Is it a good business to sneak up on the self-heated food in the ＂lazy economy＂？

Editor’s Note: This article is published by the columnist Songguo Finance, and the copyright belongs to the original author.

During the epidemic period, self-heating food quickly became popular in FMCG market with its novel eating methods and top taste.

What are the opportunities and challenges of the self-heating food track when giants and new players flock to it?

What kind of waves can it set off in traditional convenience food enterprises?

Core point of view:

1. Self-heating food with novel and convenient attributes invades the market of new consumer groups and quickly "self-heats".

2. Traditional convenience food enterprises are losing ground in the face of take-away attacks, competing to take the "self-heating food" express train.

3. Self-heating food is popular in the market and is deeply loved by "lazy people". Coupled with the help of e-commerce platform, the self-heating food track presents diversified characteristics and will become an "evergreen" product in the future.

Trapped by the epidemic situation and the prevalence of "house economy", the convenience food market ushered in a blowout. In addition to the popularity of instant noodles, the out-of-stock of quick-frozen dumplings and pasta, the sales volume of snail powder topped the list, and the outbreak of "self-heated food"!

According to statistics, from January 20th to February 2nd, self-heating convenience food ranked second among the best-selling products. Among them, the sales of self-heated rice increased as high as 257.09% year-on-year, even far exceeding the average growth of instant noodles of 133.34%.

Self-heating food, as its name implies, is a prepackaged foods heated by its own heating bag without fire or electricity. I believe everyone may have experienced this novel eating method before the epidemic. I remember that last year, I bought a self-heating hot pot for early taste, and the price was around 30 yuan. At that time, I was eating it on the train, but I cried a box of passengers!

In fact, as early as 2017, this product has been popular, and self-heating hot pot was the first to set off the upsurge of self-heating food, and self-heating hot pot once became online celebrity food. When everyone talked about when this kind of fast-moving consumer goods craze subsided, the big brands of hot pot and large food companies joined in one after another, which fueled this wave.

As a new category of convenience food, the self-heating food market has the property of "self-heating".According to the data of Food Industry Network, the scale of China’s self-heating food market is about 3.5 billion yuan in 2019, and it is expected to reach 4 billion yuan by 2020.

Then, the continuous investment of merchants and capital, reallyJust because the market prospect is bright?

Why do traditional convenience food enterprises rush in?

According to the data of Tianyancha, there are four main types of self-heating food enterprises: catering enterprises, leisure and snack brands, convenience food brands and newly established self-heating food enterprises. In 2019 alone, the number of self-heating food enterprises increased by 31.

Among them, many convenience food brands have joined the track, such as Master Kong’s self-heating noodles, and Jinmailang’s self-heating hot pot and other products.

So,Why do convenience food companies compete to join the self-heating food track?

1. Squeezed by the take-away market, the market share has dropped sharply, and new products are urgently needed to stabilize their position.

2. Self-heating food is an upgraded version of traditional instant noodles, in order to seize new consumer groups.

Although the traditional fast food enterprises have ushered in an outbreak under the epidemic, their market share has been declining in previous years, which is mainly caused by the rise of the takeaway industry.

According to Wind data, since 2013, the sales volume of convenience foods has been declining, and it fell to the bottom at the most intense moment of the take-away subsidy war around 2015, and it was not until the outbreak of new self-heating foods in 2017 that it was revived.

With the "lazy economy" becoming a new force of domestic consumption, in order to seize this new force, traditional convenience food enterprises have to upgrade and innovate to create new products and brands, which belong to self-heating food under the convenience food track, and naturally become the only choice.

In a sense, self-heating food is an upgrade and replacement of traditional instant noodles. For established convenience food enterprises such as Master Kong and Uni-President, entering the self-heating food market is a new growth opportunity. At the same time, in order to seize new consumer groups, everyone will also accelerate the competition for self-heating food.

In addition, the competition on the self-heating food track has become fierce, and more and more new players and new ways of playing have emerged. According to the data of Tianyancha, among the self-heating food enterprises, there are both powerful people with registered capital higher than 10 million, and some individual industrial and commercial households have begun to test the water.

For example, Haidilao launched its own self-heating hot pot products, and leisure snack giants such as Baicaowei and Three Squirrels entered the self-heating food market one after another, and new self-heating food enterprises continued to join.

The epidemic situation has gradually become a thing of the past, and the self-heated food shows signs of cooling down, but the overall sales volume is still hot. So, what is the charm of self-heating food, attracting more and more new players? How did it become an "evergreen" track?

First of all, self-heating food has gradually attracted the "lazy people" by virtue of its novel eating methods, fast food and convenient properties.

According to the analysis of retail business reviews, nearly half of the over 200 million singles in China are between the ages of 20 and 29; People aged 18-30 account for nearly 70% of the lazy people. More than 70% of post-95 consumers in China prefer to buy goods directly through social media, which is higher than the global average of 44%.

