During the epidemic, self-heating foods quickly became popular in the fast-moving consumer goods market by virtue of novel eating methods and flavors from above.
As giants and new players flock in, what are the opportunities and challenges of the self-heating food track?
What kind of waves can it make in traditional convenience food companies?
Core viewpoint:
1. Self-heating foods with novel and convenient attributes invade the market of new consumer groups and quickly "self-heat".
2. Traditional convenience food companies are racing to take the "self-heating food" express train when they are retreating in the face of the takeaway invasion.
3. Self-heating foods are popular in the market and are loved by "lazy people". Coupled with the promotion of e-commerce platforms, the self-heating food track shows diversified characteristics and may become "eternal" products in the future.
Self-heating food quickly "self-heating"
Affected by the epidemic, the "home economy" prevails, and the convenience food market ushered in a blowout. In addition to the popularity of instant noodles, quick-frozen dumplings and pasta are out of stock, the smelly snail noodles tops the sales list, and the outbreak of "self-heating food"!
According to statistics, from January 20 to February 2, self-heating convenience food ranked second among the best-selling products; the sales of self-heating rice increased by 257.09% year-on-year, even far exceeding the average instant noodle growth of 133.34%.
As the name suggests, self-heating food is pre-packaged food that does not require fire or electricity and is heated with its own heating pack. I believe you may have experienced this novel way of eating products long before the epidemic. I remember that last year I also bought a self-heating hot pot for early adopters. The price was about 30 yuan. It was eaten on the train at that time, but it was greedy. Cried a passenger in a car!
In fact, as early as 2017, the product has become popular, and the self-heating hot pot is the first to set off the self-heating food craze, and the self-heating hot pot has once become an Internet celebrity food. When everyone talked about when this kind of FMCG craze would recede, big hot pot brands and large food companies joined in one after another, fueling this wave.
As a rookie category of convenience foods, the self-heating food market seems to have "self-heating" attributes. According to data from Food Industry Network, the size of my country's self-heating food market in 2019 is about 3.5 billion yuan, and it is expected to reach 4 billion yuan by 2020.
So, is the continuous investment of businesses and capital really just because the market prospects are great?
Why are traditional convenience food companies rushing in?
According to data from Tianyan Check, there are four main categories of self-heating food companies: catering companies, leisure snack brands, convenience food brands, and new self-heating food companies. In 2019 alone, the number of self-heating food companies increased by 31.
Among them, many convenience food brands have joined the track. For example, Master Kong launched self-heating noodles, Jinmailang launched Mr. Mi Fan self-heating hot pot and other products.
So why are convenience food companies competing to join the self-heating food track?
1. Being squeezed by the takeaway market, its market share has dropped sharply, and it is eager for new products to stabilize its position.
2. Self-heating food is an upgraded version of traditional instant noodles to capture new consumer groups.
Although traditional fast food companies have ushered in an outbreak under the epidemic, their market share has been showing a downward trend in the past years, and all this is mainly caused by the rise of the food delivery industry.
According to Wind data, the sales of convenience foods have been declining since 2013, and reached the bottom at the most intense moment of the takeaway subsidy battle around 2015. It was not until the outbreak of new self-heating foods in 2017 that new products were reborn.
Source: Wind
As the "lazy economy" has become a new force in domestic consumption, in order to seize this new force, traditional convenience food companies have to upgrade and innovate to create new products and new brands, which are self-heating foods under the convenience food track. Become the best choice.
In a sense, self-heating food is an upgrade and replacement of traditional instant noodles. For established convenience food companies 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 It will also accelerate the competition for the blue ocean of self-heating food.
In addition, the competition on the self-heating food track has also become fierce, and more and more new players and new ways of playing have emerged. According to data from Tianyan Check, among self-heating food companies, there are strong individuals with a registered capital of more than 10 million, as well as individual industrial and commercial businesses.
For example, Haidilao has launched its own self-heating hot pot products, and leisure snack giants such as Baicaowei and Three Squirrels have entered the self-heating food market one after another, and new self-heating food companies continue to join.
What are the opportunities and challenges?
The epidemic is gradually becoming a thing of the past, and self-heating food is showing signs of cooling, but overall sales are still hot. So, what is the charm of self-heating food, attracting more and more new players into the game? How did it become an "Evergreen" track?
First of all, self-heating foods gradually make "lazy people" on the top with their novel eating methods, fast food, and convenient attributes.
According to the analysis of retail business review, nearly half of China's over 200 million singles are between 20-29 years old; 18-30 year olds account for nearly 70% of lazy people, and more than 70% of Chinese post-95s consume People prefer to buy goods directly through social media, which is higher than the global average of 44%.
