As an industry projected to exceed 830 billion yuan by 2025, prepared dishes are at the forefront. Supermarkets, fresh food e-commerce, community group buying, and other business formats are all eager to get a piece of the "prepared dishes" pie. The pandemic and New Year's Eve dinner have pushed prepared dishes into the spotlight of public opinion. Some say there is already a demand gap in the market, and prepared dishes will grow and thrive in the C-end; others say young consumers won't buy it, and food delivery will still be their first choice. As competitors to the fresh food and delivery industries, are prepared dishes and consumers truly moving toward each other, or is it just wishful thinking on the part of prepared dishes? Let's examine whether prepared dishes have a market in China from the perspectives of consumer demand, the state of the prepared dish industry abroad, and the problems inherent in prepared dishes themselves. Looking at Prepared Dishes from the Consumer's Perspective To get consumers to buy prepared dishes, we first need to understand consumer needs and whether prepared dishes can provide corresponding value. People generally eat in three ways: cooking at home, eating out, and ordering delivery. Ordering delivery and eating out are essentially the same, so there are two main camps: cooking and ordering delivery. Why do some consumers cook while others order delivery? Compared to eating out, cooking at home is cleaner and more hygienic, allows you to control the taste, and is cheaper. The only downside is the time it takes, commonly known as "an hour to cook, five minutes to eat." In contrast, delivery saves time and effort; you can get whatever you want with just a few minutes of tapping on your phone. But do consumers only want to save time? According to data from iiMedia Research, in 2021, 55.8% of consumers considered taste as the main factor when ordering delivery, 52.9% considered cost-effectiveness, 40.6% considered merchants with lower delivery fees, and 39.8% considered merchant ratings and user reviews. This shows that consumers have high expectations for taste, cost-effectiveness, and price. Some surveys also indicate that factors such as variety, low price, inability to cook, lack of cooking facilities in rented housing, and even social anxiety are among the reasons prompting consumers to order delivery. From the perspective of delivery, prepared dishes need further consideration of cost-effectiveness, taste, and ease of preparation. On a certain food review platform, Jia Guolong Kung Fu Cuisine has received a lot of consumer complaints, with words like "expensive," "tastes average," and "at this price, I'd rather have something else" appearing everywhere. It seems that selling prepared dishes at the price of freshly cooked dishes is not yet acceptable to consumers. According to a "Prepared Dishes Consumption Survey Report" recently released by Jiangsu Province, 76% of prepared dish consumers are under 40 years old, with 40% aged 25-30 and 36% aged 30-40. 82% of consumers have purchased prepared dishes. Among the issues consumers are most concerned about, food safety, post-purchase preparation cost and difficulty, and price reasonableness are the most highly valued. Over 60% of consumers believe that prepared dishes taste average and are not attractive. Additionally, the survey shows that over 90% of consumers have encountered incomplete label information. Nearly 30% of consumers think the dishes are monotonous and cannot be freely combined. Over 60% of consumers purchase prepared dishes online, and nearly 90% of users encountered various issues when picking up their orders, such as successful reservations but inability to pick up, non-cold-chain transportation, and slow delivery. Perhaps prepared dishes have not yet established a firm foothold in the minds of consumers. How Do Other Countries Do Prepared Dishes? Prepared dishes have formed a certain market scale in some countries. Although national conditions and eating habits differ, the development of the prepared dish industry in other countries has some reference value. Let's first look at the United States. The prepared dish industry in the U.S. began in the 1940s. By 2020, the overall market size of prepared dishes in the U.S. had reached $45.4 billion, with fast food being the industry that uses prepared dishes most intensively. In the U.S., people's dietary structure is relatively simple, which means dishes are easy to standardize. In public dining, the most popular categories are burgers, seafood, pizza, steak, and chicken, which do not require complex preparation techniques. According to relevant frozen food reports, the top five prepared dishes by sales in the U.S. are appetizers, seafood, pizza, poultry, and meat. High-frequency buyers are those born in the 1980s and 1960s, with families of five or more making up the majority, and nearly half of consumers pay attention to whether the dishes are healthy. Many Americans say prepared dishes are their first choice for backup food. It can be seen that Americans' eating habits are relatively simple, and prepared dishes are more popular among middle-aged and elderly groups, with most prepared dish consumers living in urban areas. Now look at Japan. Chinese eating habits are more similar to Japan's, with staple foods often being rice and noodles. Japanese dining generally has many varieties, small portions, and dishes tend to be refined and light. In 2020, Japan's prepared dish market reached $23.85 billion, with an industry penetration rate exceeding 60%. Japanese breakfasts mainly consist of rice balls, bread, and eggs; lunch is bento boxes containing fish, rice, eggs, tempura, and soup; dinner is similar to lunch, with dishes mostly grilled, boiled, or steamed. From the diets of Japan and the U.S., it can be seen that domestic dishes are numerous and varied, with different regions having their own specialties, making standardization difficult, which limits industry development. Additionally, consumers generally prefer rich flavors, which also poses significant challenges to the standardization of prepared dishes. The common point is that as the economy continues to develop, consumption will become more segmented, and the demand for prepared dishes on the C-end will further increase. The growth of the single population and work pressure will continue to expand the "eating alone" economy. Prepared Dishes Still Have Problems to Solve In addition to consumer demand, prepared dishes themselves need to work on supply chain capabilities, food safety, and dish variety. In the retail industry, the supply chain is always the backbone supporting business operations. The supply chain is "an organizational form that, guided by customer demand, aims to improve quality and efficiency, uses resource integration as a means, and achieves efficient collaboration across the entire process of product design, procurement, production, sales, and service." Cold chain logistics and distribution capabilities determine product quality and delivery efficiency. Since prepared dishes are mostly used in homes and kitchens, downstream customers are scattered, and order quantities and varieties vary, placing extremely high demands on delivery frequency and timeliness. At the same time, delivering in low-temperature environments poses significant challenges to a brand's warehousing and logistics system and cold chain transportation technology. Currently, most companies in the industry have a single production base, and warehousing, logistics, and cold chain transportation capabilities restrict the regions where products can be sold, directly affecting their service scope. Additionally, after purchasing frozen or chilled dishes, consumers may not store them in time, leading to bacterial growth and food safety issues. Some prepared dishes have missing or incomplete information on ingredient lists, production dates, shelf life, and storage conditions. Regional differences pose significant challenges to the popularization of prepared dishes. In addition to the hundreds of dishes in the eight major cuisines, there are also local adaptations of other regional cuisines. How brands balance consumer demand and the number of dishes, and regularly update their offerings, remains a problem to be solved. In Conclusion: Summarizing the above analysis, for prepared dishes to achieve a "two-way street" with consumers, the following points need improvement: 1. Standardization, safety, and health issues of dishes. 2. Balance between taste and price. 3. Improvement of supply chain efficiency and technology, and the quality of online ordering services. 4. Launching products tailored to the "eating alone" economy. 5. Improvement of information such as production date, shelf life, ingredient list, and storage conditions. To attract consumers, the grand blueprint of prepared dishes still needs more colors. Cover image source: NetEase - Xiangcai Ren Weibao -END-