Should the restaurant let me know if it uses prefabricated dishes？
□ Our reporter Zhang Shoukun
□ Intern of this newspaper Chen Haozheng
"If we had known that the hotel used so many prepared dishes, we would definitely not have booked this one. We felt that there was no grade, and we were even more afraid that the guests would think that we were insincere."
Not long ago, in order to leave an unforgettable wedding banquet for relatives and friends in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, a couple specially chose a well-known hotel in the city and ordered an expensive banquet package. However, after the wedding banquet, the couple were quietly told by their relatives and friends that the wedding banquet was not cost-effective, and 70% of the 16 dishes were prepared.
After the couple posted "Tucao" on the Internet, it immediately aroused the resonance of many netizens: "I know that prefabricated dishes are popular now, but I didn’t expect that wedding banquets that cost a lot of money are mostly prefabricated dishes." Some people even sneered: "You don’t need to recruit a cook in the future. Going to a restaurant to eat is all prefabricated dishes. Just heat it yourself."
Prefabricated dishes, with the advantages and characteristics of convenient cooking and fast meals, conform to the fast-paced life at present, and are also deeply loved by some young people. In recent years, the prefabricated vegetable market has developed rapidly. Relevant data show that the number of registered prefabricated vegetable enterprises in China has reached 62,000. Recently, the "Measures on Restoring and Expanding Consumption" issued by the relevant state ministries and commissions mentioned that "tapping the potential of prefabricated vegetable market and accelerating the construction of prefabricated vegetable bases".
At the same time of market expansion, there are many disputes about prefabricated dishes. A recent survey by the reporter of Rule of Law Daily found that many consumers said that they didn’t want to order prefabricated dishes when they went out to eat, and some restaurants didn’t explicitly tell them when they used prefabricated dishes. Problems such as poor quality of prefabricated dishes have also caused frequent vomiting.
The experts interviewed said that there is a lack of national standards and definitions for prefabricated dishes, and there is also a lack of supervision over their quality. The extensive use of prefabricated vegetables has its positive significance, but consumers should be clearly informed and their right to know and choose should be respected.
Online and offline prefabricated dishes are popular.
Food safety issues cause concern.
"Your 1: 1 rice is ready, please enjoy your meal. Two months ago, you cooked a fried tofu roast meat, put it in boiling water and heat it for a few minutes, then you can cook it. The cost of 5 yuan takeaway is 15 yuan, and the color is bright and the soup is delicious. Such a prefabricated dish takeaway is ready. " This is a picture in a short video about the production of prefabricated dishes.
The reporter found that prefabricated dishes have penetrated into many hotels online and offline.
The reporter searched on the e-commerce platform with "cooking bag" as the key word, and you can see many pre-cooked food stores with accumulated sales of thousands. After conversion, the average price of a cooking bag is 5 yuan, ranging from "Brazilian barbecue" to "Wanzhou grilled fish" and "spicy cod". Many of these stores will directly indicate "for take-out" or "the same catering/take-out", and many stores will put up "merchant purchase links". As long as they provide store photos and business licenses, they can choose 5 or 10 packages for free.
The customer service of a store told the reporter that every day, it receives consultations from dozens of take-away stores, and its store promotion page reads "cumulative supply of 8 million+"to take-away platform merchants.
According to the data of China Chain Store & Franchise Association, at present, the biggest downstream demand of the prefabricated vegetable industry comes from catering enterprises, accounting for 80%. Snack fast food restaurants, chain stores, food and beverage outlets that focus on take-out, rural kitchens, group dining halls, etc. are the main scenarios for the application of prefabricated dishes. Among them, some head chain catering enterprises have a high proportion of prefabricated dishes, and more than 80% of the dishes in some restaurants are prefabricated dishes.
According to the data released by the third-party survey organization, the scale of prefabricated vegetable market in China reached 419.6 billion yuan in 2022, up by 21.3% year-on-year, and it is estimated that the scale of prefabricated vegetable market will exceed 1 trillion yuan in 2026.
Yi Zhu, an associate professor at the College of Food Science and Nutritional Engineering of China Agricultural University, told the reporter that the healthy and orderly development of the prefabricated vegetable industry can meet the convenient, fast and safe needs of consumers, and also promote the iterative upgrading of breeding and food industries, and a number of prefabricated vegetable industrial bases with strong radiation will emerge to accelerate consumption upgrading.
