The ready meal market is estimated to experience a robust value growth of 13.2% in 2020, mainly attributed to the growing demand for frozen ready meals. Increased channel coverage and expanded product varieties like ready-to-cook foods from restaurant brands help ready meals better serve consumers’ rising demand for cooking after the outbreak of COVID-19. Due to the healthy eating trend, nutritional value should be a crucial factor besides convenience for ready meal brands to focus on. In addition, customized products could be another area of innovation to explore to satisfy the diverse demand from the greater number of people cooking at home.

This Report looks at consumers’ purchase and consumption habits of ready meals, and their general attitudes towards and perceptions of ready meals.

Ready meals include frozen, chilled, and ambient meals that require easy preparation. Frozen ready meals include frozen dumplings/wontons, frozen tangyuan (rice dumpling), frozen buns/dim sum, frozen meat meal set, frozen pizza/pasta, and so forth.

Chilled ready meals include ready-made lunchboxes/dishes that only need simple heating, sandwiches, sushi/rice balls, salad, etc.

Ambient ready meals include ready-to-eat foods (eg deli, Oden) which are defined as cooked unpackaged foods, and ambient packaged staple foods (eg canned mixed congee).

Ready-to-cook foods refer to semi-finished products specifically positioned as needing no further preparation on the part of the consumer other than opening the packet and cooking the product according to the on-pack instructions.

Market value is based on spending on frozen and chilled ready meals; market volume is based on tonnes of consumption.

Instant foods which comprise of instant noodles and self-heating foods are excluded. For instant foods, please refer to Mintel’s Instant Foods – China, March 2020 Report.