At a supermarket in southwest China's Sichuan Province, January 7, 2022. /CFP
Diners in China turned to ready-made dishes for their annual reunion dinners on the eve of the Lunar New Year holiday, as busy schedules and new offerings from restaurants and supermarkets prompt a shift in traditions.
The reunion, on Monday this year, is customary for many Chinese-speaking communities around the world. Families traditionally get together for a freshly prepared feast to mark the end of a year and welcome another.
But in China ready-made dishes or meals, which are pre-prepared and can be warmed up in a few minutes, are now coming into fashion as time-starved urbanites seek quick solutions. Shortcuts are especially welcome for complicated traditional dishes like braised "Dongpo Pork Elbow" or "Buddha Jumps Over the Wall," a meat-and-seafood stew that can require up to 30 ingredients.
"Last year I had to spend days to prepare the New Year Eve dinner," said Li Wei, a 32-year-old teacher who decided to pre-order dishes for her family's reunion dinner from a well-known Beijing restaurant.
"I learned from media reports that ready-made dishes are popular, and that sounds a perfect solution to me as I am not a good cook anyway."
Supermarkets and restaurants are rushing to meet the demand.
Alibaba Group's Freshippo supermarket chain is offering Lunar New Year ready-made meal sets priced from 688 yuan ($108.17) to as much as 3,888 yuan, and Dingdong Maicai, another fresh-food delivery platform, sells easy-to-cook dishes for the holiday, such as sweet rice pudding.
China's ready-made vegetable market was estimated to be 345.9 billion yuan in 2021, according to iiMedia Research. The market is on track to expand yearly at a growth rate of 20 percent, reaching about 516.5 billion yuan in size in 2023.
The pandemic prompts the popularity of ready-made dishes as social distancing measures make more people stay in for meals.
However, the advancement in food process techniques and development of cold chain logistics are the primary reasons for the growth in the ready-made dishes sector, according to NCBD, a research organization for the catering industry.
iiMedia Research analysts believe that ready-made food can also find its place in chain stores. The rapid growth of chain stores creates an increasing demand for ready-made food, as they resort to standardized and large-scale production. Ready-made food can cut the operation cost in restaurants' kitchens, the research organization added.
NCBD noted problems exited in the sector, including unclear industry standards, incomplete supply chain and vulnerability to the price fluctuations of raw materials.
NCBD predicted that enterprises will pay more attention to the brand-building going forward, and focus on the business-to-business market and business-to-consumer market.
