The rise of Chinese ready meal

By MA Yue, WU Rong

When it comes to restaurant food, most people think of dishes prepared by a team that does everything from chopping to garnishing. But nowadays, the dishes are more likely cooked and portioned in a central facility and cooked in a much scaled-down kitchen.

Sometimes the restaurant does not even have a kitchen. The cook (also the manager and cashier, maybe the cleaner), simply heats up the dish and ships it out. In the age of food delivery, ghost kitchens, and franchising, ready-to-cook is the new trend for the restaurant business​​​​​.

Hot dinner, cool trillion

The same goes for home cooking. Big-box stores and gourmet supermarkets alike are competing to attract food-obsessed and time-pressed millennials and GenZs. The choices go far beyond frozen soup dumplings and lunch meat. You can even find rare seasonal delicacies such as Yangtze River anchovies.

Sales of ready-to-cook food in China grew 21 percent to 420 billion yuan (US$57.69 billion) in 2022, according to market research company iiMedia. The market is expected to exceed 1 trillion yuan by 2026. Over 80,000 companies are registered in the business, including artisan producers and publicly listed conglomerates with market caps of as much as 50 billion yuan.

To be clear, ready-to-cook has been around for a long time. But demand was never as high, and products were not as varied.

If you cook it at home, it's home-cooked

Delisi, a meat producer, started ready-to-cook products for restaurants in 2015. It invested 20 million yuan and hired a team of chefs, who developed hundreds of marinated meats for commercial kitchens. But restaurants back then were resistant to buying processed ingredients. CP Group entered the market even earlier, in the early 2000s. For a long time, it didn’t even touch the Chinese market, selling to convenience stores in Japan instead.

The pandemic completely changed the game. The popularity of food delivery gave rise to a whole new type of restaurant, whose business model depends on getting as many dishes out of the door in as little time as possible.

Restaurant chains expanded fast and had to find new ways to standardize recipes and lower costs. Homebound consumers also became receptive to meal kits. The new habits stuck after the pandemic.

Food companies expanded capacity and signed new deals with grocery stores. Investors took notice too. Guolian Aquatic received US$ 560 million from the Saudi Arabia sovereign wealth fund. HaiXin Foods reportedly is negotiating a 520-million-yuan funding round for its ready-to-cook business. Increased investment also led to much vertical integration and innovation in the industry.

Many cooks make better broth

A lot of science goes into ready-to-cook food to preserve the flavor and texture of ingredients during processing, packaging and shipping. Food companies either raise their own meat or buy from suppliers who can produce to specifications.

Zhongyang Group breeds a type of algae-eating catfish that doesn’t become rubbery or pungent after a few days in supermarket fridges. Guoquan Shihui, a brand that supplies hot-pot and barbecue ingredients harvests crawfish early in the shell-shedding season so that the stir-fries are not all shells and no meat. Chicken producer Fengxiang developed a pounding technique that makes vacuum-packed chicken breasts juicy without much damage to the muscle fiber.

To lower costs and increase capacity, human workers are being replaced with machines. Yanji, a restaurant equipment company, makes 57 types of blades to dismember and slice different parts of a chicken. There is another set of blades for fish. One of its clients, a hot pot restaurant, slices 8 tons of fish a day in its central kitchen. Human cooks could only process 2 tons a day.

Slow food moves fast

For shipping, flash freezing is widely used to minimize cell damage and nutrition loss. If the food is perishable, warehouses and shipping routes are set up to shorten the time spent on the road. The logistics get complicated when many ingredients are involved.

Delisi often has to process, pack, and ship each ingredient for a single dish differently – a double-cooked pork it sells to restaurant clients. The pork bellies can be sliced, marinated, and frozen in a factory. But scallion, chili pepper and ginger are better fresh. More food science goes into a single-pack version that can be assembled in home kitchens.

Not like grandma used to make

Still, the perception of ready-to-cook dishes as inferior to made-from-scratch ones is here to stay. Even food company executives admit that thawed seafood is spongy, and microwaved stir-fries do not have “the breath of a wok” – the hearty flavor unique to fresh-off-the-stovetop dishes.

For now, the solution doesn’t go beyond selling pre-flavored and pre-portioned raw ingredients, so that restaurants or individual customers can simply tear open the packages and perform the last few crucial steps themselves. Not a perfect one. But the food scientists are still hard at work.

真实短文《Ghost》10人看完9个哭！看你能不能挡得住？

你小时候有没有与父母一起玩耍的愉快经历？

或许女孩子会与母亲一起翻花绳，

而男孩子则会与父亲一起打游戏。

彼时的你，几岁？

而现在的你，几岁？

父母是否已白发苍苍？

在国外的Youtube网站上，就有这么一位叫“00WARTHERAPY00”的网友，

他在一个偶然的视频评论中，

向人们讲述了一个他从小与父亲一起玩耍，

又感人至深的真实故事。

Ghost

When I was 4, my dad bought us a trusty Xbox. You know, that first, rugged, blocky one from 2001. We had tons and tons and tons of fun playing all kinds of games together. We especially loved the racing game Rally Sports Challenge, which – in its day - was actually pretty awesome.

And then, when I was just 6, he died.

I couldn't touch that console for 10 years.

But once I did, something strange happened.

I found a GHOST.

Literally.

You know how, when a timed race happens, the fastest lap so far gets recorded as a ghost driver? Well, you guessed it - his ghost still rolls around the track today.

I played and played, and played, until I was almost able to beat the ghost. Until one day, when I got ahead of it. I surpassed it, and...

