Boom in ready-made meals as Chinese embrace convenience

Buddha Jumps Over the Wall isn't something that can just be whipped up at home. But lately the well-known Chinese delicacy featuring high-grade ingredients and a complicated preparation process has been finding its way into more Chinese households, as part of the growing popularity of ready-made meals.

Hydewin, an ingredient processing company based in East China's Fujian province, launched ready-to-cook Buddha Jumps Over the Wall gift boxes for the recent Mid-Autumn Festival. Containing ingredients such as abalone, sea cucumbers and vegetarian shark fins, the gift box needs to be defrosted and heated before serving.

The size of China's ready-made food market has exceeded 300 billion yuan ($42.3 billion). More than 5,000 varieties of ready-made dishes are for sale on e-commerce platforms, said a recent report from Consumption Daily.

During the Spring Festival holiday, from Jan 31 to Feb 6, the sales of ready-made dishes on e-commerce platform Taobao jumped more than 100 percent year-on-year. Those on Freshippo, the grocery chain of Alibaba Group, soared 345 percent.

Dong Mingzhu, chairwoman of Gree Electric Appliances, announced at a recent symposium on the ready-made food industry that it will set up a company to manufacture dish equipment.

COVID-19 is an important factor underpinning the recent sales growth of ready-made dishes, which are easy to prepare and rich in variety.

For example, during the COVID-induced suspension of dine-in services in Beijing in May, major supermarket chains and online fresh food marketplaces saw marked increases in sales of precooked dishes, Legal Daily reported.

As many businesses have jumped on the bandwagon in a short space of time, problems have arisen. These include inconsistencies in taste, a lack of industry standards and a low bar to entry.

"We bought and tasted all the ready-made dishes available on the market. Many products of the same type share names but tasted differently," Jia Guolong told Consumption Daily. Jia is the chairman of Xibei Restaurants and founder of Jia Guolong Kung Fu Cuisine, a ready-made food brand of Xibei.

Kong Runchang, vice-president of the Hebei Specialty Food Industry and Culture Research Institute, pointed out that funding is a major hindrance to the healthy development of the precooked food industry.

"Because of the low barrier to entry, many businesses in this trade are of small size, and they face financial difficulties due to a shortage of guarantees such as real estate," Kong is quoted as saying by chinanews.com.

"In addition, many precooked food producers are still in the primary processing stage. They are unable to effectively control the risks in procurement, production, transportation, sales and other steps, which may cause losses and affect operations," Kong added.

On top of problems inside the industry, many consumers hold the opinion that ready-made dishes are mostly frozen foods and are not fresh or healthy enough. For this reason, a lot of them have second thoughts when it comes to purchasing them.

Chen Ruiai — deputy to the National People's Congress and chairwoman of Zhaoqing Dahuanong Biomedicine, which is based in South China's Guangdong province — urged the formulation of industry standards on food safety. She said that the bar to entry must be raised to ensure the quality of ready-made food, Legal Daily reported.

"It is also necessary to bring in third-party testing service providers and trace the source of farm produce used in ready-made dishes, utilizing quick food safety testing methods and internet-based approaches," Chen added.

Regarding the future of the industry, financial group Topsperity Securities holds an optimistic view. It says in a report that ready-made dishes not only cater to young professionals who have little time to cook, but meet the demands of food and beverage businesses to reduce costs and improve efficiency.

Jia told Consumption Daily: "Ready-made dishes mark the modernization of Chinese food. It's a combination of traditional Chinese cooking and modern food technology."

An industry veteran once said that the ready-made dish industry is not necessarily the "final answer" to the modernization of Chinese food, but it will be a milestone in this process, said the Consumption Daily report.