China's baking industry will enter a period of rapid development

How the baking market is getting more and more fragrant

On October 22, the first "super-sized" bread festival in Beijing ended in Dongfeng International Sports Park, Chaoyang. During the 3 days from October 20 to 22, more than 8000 people came to punch in the bread festival every day. It is roughly estimated that the average daily sales of baking brands participating in the festival in these 3 days are about 10,000 yuan.

At the scene, a reporter from the Workers' Daily saw a long line in front of many bakery stalls. Consumers lined up to discuss which hot breads and online red snacks to buy. Several well-known brand stalls even sold out early in the morning. "Everyone is too enthusiastic. The supply exceeds the demand. Many shops are stepping up their production and will deliver them to the stalls at 2 pm." Zuo Yang, the person in charge of the organizer of this year's "Super Mouth" Bread Festival, told reporters that even so, there are still many consumers participating in the festival.

The "2023 China Catering Industry Annual Report" pointed out that in 2022, the baking industry showed an obvious growth trend, and the average store revenue changed significantly year-on-year. There was a long queue in front of the newly opened bakery; the introduction of explosive bakery products on the social platform was highly praised; European bags, bagel, toast ...... single products flourished and varied. All kinds of phenomena show that in recent years, consumers are enthusiastic about bakery products.

The $300 billion market.

The stores lined up with long lines are not selling new digital products, but young people are buying bread. Bread lovers even call themselves "bread star people" and have a "carbohydrate head".

These "bread stars" are keen to discover treasure bakeries. As long as bread does not sell at sky-high prices, there will always be an audience. The price of bread has risen higher and higher with the popularity of "bread star people". In the newly opened independent bakery, a French croissant can easily sell for dozens of yuan, even exceeding the price of a working meal for workers. In a Japanese-style bakery in Shanghai this year, a piece of raw toast sold for 98 yuan, and people queued for 6 hours to buy it.

In addition, the bread festival has become the most popular offline activities this year. Beijing, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Fuzhou, Chengdu, Nanjing and other cities have held bread festivals. On the first day of the "super large mouth" bread festival, even on weekdays, the "bread star people" line up on the road.

According to the analysis of industry insiders, the main reason for the vigorous development of baking industry is that the catering consumption structure and life rhythm of Chinese residents are changing, and the nutritious, healthy, fast and diverse baked food meets the consumption needs of residents.

Data show that the production scale of China's baked goods industry continues to expand. According to the China Food Industry Yearbook (2012-2018), the operating income of enterprises above designated size in my country's pastry and bread industry increased from 52.64 billion yuan in 2011 to 131.623 billion yuan in 2017, with a compound annual growth rate of 16.50, which is much higher than the food industry in the same period. The overall growth level of 5.44 is also higher than the growth rate of the global baking industry. According to Tianyan survey data, there are currently more than 1.047 million baking-related companies in my country, and more than 54000 new companies were added from January to September 2023, an increase of 14.3 compared with the same period in 2022. From the perspective of geographical distribution, the number of enterprises in Guangdong, Shandong and Jiangsu ranks in the forefront, with more than 119000, more than 101000 and more than 71000 respectively.

Some experts predict that the scale of China's baked goods market will exceed 300 billion yuan in 2023, and China's baking industry will enter a period of rapid development.

Preforms stand out

At the third "China Baking Industry Summit" held on October 12, Zhang Yi, founder of AI Media Consulting, shared the big data of the baking food industry, mentioning that healthy and low-fat, frozen baking has great potential for development. With the gradual maturity of frozen baking technology and the continuous improvement of cold chain storage and logistics technology, the application field of frozen baked goods will gradually develop from frozen pastry products to frozen bread semi-finished products and cooked products such as sesame potatoes and Danish beef horns.

With the rise of home baking, the demand of young consumers for prefabricated baked goods is gradually increasing. While the post-90s and post-00s consumer groups are pursuing personalization, they also require simple and efficient production processes. Therefore, the demand for baking prefabricated semi-finished products has increased sharply.

The sales data of Tmall in the past three years also show that prefabricated baking has experienced explosive growth, in which the growth rate of prefabricated baking is 3.6 times that of baking raw materials and 6.8 times that of finished baking. It is foreseeable that in the next few years, prefabricated baked products will also become one of the baking tracks.