A few days ago, I wanted to stock up on instant noodles. Standing in front of the shelf, I was amazed by the variety of new instant noodles. Besides various broth series and fresh vegetable options, I discovered a new category—self-heating noodles, a new product under Master Kong's Suda brand. The store clerk said these noodles only need cold water and taste just like freshly made noodles from a noodle shop.
I bought a box, and the taste was indeed good. According to official data, the sales performance of this product is quite impressive. During last year's Double 11, within just 60 minutes of the event, sales of Suda Noodle House self-heating noodles exceeded the total sales of the entire Suda Noodle House series in November 2018. Over 65,000 units of Suda Noodle House self-heating noodles sold out that day.
This piqued my interest: How did the instant noodle market turn the tide and thrive? How will the category develop in the future? What opportunities will self-heating noodles bring to brands?
-01- Market Recovery: Instant Noodles Remain a Staple
Looking back over the past decade, the instant noodle market experienced a rollercoaster ride. From sales data, after peaking in 2013, sales declined year by year, hitting a trough in 2016, down 17% from the peak; but since 2017, the market has gradually recovered, returning to 40 billion packs in 2018. The instant noodle market has shifted from competing on low prices to competing on quality, entering a new phase.
The market recovery is mainly due to two reasons.
First, the consumer base has changed. Unlike before, when instant noodles were a choice to fill the stomach, they have transitioned from blue-collar to white-collar consumption. As post-90s and post-95s enter the workforce, and the middle-class consumer segment expands, instant noodles have been given new functional positioning.
The new consumer group has higher income but is busier; convenience remains a necessity, and the convenience of instant noodles meets their needs. At the same time, users' quality requirements are also rising. Even a simple meal of noodles should make them happy, not feel like they're "suffering."
In terms of eating, they have upgraded from eating enough to eating well, willing to pay a premium for higher-quality products. Especially for families with children, providing healthier and more nutritious products while being convenient is very important.
These changes have driven instant noodles from a meal replacement to a proper meal, broadening the category's usage scenarios and providing more space for category upgrades. The era of instant noodle upgrades has arrived.
Second, the food delivery market is gradually returning to rational competition, and instant noodles are regaining lost ground.
On one hand, food delivery is now dominated by Ele.me and Meituan, with reduced subsidies and increased delivery fees. The cost of ordering a meal has returned to normal levels. For example, in Beijing, a typical delivery meal costs 30-40 yuan, which is normal, weakening the advantage of delivery.
On the other hand, the quality of delivery food varies widely, and safety is hard to guarantee. Scandals like "toilet-processed food" and "unlicensed restaurants" have been exposed, prompting consumers to seek safer dining solutions. Moreover, noodles delivered can easily become a clumpy mess if not timed well, tasting bad and wasting money. These factors bring new opportunities for noodle brands with standardized processes and guaranteed safety.
Both the internal demand for category upgrades and the favorable external environment are driving the instant noodle market towards premium products.
-02- Three Key Strategies for Premium Noodle Development: Health, Scenario, and Perfection
As instant noodles become a proper meal, new requirements have emerged for taste, texture, quality, and preparation methods.
1. Product Health Upgrades
In fact, health upgrades are a clear trend across the entire food industry. In the juice market, low-concentration juice sales are declining, while medium and high-concentration juices are growing rapidly; new tea drinks like Heytea and Naixue Tea, made with real ingredients, are gradually replacing low-end flavored teas. It's evident that consumption is becoming more rational, with real ingredients and naturalness becoming new drivers of consumer choice.
The same trend is occurring in the noodle industry. Sales of mid-to-high-end noodles are growing faster. According to AC Nielsen data, in the first half of 2019, China's instant noodle market sales increased by 7.5% year-on-year, with overall volume also up 1.4%. Consumer health awareness is rising, and brands need to upgrade products to meet consumer needs.
Uni-President's Tang Daren entered the premium noodle segment with its "broth" positioning. Master Kong also began launching its slow-cooked broth series in 2016, emphasizing "less additives, rich flavor, delicious, healthy, and nutritious," and introduced the ultra-premium Suda Noodle House series, which uses real ingredients in seasoning and beef packets and optimizes processes to reduce artificial additives, meeting consumer health needs.
2. Product Development Focuses on Scenario Needs
As the consumption scenarios of target groups become more diverse and complex, the era of a single product dominating the market is fading. Consumers need different products to meet their needs.
Based on the life trajectory of white-collar consumers, life can be divided into three scenarios: at home, at work, and outside activities.
In the office, consumers have the most urgent need for quick and nutritious options, prioritizing efficiency; outside of work, consumers also seek a sense of ritual in life, and "light kitchen operations" are becoming increasingly popular. Consumers enjoy adding a bit of effort to enhance their participation in food preparation, so semi-finished food sales are growing, becoming a new trend; when consumers are in scenarios like picnics, travel, or outdoor activities, in austere environments, they need products with lower preparation barriers, such as self-heating foods, to quickly recharge their energy.
Needs guide changes. Product development must fully consider these needs and offer a richer selection in combination.
3. Demand for Product Perfection Increases
For consumers, the ultimate goal of instant noodles is to replicate a freshly made noodle dish from a restaurant. This requires brands to pay more attention to product details in every stage of development. For example, the noodles should maintain a chewy texture after rehydration, have fewer additives, and have visible, generous ingredients that stimulate consumer satisfaction, recreating the experience of a noodle shop in every detail—what you see is what you get.