In addition, according to the data of Tmall in 2019, among the self-heating hot pot consumer groups, 18-24 year olds accounted for 47.75%, 25-29 year olds accounted for 19.61%, college students and white-collar workers just entering the workplace accounted for nearly 50% .
From this, it can be seen that the self-heating hot pot has convenient attributes such as no fire, no plug-in, and can be eaten anytime, anywhere, which completely fits the current lazy economy and fast-paced life, and has successfully owned most of the loyal consumer group.
Secondly, the self-heating food market has great space. Apart from the help of the epidemic, the development will accelerate in the future. According to data from the Food Industry Network, the market size of self-heating food in my country in 2019 reached 3.5 billion yuan, and the sales of self-heating food will usher in a new round of explosive growth in 2020. The market size is expected to reach 4 billion yuan.
Finally, if the transformation of new consumer groups provides potential purchase opportunities for self-heating food, the rise of live broadcast e-commerce provides a more powerful stage for its all-round display. The self-heating food is specializing in online sales channels, live electricity supplier will become popular in the market long-term trends.
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 everyone feels this way. Although self-heating food is simple and fast, is the price a bit too expensive? According to a survey by Songguo Finance, a box of self-heating hot pot with a net weight of more than 400 grams on the market is priced between 35-40 yuan, and their meat content is less than a quarter, and the homogeneity phenomenon is serious.
So, self-heating food that belongs to fast-moving consumer goods is not as fresh and rich in variety as takeaway, and self-heating food that is more expensive than instant noodles. How can consumers maintain their enthusiasm for buying for a long time? '
In addition, self-heating food must be careful to "blow"! Various self-heating food evaluations on the Internet show that self-heating food has great safety hazards. Overheating of self-heating packages causes consumers to be scalded. Consumers' improper steps in the eating process result in product explosion news.
Although the self-heating food track is becoming more and more lively, the industry standard has yet to be advanced. Some institutional research reports believe that the safety and standardization of self-heating food will still be the subject of discussion for a long time to come.
How do self-heating food companies develop in an all-round way?
Self-heating food is a track where opportunities and challenges coexist due to the advantages of low cost, high profit, wide channels, and steady growth in customer demand. The companies are, how should the next round of development, so that self-heating food become a veritable "evergreen" products?
On the convenience food track, the degree of concentration is very high, and the concentration of natural food under the convenience food track will also become higher and higher.
At present, the self-heating food industry has relatively low concentration, with only Haidilao, Zihaiguo and Mo Xiaoxian as the leading companies. Therefore, the market will continue to "innovate" in the future, and the output of new brands will continue to bring more new variables to the entire industry, and finally, when the market concentration becomes higher and higher, several unique brands will be left.
Therefore, if self-heating food companies want to build their brand awareness and increase market concentration, the difficulty lies mainly in the team, but also in the technical aspects of safety, nutrition, and convenience.
As for the team, talent is an indispensable driving force for sustainable development in each market. Its advertising, channel building, and product development all require a talent team. As for the improvement of technology, it is the continuous output of talents for this aspect.
From the above, we can see that the long-term driving force of food companies is innovation, and talents and technology are everyone's competition.
In the future, self-heating food companies will give priority to solving these difficulties.
1. Break through product type restrictions. Self-heating rice, self-heating hot pot, etc., among which vegetable products are very restricted. Because the freshness of vegetables is difficult to preserve, and self-heating foods as pre-packaged foods are difficult to guarantee to provide a variety of vegetable products, which leads to various brands The choice of dishes is similar, with serious homogeneity.
2. Safety and health need to be improved. For generation Z young people who are now focusing on health preservation, self-heating foods are generally heavy salt and heavy oil, which is not conducive to long-term stable growth in sales.
3. The high price, cost-effective but not close to the people, also restricts category development. Self-heating foods whose prices are positioned in the mid-range between takeaway and convenience foods. This neutral position does bring room for survival, but the price is not close to the people and it is indeed a disadvantage. Consumers may also just try out of freshness, but how to maintain later customers is a key element of the continued development of the market.
Finally, for the question of whether self-heating food is "Evergreen" product. The author believes that there is a certain possibility that the self-heating food market has the potential to tap.
Wang Zhengqi, founder of the self-heating food brand Mo Xiaoxian, once said, "The current instant noodle market has a market capacity of up to 80 billion, and self-heating products are generally 4 times that of instant noodles. Therefore, it is not a big problem to reach 1/4 of the volume, so the market capacity It can reach about 80 billion."
However, the entry threshold of the self-heating food track is low, which also makes the industry unable to build strong barriers. Therefore, whether the self-heating food can become an "evergreen" product depends on market demand.
Author: Yexiao An
Article source: Songguo Finance, please indicate the copyright for reprinting.