption power in lower-tier cities is actually not low. From Starbucks and Haidilao collectively "going downmarket" to snack shops blooming in county towns, young people in big cities are still penny-pinching, buying discounted food at Hema or Aldi after 8 p.m., while wealthy and leisurely youth in fourth- and fifth-tier cities are not hesitant to "buy, buy, buy." Meituan's "2024 Spring Festival 'Food, Drink, Fun' Consumption Insight Report" pointed out that during this Spring Festival, consumption in areas below fourth-tier grew the fastest year-on-year, and lower-tier markets became the "new engine" driving holiday economic growth. According to McKinsey's forecast: "By 2030, China's personal consumption will grow to $65.3 trillion, with over 66% of growth coming from third-tier and below cities." 48.8% Have Actively Purchased Ready-to-Cook Pre-made Dishes Price and Taste Outweigh Nutritional Value After discussing acceptance, let's look at the consumption of pre-made dishes on the C-end. According to China Business Intelligence Network, China's pre-made dish market is currently dominated by B-end sales, with C-end accounting for about 15%. However, with changes in consumption concepts and habits, as well as the rise of new retail methods like live-streaming e-commerce, fresh food e-commerce, and community group buying, "in the future, C-end brands will become a strong force driving the growth of the pre-made dish market." In this survey, a total of 1,767 respondents participated, of whom 1,637 had purchased different types of pre-made foods. By degree of pre-preparation, the highest purchase rates were for ready-to-heat foods like frozen dumplings and ready-to-eat foods like eight-treasure porridge cans. Even for "pre-made dishes" as defined by national standards (commonly known as meal kits), 48.8% of people had actively purchased them. There are many reasons for not buying pre-made dishes: some "prefer freshly made food" (46.9%), some think pre-made dishes have "unreliable quality" (45.4%), and others worry that pre-made dishes are "unhealthy" (43.8%). But the main reason people buy pre-made dishes basically points to one thing: "saving time and effort" (87.7%). For this reason, in specific purchase decisions, when safety, hygiene, and ingredient quality are basically guaranteed, most people, especially younger groups like post-00s and post-95s, care more about cost-effectiveness, taste, and convenience, rather than nutritional value and brand. In other words, for the C-end, pre-made dishes are a third solution for eating at home, alongside cooking and ordering takeout, serving as a substitute or supplement to the kitchen and takeout: Its advantage is that it's more convenient than cooking yourself and cleaner/tastier/cheaper than takeout. Nearly 80% Purchase Offline Chain Restaurant Single Items Also Recommended Regarding channels for purchasing pre-made dishes, traditional offline retail stores such as supermarkets and wet markets remain the mainstream, chosen by 79.1% of people. The top three online channels are: fresh food e-commerce platforms like Dingdong Maicai and Hema, Taobao/Tmall, and JD.com. In terms of single products, the ranking of the most purchased pre-made dishes and the most repurchased pre-made dishes is basically the same, with the top three being hot pot ingredients, barbecue ingredients, and small crispy pork. In terms of brands, based on over 200 valid responses to the open-ended question "Do you have any recommended pre-made dish products or brands?", we categorized the recommended pre-made dish brands into three main types:

  1. Pre-made dish/frozen food brands, such as Anjoy, CP, and Synear;
  2. Pre-made foods launched by chain restaurants, such as KFC, Haidilao, and Tai Er Sauerkraut Fish;
  3. Private-label pre-made dishes from fresh food e-commerce platforms/retail stores, such as Hema, Sam's Club, and Dingdong Maicai. These brands reach C-end consumers in different ways. For example, Anjoy, a leading pre-made dish brand, mainly does B-end business, but because it entered early and has extensive offline distribution, C-end consumers are also aware of it. The pre-made dish brand "Ding Ding Lazy Man Dish," founded in 2020, focuses on the Douyin channel and has achieved a scale of about 1 billion yuan. Private-label pre-made dishes on Hema and Dingdong Maicai were also frequently mentioned. It's worth noting that in 2023, Dingdong Maicai announced a high-profile increase in its pre-made dish department, launching a "pre-made dish partner" recruitment plan; Hema's pre-made dish department became a first-level department in April of the same year, alongside its import and private-label businesses. Both companies' estimated pre-made dish sales for 2023 were 5 billion yuan. Additionally, another category of pre-made dishes frequently recommended is those from chain restaurant brands: Not only are brands like KFC, McDonald's, Haidilao, Tai Er Sauerkraut Fish, and Xibei nominated, but also Sunner, which supplies chicken products to KFC, and Meihao, which supplies small crispy pork to Haidilao, are prominently listed. From this perspective, today's consumers are not completely rejecting pre-made dishes. When brands ensure safety and good taste, consumers will actively repurchase or spontaneously recommend them. In the 1990s, KFC, McDonald's, and Pizza Hut entered China, and along with them came Sunner, which supplied chicken products, Binxi Foods, which supplied beef patties, and Haofeng Foods, the "lettuce king." Over the years, with the rise of takeout and restaurant chainization, this semi-finished product business has formed a huge market. It first flooded into chain restaurants and street eateries, and now gradually appears on ordinary families' dining tables, supporting three meals a day for countless households. For the catering industry, pre-made dishes solve the problems of standardization, efficiency, and scale. For new retail channels, pre-made dishes are both a trend and a goldmine. Li Xue, a special researcher at the Japan Distribution Economics Research Institute, mentioned in an interview with "Third Eye Retail Observation": "The gross margin of pre-made dishes is generally at least 10% higher than fresh food. The gross margin for ready-to-prepare products can exceed 20%, and for ready-to-eat products, it can reach 40-50%. The gross margin for ready-to-cook and ready-to-heat foods developed by manufacturers is basically the same as pre-packaged foods, around 20%." B-end is business; C-end is life. Consumers know they can't escape pre-made dishes, and a considerable number of people choose: if you can't beat them, join them. From being forced to eat semi-finished products provided by merchants to actively searching for which brand of pre-made dishes tastes good and who supplies restaurants... Since it's all just heating meal kits, why bother traveling miles to eat in a store and let middlemen take a cut? Moreover, as attitudes shift, more and more people realize that pre-made dishes are not a scourge. The dirty and messy stoves in takeout workshops may not be cleaner or more hygienic than standardized pre-made dishes; the ladle of seasonings used by restaurant chefs may be heavier in oil and salt than meal kits. Whether pre-made dishes are off-putting or not, it all comes down to a few points: Information transparency, safety and hygiene, clear pricing, and good taste. Recommended Reading