-03- Premium Noodle Brands Need to Redefine a Bowl of Noodles
Creating a premium noodle product is not difficult for many manufacturers. However, to make consumers recognize the value of this bowl of noodles, it requires coordinated efforts across market analysis, R&D, marketing, and channel operations to transform the "premium noodle" positioning from concept to product, and through advertising and in-store guidance, ultimately achieve conversion.
1. Let the Good Product Speak for Itself
Premium noodles must significantly differentiate from ordinary instant noodles in terms of ingredients, process, and product form, reflecting health and perfection. The degree of difference should be enough to engage consumers' five senses, eliciting a "wow!" reaction.
Let's take Master Kong's Suda Noodle House as an example to see how product upgrades build a premium perception.
Generous ingredients break perceptions and attract attention. Unlike one or two slices of meat or small meat bits, Suda Noodle House includes 7-8 pieces of imported beef chuck, and a vegetable packet with large vegetable pieces, creating an impact with quantity and quality.
The soup packet stimulates the nose with rich aroma. The soup packet uses beef bone broth, recreating the aroma of high-quality broth, stimulating the sense of smell.
Finally, the enjoyment for the mouth. The noodle cake uses a combination of micro-steaming and hot-air drying to achieve a smooth outside and chewy inside texture; the seasoning packet uses industry-leading low-temperature vacuum tumbling and freshness-locking technology to ensure better taste for the meat and seasoning.
Seeing, smelling, and tasting—step by step, it subverts users' perceptions of instant noodles, providing a high-quality experience. In fact, beyond engaging the senses, Suda Noodle House also taps into the inner "sense of ritual." For example, it uses chopsticks instead of forks, closer to the noodle shop experience. The seasoning packet and noodle cake are heated separately, adding more participation in the details.
2. Enrich Product Lines to Meet More Consumption Scenarios
As mentioned earlier, white-collar consumers have different needs in different environments, and brands need to meet these needs through product line planning.
Currently, the instant (brewed) noodle product line is the most competitive, and it's the main battleground for premium noodle brands. Both Suda Noodle House and Uni-President's Man Han Quan Xi are positioning themselves to capture the ultra-premium segment; the cook-type noodle line targets the middle-class's "sense of ritual," emphasizing light participation, requiring a certain environment, but with lower category competition. It's currently in the stage of category education and expanding the consumer base.
Besides these two types, there is another category that hasn't been fully tapped: self-heating noodles. With the popularity of self-heating hot pots like Zihaiguo and Haidilao, the self-heating format has been boosted. It's simpler to operate and requires even less environment. Compared to bowl noodles and cook-type noodles, self-heating noodles expand the category boundaries, acting like a portable "mini noodle shop." Self-heating noodles are not just competing with instant noodles but also with noodle shops, bringing more possibilities for category development.
Suda Noodle House launched its self-heating noodle series in 2019 and promoted it as a key product. As a major player in self-heating noodles, the brand leverages its first-mover advantage and is expected to become a leader in the self-heating noodle category.
From Suda Noodle House to cook-type noodles to self-heating noodles, the product matrix is continuously enriched, giving it a significant advantage over other premium brands. The self-heating products, with their first-mover advantage, are expected to help Suda Noodle House become a new blockbuster series. Currently, the "three carriages" of Master Kong's Suda family are galloping forward, setting a new benchmark for the category.
3. Precise Target Audience Marketing to Make Product Power Perceived
If quality products open the door to the ultra-premium market, then precise marketing is the booster for brand development. Premium brands have a smaller audience but higher requirements for marketing methods, so marketing must have a sense of "premiumness." Still using Master Kong Suda as an example, let's look at some cases to see how the brand captures the hearts of high-end users.
Enhance brand image through sports marketing. Seizing the opportunity of "China Ice and Snow," it became a sports nutrition dietary partner of the Winter Sports Center of the General Administration of Sport, developing the "China Ice and Snow Customized Edition Master Kong Suda Noodle House" product. Through such major sports event partnerships, it establishes the premium image of Suda Noodle House.
Leverage the Spring Festival to empower consumer conversion with traditional culture. Suda Noodle House targets the natural connection between traditional noodle culture and the Spring Festival, using consumers' expectations of auspiciousness in traditional culture, launching the "Fu Lu Shou Xi" series during the Spring Festival, using traditional culture to empower consumer conversion.
Deep channel cultivation, targeted approach. Combining the product characteristics of Suda Noodle House, it focuses on e-commerce, convenience stores, and special channels like long-distance passenger transport, reaching the target consumer group more precisely, and through brand exposure and marketing activities, achieving sales conversion.
-04- Summary
Under consumption upgrades, user needs are more diverse, quality demands are stricter, and brands are tested on their insight into users. By continuously refining products to meet user needs, establishing deep emotional connections, and transforming quality into user perception, Master Kong Suda has perfected its product matrix, launched a combination punch, and gained user recognition through precise marketing.
From meal replacement to proper meal, from bowl noodles to cook-type noodles to self-heating noodles, the Master Kong Suda family series is expected to lead the category into a new development stage, becoming another "heavy weapon" for Master Kong in the noodle field, helping the brand become a new star blockbuster product.
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