What Can Pictures of a New Year's Eve Dinner Teach Us?

A New Year’s Eve dinner is probably the most important meal of the entire year for Chinese consumers. In recent years, more and more people have posted photos of their banquet on Moments of Wechat, allowing us to take a closer look at the dishes in various regions (see Figure 1).

In addition to those must-have traditional dishes, such as dumpling, spring rolls, fish, and chicken, carrying special meanings for various wishes, people also select their best delicacy and premium food for this occasion. These extra dishes therefore tell us a lot about which foods are considered premium in China. It is not surprising to see that these other dishes are mainly premium seafood, such as shrimp, lobster, and crab. This may suggest that the underlying premiumisation trend in China will drive the growing demand for the premium seafood products and offer great opportunities for global suppliers to feed this huge market.

In the meantime, it is a bit surprising to see that there was not much beef and sheepmeat in the photos of home cooked dinners, except in the traditional beef/sheepmeat consumption areas. This indicates that there is still a long way to go for beef and sheepmeat before it becomes a staple ingredient in home cooking. Until then it will continue to be mainly consumed outside the home.

As preparing such a big banquet is always time consuming and tiring, an emerging trend this year is ordering the Lunar New Year dinner food online. Some consumers ordered ready-to-eat dishes, but more ordered ready-to-cook dishes, which only require easy preparation or heating. While this may be not as good as home cooked dishes or dining out, this new way of preparing the banquet saves a lot of preparation time and effort and maybe added some delicacies seldom cooked at home.

This also reflects consumers’ rising confidence in online food ordering, even when it comes to important events. Online food ordering has grown rapidly in recent years. In 2017, the total sales of online food ordering reached USD 33 billion, up 23% YOY, according to research by Meituan Dianping, the largest online food ordering platform in China. Meituan Dianping became the fourth most valuable startup in the world, valued at USD 30 billion in October 2017. Their research further found that the sales of online food ordering are slowing down but may still maintain 18% growth in 2018. In comparison, the growth rates of total retail sales and food service sales were 10.2% and 10.7% in 2017, respectively.

Because the expansion of online food ordering doesn’t mean that consumers eat more but rather that other channels are declining, it has a mixed impact on animal protein consumption. First, this may help increase beef consumption, as beef is not commonly cooked at home but could be a regular item for instance in a meal kit. Second, by ordering food online, the hot meal can now be delivered to many places, including train stations or construction sites, where instant noodles and high temperature meat products were previously the key foods sold. The strong substitution by ordered food will exert great pressure on some of these traditional meat products.

Animal protein is still prominent in New Year’s banquets in 2018 – the most important home-cooked meal of the year – but important changes among the various proteins are worth highlighting.

Seafood appears to be gaining momentum as the premium protein of choice for at-home consumption, although beef and sheepmeat may remain one of the premium choices for out-of-home consumption.

The ease and diversity of online ordering of ready-to-eat and ready-to-cook meals may be eroding consumer interest in traditional animal protein products, such as high temperature meat products.