"Beer, barbecue, and crayfish" seem to have become the most popular foods in people's night snacks. Among them, crayfish has become a big market for emerging species, and many people have started to cook crayfish. Business.
According to research data from iiMedia.com, consumers of Chinese aquatic products prepared vegetables most often buy aquatic shrimp, fish, crab and shellfish, accounting for 82.2%, 75.2%, 50.7% and 50.5% respectively. Shrimp has become the first consumer product of aquatic prepared dishes with a proportion of 82.2%, which also indicates that the current shrimp market is undergoing new changes in the pattern.
The expansion of the shrimp market indicates that the production scale of shrimp products will increase, and there is also the risk of a reduction in the unit price of the product. According to public data, the crayfish brand Xinliangji became the sales champion of the three major e-commerce platforms in 618 this year. In the changing market, this "first" throne does not seem to be easy to sit on.
Prefabricated Aquatic Vegetables
It is not accidental that Xinliangji has achieved the top sales position of the three major e-commerce platforms, but the market scale of crayfish and even the entire aquatic prefabricated dishes has expanded, combined with the development of Xinliangji itself, which has made it a big hit.
According to the "2022-2023 China Aquatic Prefabricated Vegetable Industry Research and Competition Pattern Monitoring Report" released by iiMedia.com, the scale of China's aquatic prefabricated vegetable industry will be 85.6 billion yuan in 2021, a year-on-year increase of 16.8%. The market size of aquatic prefabricated vegetables will reach 257.6 billion yuan.
The fire in the prefabricated vegetable market has a lot to do with the difficulty of dine-in meals due to the epidemic. In order to satisfy their appetites, most consumers choose to buy ingredients and cook them themselves. Among them, prefabricated vegetables are semi-finished products, which are always loved by "kitchen experts". Therefore, in the post-epidemic era, orders for prepared dishes have increased, and aquatic prepared dishes are among them.
According to the survey data, in 2022, 68.7% of Chinese consumers of prepared aquatic dishes will increase their consumption times, 27.5% of consumers will remain unchanged, and 3.8% of consumers will consume less times. The fact that pre-made dishes are easier to make cooked food makes some people who love to eat crayfish choose to "cook it themselves".
Gradually leaving dine-in food is the trend of crayfish. After all, the cost of purchasing raw materials is lower than dine-in food. New consumers pay more attention to the matching degree of goods and prices. Moreover, as short video food categories gradually become a big diversion, many users use Since then, I have become a food lover, and I am more familiar with the method of crayfish. What's more, compared with other cuisines, the method of crayfish is simple, with the addition of pre-made dishes, and it is easier to control the name of "home cooking". The consumption scene of lobster is gradually changing.
Moreover, according to the Southern Metropolis Daily report: the sales growth rate of crayfish pre-products under the "Boxing Shrimp" reached 200%. The unit price of orders including "boxing shrimp" was nearly 74% higher than the average order price, reaching 98.9 yuan. In addition, data from Yonghui shows that from May 1st to 22nd, the sales of Yonghui crayfish-related products rose sharply, and the sales of crayfish whole shrimp series in Yonghui Farm increased by nearly 700% year-on-year.
The rise of crayfish prefabricated dishes is of course some people’s joy and some people’s worries. However, Xinliangji, as a top enterprise of crayfish prefabricated dishes, is naturally in the ranks of joy. After all, prefabricated dishes have the characteristics of long shelf life and unchanged taste, so they can be better served. Grasping the needs of consumers can also gain a firm foothold in the fiercely competitive market.
However, the joy of market expansion does not mean that Xinliangji can ignore the disadvantages that may be encountered in the development of the enterprise. Blindly expanding the scale cannot improve the brand image.
Profit is difficult to predict
Leaving aside the larger overall pre-prepared vegetable market, the growth of crayfish pre-prepared dishes alone has brought significant changes to the market, and the growth of crayfish pre-prepared dishes is likely to be accompanied by intensified competition and a surge in production, resulting in a decline in unit price per customer , so that crayfish prefabricated dish brands are unprofitable.
According to the "Analysis of China's Crayfish Industry Market in 2021", the overall price of crayfish in 2021 is higher than that in 2020, an increase of 24.5% compared with 2020; crayfish with a size of 6-8 yuan has increased by 23%. Relevant data from China Shrimp Valley also shows that the overall average price of commercial shrimp in 2022 will increase by 1.8-2 yuan/catties compared to the same period in 2021.
However, according to the big data of Huinong.com and statistics from Aquaculture.com and other institutions, the average price of crayfish in Guangdong, Jiangsu, Anhui, Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi and other places was still at a high level of 40 yuan/catties in April. The quotation has dropped to 20 yuan/catties.
