The preprepared food industry is experiencing rapid growth, and businesses from all backgrounds such as Qudian are looking forward to catching this opportunity.
Fintech company Qudian (Chinese: 趣店, QD:NYSE) entered the preprepared food industry through its subsidiary. On July 17, the firm's CEO, Luo Min, live streamed on TikTok. A total of 95 million people joined the channel and more than 9.5 million preprepared dishes were sold in a single day.
Qudian, founded in 2014, is a financial technology services company listed on the New York Stock Exchange. According to the 2022's first-quarter earnings report of Qudian, total revenue in was CNY 202 million, down 60.9% from the same period last year. Net loss attributable to Qudian's shareholders was CNY 142.8 million, down 129.84% year-on-year. Luo Min responded by saying that "in the future, Qudian will maintain a prudent business strategy in the cash business and focus on promoting the preprepared dish business.
This time, the firm re-entered the food industry by launching "delicious, fresh, healthy" short shelf-life preprepared dishes. Luo Min believes that the preprepared dish market is enormous, entrepreneurship is a long-term process, and good product is the focus. China's preprepared dish market size is already over CNY 200 billion in 2022. The market is expected to maintain a high growth rate in the future and will reach a size of CNY 400 billion by 2026, per Sealand Securities.
Currently, Qudian has 14 dishes on the shelves. It is reported that the firm plans to add hundreds of dishes soon, with a price less than half of those in mid-range restaurants, such as yesterday's top-selling dish, the 'CNY 19.9 pickled fish.' The firm's competitors include Sanquan Food (Chinese: 三全食品), Anjoy Food (Chinese: 安井食品) and Haodelai (Chinese: 好得睐).