And I stopped right in front of the finish line, just to ensure I wouldn’t delete it.

Bliss.

- 00WARTHERAPY00

阅读自测题：

1. What did the writer do when he was a kid?

A. He went to Hawaii with his father.

B. He was educated well.

C. He had tons of fun playing games with his father.

2. He couldn’t touch the console for … ?

A. 5 years

B. 10 years

C. 15 years

3. What did he find when he turned that console on again?

A. A game

B. A “ghost”

C. A monster

4. What did he do with the ghost?

A. He played again and again to try to surpass it.

B. He escaped from the ghost.

C. He deleted the ghost.

5. Why did he stop right in front of the finish line?

A. To Keep his father’s “ghost” in the game forever.

B. He couldn’t win the game.

C. He didn’t like the game

短文翻译

当我4岁的时候，我的父亲给我买了一台xbox游戏机。你知道，就是2001年推出的粗糙的方盒那款。我俩共同在游戏的海洋中一起收获了许许多多的快乐。我们尤其喜欢一个叫《拉力运动挑战》的赛车游戏，当时那游戏可真是太好玩了。

然而，在我6岁的时候，父亲离世了。

然后我10年间都没有再去碰那台游戏机。

但是有一次我这么做了，并发现了些蹊跷。

我发现了一个“幽灵”。

毫不夸张。

你知道，当一场比赛开始后，跑出最快圈速的玩家会被记录下来变成幽灵车手。没错，你猜到了——我父亲的幽灵时至今日仍然在赛道上奔驰。

于是我一遍又一遍不停地玩。直到我几乎能够打败那辆幽灵车；直到有一天我终于开到了他前面。我超过了他，然后……

我就在终点线前停了下来，只为了确保我不会让它消失（覆盖掉父亲的记录）。

无比幸福。

正确答案：

1. C | 2. B | 3. B | 4. A | 5. A

如果你不太爱玩游戏，或许会不太明白这个故事。这里华生就简单解释下：

在赛车类电子游戏中，速度最快的那个玩家会被记录下来。然后游戏再次开始时，这个纪录会以半透明“幽灵车”的方式呈现。如果此后有人做出了更快的圈速，那记录就会被刷新，老的幽灵车数据则会被删除。

本故事的讲述人在父亲亡逝十年后，再次打开游戏机，找到了自己与父亲以前常玩的赛车游戏。孩童时的他并不是父亲的对手，所以至今游戏里仍然保存着父亲当年夺冠的疾驰身影。于是，成长了的男孩追逐着昔日父亲的步伐，像青出于蓝一般一步步去超越他。然而，最终当他终于能超过父亲时，他停在了终点线前，静静等待着父亲冲线。

因为这样，父亲就是永远的冠军，他的身影就不会消失在游戏里，并一直以“幽灵”的方式陪伴着他。

这样你应该就能更加理解这个故事了，可能你已经悄悄拿起了纸巾。这一则故事曾被千千万万的人转发，每一个阅读它的人，最后都忍不住落了泪。

对于男孩子来说，父亲可能是人生中的第一个玩伴；而对于父亲来说，调皮的儿子们却或许是人生中最后一个玩伴。但是对我们每一个人来说，珍惜此时此刻身边的人，才是我们最应该做的。

词汇

trusty - 可靠的

rugged - 粗糙的

blocky - 块状的

console - 游戏机

awesome - 极好的

literally - 正如所述，毫不夸张

surpass - 超越

bliss - 幸福快乐

美剧《The Idol》第一集成绩不及预期，低于《亢奋》

HBO 新剧《The Idol》由 HBO 热门剧集《亢奋》的制作人 Sam Levinson 和 Reza Fahim 以及歌手 The Weeknd 创作，讲述的是娱乐圈的黑暗和疯狂，一些不为人知的故事。

这部剧集不仅在戛纳电影节宣传，还有韩国女团 BLACKPINK 的金珍妮 JENNIE、澳大利亚歌手 Troye Sivan、德普之女 Lily-Rose Depp，以及 The Weeknd 出演，但尽管星光很强，每个演员都是大明星，比《亢奋》刚播出时的阵容强大了不少，宣传力度也极强，但似乎没有得到非常好的成绩。

《The Idol》首播成绩为91万人观看，而《亢奋》在2019年时的首播成绩为110万人观看。《The Idol》也不如2021年《白莲花度假村》首播时的94万人观看的成绩。

这个成绩表示《The Idol》的首播成绩不及预期，因为 HBO ORIGINAL 这个平台在过去三年增加了两千多万的订阅用户，用户比2019年时多了许多，而且《The Idol》预热很久，还去了戛纳电影节宣传，但成绩却不如三年前的剧集的成绩。

《亢奋》和《白莲花度假村》的明星阵容都没有《The Idol》这么强，很多人认为是因为影评成绩影响了观众收看的欲望。

比较值得注意的是，《亢奋》和《白莲花度假村》因为一路以来好评如潮，此后成绩不断创新高，但《The Idol》能否也有这样的好命，那就不知道了。

为什么有钱人都喜欢背The Row？

好多明星都在背The Row，这个牌子真的好低调！！除了倪妮上身的这个Park水桶包，肯豆的这两只包也超有气质，“老钱风”Get！✅

不得不说The Row这个品牌低调又高级，干净利落的廓形和柔软高级的面料结合，拉高了整体的舒适性，它家的配色可做穿搭模板，每一套都很高级，上身质感满满！！