The half-fold price cut made the originally profitable crayfish market seem unprofitable, but the growth of the market led to its price returning to 40 yuan/catties in July, but compared with previous years, it is still on the average The potential of the following crayfish is in stark contrast to the price fluctuations in the market, which has led to an embarrassing situation where offline channels sometimes have sufficient production but are difficult to make a lot of money.
The reason why the current growth of crayfish is doubtful is that it is currently during the summer vacation, and the increase in consumption has led to a great possibility that crayfish will grow on the original basis. However, whether it will encounter cold after the summer vacation is also a question, and with the It is still unknown whether producers and sellers will redefine prices due to the explosion of fire and intensified competition.
Judging from the current development of leading enterprises of crayfish prefabricated dishes, the consumption scene is gradually shifting from the B-end to the C-end, and the return to "fireworks" will also bring new considerations to the crayfish market.
In the early days, crayfish mostly appeared in three types of places, such as specialty stores, night food stalls, and restaurants. At the same time, crayfish were also endowed with strong social attributes. Most consumers believe that eating crayfish is easy to enhance communication. After all, no matter whether it is peeling or eating shrimp, there is no time to play other things, so eating crayfish is regarded as one of the social methods by default.
However, due to the impact of the epidemic and the emergence of live broadcast delivery, opportunities for the sale of crayfish pre-made dishes have emerged. According to some restaurant owners, the pre-made crayfish dishes that are live-streamed make it more difficult to do business in physical stores, and many consumers who do not have cooking skills have also begun to eat at home. They are much cheaper, which is why Xinliangji can use "restaurant taste, half the price" to promote its products.
Judging from the current market situation, many live broadcast rooms will present consumers with promotional methods such as "discounts" and "lowest prices" of products, thereby arousing consumers' desire to consume. This is the consumption method of most products, and Xinliangji has long been Settled in the live broadcast to bring goods, and is expected to win another crown after the top three e-commerce platforms.
The new sales channel allows Xinliangji to have more room for market expansion, and at the same time lays the foundation for it to build a higher brand of crayfish pre-made dishes in the future.
From influencer to brand
As we all know, a successful brand cannot be built casually, but requires long-term precipitation, word-of-mouth, product, sales and other aspects of presentation. It may not be so easy for Xinliangji to rely on crayfish pre-made dishes to promote its brand level. .
According to the official information of Xinliangji, its pre-made dishes not only include crayfish, but also crab, fish, and other meat and vegetarian dishes. The reason why crayfish is selected as a category is because crayfish has the characteristics of Internet celebrity. The social attribute has driven the development of the entire industry, and Xinliangji has also found a breakthrough through this, and has become the leading brand of crayfish prefabricated dishes.
While operating crayfish pre-made dishes, Xinliangji also selects consumer demand research, channel supply chain, teamwork and other aspects to improve the entire business process. However, in the author's opinion, some business processes are similar, and Xinliang Remember that if you want to upgrade your brand, you must find or create a commercial outlet for other categories in the prepared vegetable industry, so as to stand out from other prepared vegetable brands.
However, at present, many top players of prefabricated dishes still use crayfish as the base to develop their own brands, lacking control over the quality, taste and other aspects of other categories, making it difficult for other categories of prefabricated dishes to obtain a similar sales environment of crayfish , so it has been inferior to crayfish pre-prepared dishes in terms of reputation and word-of-mouth, which has caused pre-prepared dish brands to be limited by the development of crayfish pre-prepared dishes, and cannot find new development outlets.
More importantly, the current crayfish category, as a market winner, has received financing from the capital market many times in recent years. It has established a complete and mature business logic, and can transition from the B-end to the C-end market, thus forming the current hot situation. , while other categories are relatively small. The lobster category not only lacks the self-owned construction of the brand, but also lacks the opportunity to attract capital financing or focus on financing a certain category.
In the author's opinion, crayfish, as Xinliangji's popular single product, naturally has the ability not to be underestimated, but the development of prefabricated dishes in the future must not rely on popular products to survive, but the multi-category development of products, so as to win the favor of final consumers Like to open up the market.
The development of prefabricated food brands needs to be popular to guide the opening of the market, just like restaurants need to be popular to attract consumers into the store. What brands want to achieve is to allow consumers to gather offline, but they have to buy "one table" dishes from their own platforms. In this way, products can go hand in hand and more profits can be made.
However, the "one table" dish will test the brand's creative ability, that is, the ability to respond to the market with other single products other than explosive models, so this is not easy for prefabricated dish brands such as Xinliangji.
Generally speaking, the brand products that are currently popular with crayfish prefabricated dishes do not want to be confined to the circle of crayfish prefabricated dishes, but want to jump out to build a larger market and occupy more of the prefabricated vegetable market. Thus, in the name of "prefabricated dishes", it has become an ivy in the consumer market.