---
title: "The Prepared Dishes Track: The Day Will Dawn, But Don't Disappear in the Middle of the Night"
description: "The prepared dishes track is hot, with many new players. How to avoid disappearing in the middle of the night is a question every entrepreneur must face. According to data from the Ministry of Commerce, sales of prepared dishes during the 2022 online New Year shopping festival grew 45.9% year-on-year, and the market is expected to exceed 3 trillion yuan by 2025."
author: "东方"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2022-02-09"
language: "en"
canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/the-prepared-dishes-track-the-day-will-dawn-but-don-t-disappear-in-the-m-df88d760/"
markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/the-prepared-dishes-track-the-day-will-dawn-but-don-t-disappear-in-the-m-df88d760.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/smxQgl0MGOnOPJG6aCbWuA"
translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E9%A2%84%E5%88%B6%E8%8F%9C%E8%B5%9B%E9%81%93-%E5%A4%A9%E4%BC%9A%E4%BA%AE-%E4%BD%86%E4%BD%A0%E5%88%AB%E6%B6%88%E5%A4%B1%E5%9C%A8%E5%8D%8A%E5%A4%9C%E9%87%8C-df88d760.md"
attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/the-prepared-dishes-track-the-day-will-dawn-but-don-t-disappear-in-the-m-df88d760/"
usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt"
---

# The Prepared Dishes Track: The Day Will Dawn, But Don't Disappear in the Middle of the Night

> The prepared dishes track is hot, with many new players. How to avoid disappearing in the middle of the night is a question every entrepreneur must face. According to data from the Ministry of Commerce, sales of prepared dishes during the 2022 online New Year shopping festival grew 45.9% year-on-year, and the market is expected to exceed 3 trillion yuan by 2025.

Source: Lingshou (ID: lingshouke) Author: Dongfang
Lingshou Note: The prepared dishes track is hot, with many new players. How to avoid disappearing in the middle of the night is a question every entrepreneur must face.
The popularity of prepared dishes needs no further explanation.
Against the backdrop of advocating staying put for the New Year, the explosion of prepared dishes is said to be the result of favorable timing, geographical advantage, and human harmony. On January 20, data from the Ministry of Commerce's big data monitoring of key e-commerce platforms showed that sales of prepared dishes during the 2022 national online New Year shopping festival increased by 45.9% year-on-year.
At the same time, relevant research reports predict that by 2025, the prepared dishes market size is expected to exceed 3 trillion yuan.
Facing continuously improving data and a trillion-yuan market, prepared dish companies are emerging one after another. Pengpengdai (烹烹袋), a ready-to-heat food brand, is one of them.
******Entering the Track Requires Deep Thinking**
Although the track is hot, in the view of Sarah, partner at Pengpengdai, whether a product can become a national consumer brand requires deep thinking and rational recognition of the following points:
**First, when everyone is entering the track, how to choose a niche field to "grind away" at.**
For example, there are many players in the prepared dishes track making "dishes," but Pengpengdai has chosen to focus on staple foods like noodles and rice. Of course, choosing this niche is based on the team's years of observation and research in the track, supported by relevant data, plus the backing of a top domestic R&D team, which is the foundation for future "grinding" on products.
**Second, for the B2C business of prepared dishes, the supply chain is still scarce and not very mature.**
When a new consumer brand benchmarks against national consumer brands, the entry barrier becomes high, requiring a very strong R&D team and supply chain management team.
**Third, consumer education still takes time.**
Consumer education for prepared dishes on the B2C side still needs time. In this process, how to carve out your own path is precisely the test of the team's operational capability. First, integrate the R&D team and supply chain team, then the team's financing ability, and more importantly, channel capability and brand capability.
For example, in the process of consumer education, what products to offer online to support the brand from the first step to the next few steps, without blurring the brand's core category in consumers' minds, while also helping the brand survive through development. This tests the efficiency of channel operations, the speed of burning money, and so on.
As an entrepreneur, how to persist from dark to dawn is very important, and it's a problem everyone faces and solves daily.
Everyone can see the huge market size of prepared dishes in the future, but have they done enough deep thinking before joining the track? Just as you are confident the day will dawn, the question is how to avoid disappearing in the middle of the night.
Based on the above issues, Pengpengdai has its own solutions.
**"Grinding" on a Niche Field**
How to satisfy consumers' taste buds while achieving ultimate convenience.
"Since users choose 'convenience,' we must let users truly experience the simplicity of 'putting an elephant in the fridge in a few steps,' while the product locks in the 'wok aroma,'" Sarah told Lingshou. Pengpengdai is also working on how to solve a meal around instant food, "grinding" products to achieve ultimate convenience.