According to Tmall’s data in 2019, among the consumers of self-heating hot pot, 47.75% are 18-24 years old, 19.61% are 25-29 years old, and nearly 50% are college students and white-collar workers who just entered the workplace.

From this, we can know that the self-heating hot pot can be eaten anytime and anywhere because of its convenient properties, such as no fire, no plug-in, etc., which fully fits the lazy economy and fast-paced life, and has successfully owned most loyal consumer groups.

Secondly, the self-heating food market has a great space, and besides the help of the epidemic, it will also accelerate its development in the future.According to the data of Food Industry Network, the market size of self-heating food in China reached 3.5 billion yuan in 2019, and the sales volume of self-heating food ushered in a new round of explosive growth in 2020. It is estimated that the market size is expected to reach 4 billion yuan.

Finally, if the transformation of new consumer groups provides potential buying opportunities for self-heating food, the rise of live e-commerce provides a more powerful stage for its all-round display. butSelf-heating food specializes in online sales channels, and the popularity of e-commerce live broadcast will become the long-term development trend of this market.

On the other hand,Although the self-heating food track has many opportunities and advantages, there are still challenges and hidden dangers.

I don’t know if you have this feeling. Although self-heating food is simple and fast, is it a bit too expensive? According to the survey of Songguo Finance, a box of self-heating chafing dishes with a net weight of more than 400 grams on the market costs between 35 and 40 yuan, and their meat content is less than a quarter, and the homogenization phenomenon is serious.

Then, how can self-heating food, which belongs to fast-moving consumer goods, maintain consumers’ enthusiasm for buying for a long time? ‘

In addition, self-heating food must be careful of "self-explosion"! Various online self-heating food evaluations show that there are great safety hazards in self-heating food. Consumers are scalded due to overheating of self-heating packages, and news of product explosion caused by improper steps in the process of eating by consumers is not uncommon.

Although the self-heating food track is becoming more and more lively, the industry standard needs to be promoted. There is also an institutional research report that the safety and standardization of self-heating food will still be the subject to be discussed for a long time to come.

Self-heating food is a track where opportunities and challenges coexist because of its advantages such as low cost, high profit, wide channels and steady growth of customer demand. butHow should enterprises develop in an all-round way in the next step, so that self-heating food can become a veritable "evergreen" product?

On the convenience food track, the concentration degree is very high, and the concentration degree of natural food under the convenience food track will also be higher and higher.

At present, the concentration of self-heating food industry is relatively low, and there are only a few head enterprises, such as Haidilao, Zihai Pot and Mo Xiaoxian. Therefore, in the future, the market will continue to "innovate", and the output of new brands will bring more new variables to the whole industry. Finally, when the market concentration is getting higher and higher, several unique big brands will be left behind.

Therefore, if self-heating food enterprises want to build their own brand awareness and enhance market concentration, the difficulty mainly lies in the team, and in the improvement of safety, nutrition and convenience.

For the team, talent is the indispensable kinetic energy for sustainable development in every market, and its advertising, channel construction and product research and development all need talent teams. For the improvement of technology, that is, the continuous output of talents in this area.

From the above, we can know that the long-term driving force of food enterprises is innovation, and talent technology is a must for everyone.

In the future, self-heating food enterprises should give priority to solving these difficulties.

1. Break through product type restrictions.Self-heating rice, self-heating chafing dish, etc., among which vegetable products are very limited. Because it is difficult to preserve the freshness of vegetables, and as self-heating food in prepackaged foods, it is difficult to guarantee to provide a variety of vegetable products, which leads to the similar choice of side dishes of various brands and serious homogenization.

2. Safety and health need to be improved.For today’s Z-generation young people who pay attention to health care, self-heating foods are generally heavy in salt and heavy oil, which is not conducive to the long-term stable growth of sales.

3. The high price and cost performance are not close to the people, which also limits the category development.Self-heating food whose price is positioned in the middle range of take-away and convenience food, this neutral position does bring living space for it, but the price is not close to the people is also a disadvantage. Consumers may just try for novelty, but how to maintain customers in the later period is the key factor for the sustainable development of this market.

Finally, whether the self-heating food is an "evergreen" product. The author believes that it is possible to tap the potential of the self-heating food market.

Wang Zhengqi, founder of Mo Xiaoxian, a self-heating food brand, once said, "At present, the market capacity of instant noodles is as high as 80 billion, and self-heating products are generally four times that of instant noodles, so it is not a big problem to reach a quarter of the volume, so the market capacity can reach about 80 billion."

However, the entry threshold of self-heating food track is low, which also leads to the inability of the industry to build solid barriers, so whether self-heating food can become an "evergreen" product in the future depends on the market demand.

Author: Ye Xiaoan

Article source: Songguo Finance, please indicate the copyright.

This article is published by Entrepreneurial State authorized by the columnist, and the copyright belongs to the original author. The article is the author’s personal opinion and does not represent the position of the entrepreneurial state. Please contact the original author for reprinting. If you have any questions, please contact editor@cyzone.cn.