China Ready Meals Market Report 2024

Explore China’s ready meal market with this report. Market sizing with analysis provides the background for deep consumer insights, including preferences and behaviours.

China Ready Meal Market – Current Landscape

Half of consumers consider high nutritional value as a key consideration when purchasing ready meals. The ready meal industry needs to pursue a balance between nutrition, convenience and taste.

Nevertheless, only about 30% of consumers recognise high nutrition value in ready meals, indicating significant room for improvement in meeting consumer demands for nutritional value. Brands focusing on this field have the potential to explore a broader market.

Compared with traditional frozen rice and noodle foods, the market’s growth potential is expected to lie in more diverse chilled food categories that reflect the ‘fresh food’ concept, such as ready-to-eat easy meals and semi-finished quick cook dishes, as well as non-conventional frozen food categories, such as hot pot paste and meatballs and frozen prepared dishes.

Key Topics Analyzed

Report Scope

Prepared foods include frozen, chilled and ambient foods that only require simple preparation.

• Frozen ready meals include frozen dumplings/wontons, frozen tangyuan (glutinous rice balls), frozen buns/steamed buns/Chinese dim sum, frozen meat meal sets, frozen pizzas/frozen pasta etc; chilled ready meals include bento or packaged dishes, sandwiches, sushi/rice balls, salads etc that only require simple heating; ambient ready meals include unpackaged cooked foods (such as deli meats, oden) and ambient packaged staple foods (such as canned mixed porridge).
• Ready-to-eat foods refer to products that can be consumed directly after opening, such as deli meats and mixed porridge; ready-to-heat foods refer to products that need to be heated using a microwave, pot etc, such as frozen dumplings and chilled bento; ready-to-cook foods refer to products that have been partially processed and only require simple cooking, such as semi-finished shredded pork in spicy garlic sauce; ready-to-prepare foods refer to products that require cooking and seasoning, such as washed vegetables.

Market value is based on consumer spending on frozen rice and noodle products (frozen dumplings/wontons, frozen tangyuan, frozen buns/steamed buns/Chinese dim sum, frozen pizzas/frozen pasta etc); market volume is based on tonnes of consumption.

Excluded:

• Instant foods (including instant noodles and self-heating foods) are not included in the market size of this Report. For information on instant foods, please refer to Mintel’s Report Instant Foods – China – 2024.

Expert Analysis

This report was written by the associate director of Mintel’s China insights, Daisy Li.

The overall market still presents growth opportunities, while setting higher standards for product diversification, high quality and standardisation. Companies urgently need breakthroughs in health and nutrition, enhance consumer trust through increased information transparency and expand the brand’s overall influence and market competitiveness by focusing on key consumer groups.

Daisy Li
Associate Director, China Insights