It is understood that Pengpengdai was originally a prepared dishes project brand under Zaihui Network (再惠网络) in June 2020. In August 2021, the project was spun off and reorganized, and the operations team was readjusted. Subsequently, in August and September, two rounds of financing in the tens of millions were completed.
Its product positioning is around instant food, solving a meal with frozen instant food. Products are mainly rice and noodles, with categories such as soups, toppings, and side dishes developed around staple foods. The main customer group is senior white-collar workers around 30 years old, new mothers, etc.
Sarah introduced that the team actually participated in prepared dishes projects as early as 2015. At that time, the project was called "Wochu Fresh" (我厨生鲜), and B2C prepared dishes were a core competitive category for "Wochu Fresh." At that time, it was also one of the earliest teams in China to engage in B2C prepared ingredients and operate at scale.
From 2015 to 2017, Sarah said that the highest daily order volume in Shanghai was about 30,000 orders. However, at that time, the entire customer group or users accepting B2C prepared dishes were still a minority, and there was no dependent consumption. Later, the project was acquired. Even so, they kept paying attention to prepared dishes and firmly believed it was a trend for the future.
"Increasing standardization is definitely a future trend. I think this is beyond doubt, just a matter of when it will arrive. Based on the practice of 'Wochu Fresh' from 2015 to 2017, compared to other teams in the domestic market focusing on prepared dishes, the current Pengpengdai team has a deeper understanding," Sarah said.
By the end of 2019, the pandemic broke out, and under the catalyst of this black swan event, the prepared dishes market began to explode. Sarah's team resolutely restarted the prepared dishes project.
From the project restart in June 2020 to the "spin-off" in August 2021, Sarah said it was also based on the existence of the following two optimization spaces:
**First, product convenience.**
When users choose 'convenience' to solve a meal, how to provide the ultimate convenience, completely without needing to light a fire, without cooking, preferably without any extra actions. How many steps to put an elephant in the fridge, this product has that many steps. Put it in the microwave, 'ding,' take it out and eat.
So, when the Pengpengdai team restarted the prepared dishes project and optimized it, the goal was clear—either not convenient, or ultimately convenient.
According to Lingshou's observation, consumers who choose ready-to-heat food are mostly senior white-collar workers with fast-paced lives who need the simplest dining method.
An important consumption scenario for instant food products is when users come home late after overtime work and need to eat. At this time, the biggest demand is speed; products that heat in the microwave for three to five minutes are most suitable. To create this convenience, Pengpengdai made the packaging bowl-shaped, so after heating, you just tear open the packaging and eat. Not only is it quick to prepare, but it also solves the dishwashing problem.
**Second, there is room for optimization in price and taste.**
Once users form a high-frequency behavior in the "eating" field, it will eventually become price-sensitive behavior. "No matter how well-off you are, when it becomes something you eat every day, the price sensitivity of this product is different from the price sensitivity of occasionally buying a bag. This is also an important reason why products must undergo price optimization, including how to retain the 'wok aroma' in taste," Sarah said.
In addition, during the product optimization process, Pengpengdai currently has three main product development lines:
**First, the rice product line.**
"Regarding the development of rice products, we define it as a 'long-term war.' We will slowly polish, slowly grind, and slowly optimize, so the pace of new product launches will be relatively slower," Sarah said.
**Second, the noodle product line.**
"The pace of new product launches for pasta will accelerate next. Currently, there are not many problems in technology and R&D, and the cost price range has been fully brought down, so 'pasta' will be an important category for us next, and it also belongs to the cash flow category."
**Third, the "snack" product line.**
Currently, it mainly includes chicken wings, roasted sweet potatoes, roasted sausages, crayfish, and the upcoming soup series. "For the soup series, our team is currently 'grinding' on how to make it delicious, tasty, healthy, and highly restorative, with the key being to make the price 'affordable to the people,'" Sarah told Lingshou.
******Benchmarking Against National Consumer Brands**
If a new consumer brand benchmarks itself against national consumer brands, the challenges and tests it faces are the entire team's operational capabilities. This includes product R&D capability, brand capability, channel layout capability, supply chain management capability, financing capability, etc.
For new consumer brands, offline layout is relatively difficult. On the one hand, it tests the brand's product strength; on the other hand, it tests the experience of the channel team.
Sarah, who has been immersed in fresh food retail for many years, said that frozen food basically cannot make money on online channels. After calculating traffic costs, logistics costs, and labor costs, there won't be much surplus.
