All set for the table
The Greater Bay Area is leading the nation in the pre-cooked food business as more enterprises enter the market amid changing lifestyles caused by the pandemic. Zhou Mo reports from Shenzhen.
He notes the region has unique advantages in fostering the industry, given its multiple strengths in agriculture, food production, home-appliance manufacturing and cold-chain logistics.
"In the raw materials upstream supply chain, the first phase of the Greater Bay Area raw materials trading center for fishery and pre-cooked food in Zhaoqing has come into service. In the midstream, a number of food-making, packaging and equipment-producing enterprises, including Zhuhai-based home-appliances giant Gree Electric Appliances, have joined the industry. And, for the downstream, the GBA has rich resources, such as catering and cold-chain logistics companies," says Zhang.
Lifestyle adjustments
The Chinese mainland's pre-made-food market has accelerated in the past few years as the pandemic forced more people to stay at home and cook their own food. A report by market consultancy iiMedia Research says the industry's market reached 345.9 billion yuan last year, having grown 19.8 percent year-on-year. The trade is expected to hit 1.07 trillion yuan by 2026.
"The major consumption force in first-tier and second-tier cities is gradually turning from people born in the 1970s and 1980s to the younger generation, who have a high level of acceptance of pre-cooked food because it can save them a lot of time in their hectic lives," says Liu Yongzhong, head of the Shenzhen Cuisine Association.