The way out for frozen brands is to form enough brand power to generate enough natural traffic, so as to achieve a truly positive cycle. Therefore, it is necessary to do multi-channel and full-domain layout. Online, the main focus is on brand and market mind-share education.
Generally, the logistics and distribution cost for frozen goods can reach 20%, and whether it's Douyin or Taobao, e-commerce platform channel costs can reach 50%. Generally, the gross margin of frozen products is around 60%, which is difficult to cover costs.
Therefore, with reasonable pricing, products are hard to be profitable. And consumers are highly price-sensitive for high-frequency consumer goods; raising prices will inevitably lead to user loss, so profitability on online channels is a difficult problem.
Offline channels are different. Through regional frozen food distributors for intensive distribution, the cold chain cost of products can be reduced to 3% to 5%. Even adding entry fees, promotion fees, and other routine expenses, it can still ensure a gross margin of 10% to 15% for products.
In addition, in Sarah's view, the distribution and dealership system is the foundation of Chinese retail and can maintain the brand's sustainable development.
In the early stage of taking over the project, from September to November 2021, the Pengpengdai team mainly invested in online channels, with the purpose of determining user tags, thereby providing a reference for offline marketing plans.
By the end of November, after user tags were confirmed, online traffic investment was suspended. In December, Pengpengdai's new products were launched, and at the same time, they began entering offline channels at FamilyMart convenience stores. Currently, they have entered more than 1,100 FamilyMart stores, with single products accounting for 10% of their freezer space, ranking TOP in same-category sales.
In addition, Pengpengdai has laid out offline in landmark KA supermarkets such as Pangdonglai (胖东来), Beijing Shouhang (北京首航), Jiaxing Haihang (嘉兴海航), Changshu Changkelong (常熟常客隆), etc. At the same time, in special channels such as catering, leisure, and entertainment, they mainly choose stores with a concentration of young people to distribute.
For example, cooperating with cat cafes, young people staying put for the New Year can go to cat cafes, pet cats, drink coffee, and eat Pengpengdai products at the same time.
Sarah said that benchmarking against national consumer brands and achieving a scale of ten billion, Pengpengdai has chosen a relatively steady approach. Besides product R&D capability, full-domain channel layout is the most critical point.
******How to Persist Until Dawn?**
Just as you are confident the day will dawn, the key is how to successfully persist until dawn, rather than disappearing in the middle of the night. This is a key question for every entrepreneur.
For Sarah, she said it still depends on the capability of the operating team.
According to Lingshou, Pengpengdai currently has four partners. One is the co-founder of Huige Small Hotpot (辉哥小火锅), who has always had a dream of B2C prepared dishes and is extremely "picky" about "eating"; the CTO is from a top domestic instant food brand's technical R&D, holding dozens of patents, and can quickly judge whether a dish can be turned into a standard product;
The CFO is the former CFO of a listed company, with expertise in financing, finance, capital planning, and future IPO; Sarah, who has been immersed in fresh food retail for many years, also has deep insights into online and offline layout and marketing.
In the past 2021, for Pengpengdai, which went through several months of initial development, Sarah used four keywords to describe it:
**First, honored.** "I am very fortunate and honored that after two rounds of financing, with the support of investors, we have the opportunity to do what we want to do, including the new investors we are currently in contact with."
**Second, calm.** "After the project started, the style and state of the Pengpengdai team and investors, I think, are relatively calm. The style everyone upholds is long-term, continuous, cautious thinking, calmly promoting project progress, rather than getting hot-headed and pursuing the speed of enterprise development. Next, we hope to truly make friends with time."
**Third, grind.** "From products to costs to marketing, our team's current state of 'grinding' is very obvious."
**Fourth, desire.** For a team building a large consumer brand, sinking products to achieve a national penetration rate of ten billion is not something a young team can "handle." This involves factory, R&D, channel, etc., all of which require time and accumulation of connections.
So, in terms of team structure, it needs people who are older and have enough experience to complete it. But the key point is that when people reach a certain age, some things are easily smoothed over, so for people in this age group, "desire" is very important.
Sarah said that in the development process of some new consumer brands, excessive pursuit of expansion speed and scale will invisibly distort many things, which is not advisable. She said that in the future, she hopes investors who understand retail will come in.
Just as the prepared dishes track is hot, for the new players flooding in, how to persist until dawn and not disappear in the middle of the night is a problem every entrepreneur needs to face. Perhaps as Sarah said, setting the right mindset is key. To be a ten-billion brand, you must have the posture of a ten-billion brand.
 _-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