With the rapid development of prefabricated vegetable market, many consumers have also expressed their worries and dissatisfaction. During the interview, many consumers said that when they went to a restaurant, they just wanted to eat something fresh and cooked by the chef. As a result, some restaurants used prefabricated dishes, which "lost a little feeling". "It used to be said that it was unhealthy to eat overnight food, but now it is healthy to eat dishes cooked a few months ago." "I don’t understand why even the canteen needs cooking bags, and how can industrial food be cooked by hand?" Similar comments can be seen everywhere under the popular science of prefabricated dishes and short news videos.
The quality problems of prefabricated dishes exposed from time to time have also "added a fire" to consumers’ concerns. In February this year, Jiangsu Consumer Protection Committee released the "Survey Report on the Consumption of Prefabricated Vegetables", showing that over 80% of consumers said that when purchasing prefabricated vegetables, they encountered problems such as stale ingredients, spoiled dishes, damaged packaging and expired. Previously, some media exposed the production environment of a small and large-scale cooking bag manufacturer "Banggangxiang": the stained production room, the expired ingredients continued to be used, and the chicken that fell to the ground was directly thrown into the processing tank … …
During the interview, many consumers told reporters that many pre-cooked dishes were inconsistent in packaging and publicity. For example, the wrapping paper was painted with delicious braised pork with fat and thin, and it turned out to be starch products after being bought and opened. Some prefabricated dishes are still short of weight, and even merchants use prefabricated dishes to pretend to be fresh cooking.
Zheng Fengtian, a professor at the School of Agriculture and Rural Development of Renmin University of China, said that at present, there is no national standard for pre-cooked dishes, and some provinces have plans to formulate standards for pre-cooked dishes. However, how many types of pre-cooked dishes are classified is also a difficult problem. Whether semi-finished dishes, pre-cooked dishes and central kitchen supplies can all be classified into pre-cooked dishes is still controversial.
Experts interviewed believe that the lack of standard system has become a key issue affecting the development of prefabricated dishes. Due to the lack of uniform implementation standards, the quality of prefabricated dishes in the market is mixed, and the tastes of dishes produced by different manufacturers are quite different, which has given birth to many pain points that plague the development of the industry, such as difficult quality assurance, unclear labeling and large price difference. Take pickled fish as an example, some manufacturers implement the national standard of animal aquatic products, while others implement the standard of quick-frozen prepared food.
The merchant does not express the usage.
Infringe on the legitimate rights and interests of consumers
Not long ago, when Mr. Zhang was eating in a hotel in Qingdao, Shandong Province, he found that some dishes tasted different from what he had eaten before. After understanding, he found that the ingredients were prefabricated dishes. In this regard, the staff explained that the prefabricated dishes are convenient and quick, and they can be eaten when cooked. The quality is definitely no problem, which can meet the needs of guests to eat in a relatively short time, and the taste is not much different. Regarding Mr. Zhang’s query that "prepared vegetables are less nutritious than fresh vegetables", the staff member faltered, "There should be little difference."
"I didn’t expect such a big hotel to use prefabricated dishes, and it didn’t tell consumers. If you don’t ask, don’t say it." Mr. Zhang said that he could not understand this.
It’s nothing new that prefabricated dishes enter the hotel. During the interview, many consumers expressed their dissatisfaction with the practice of using prefabricated dishes in the hotel without explicitly telling them. Mr. Zhao, an office worker from Taian, Shandong Province, said: "I have no problem with prefabricated dishes, but the hotel should at least tell me that it provides prefabricated dishes."
To confirm the above statement, the reporter recently visited 30 hotels, take-away shops and supermarkets in Beijing and Tianjin, and inquired about the online take-away platform. Except for a supermarket in Hedong District, Tianjin, the cashier’s publicity page reads "Today’s specials are kung pao chicken and 9.9 yuan, and the prepared dishes are not made on the spot", no one has voluntarily informed or indicated that they are using prepared dishes.
At the end of August, the reporter went to a Chinese fast food chain in a shopping mall in Beijing. At that time, it was lunch time, and the store was packed. The takeaway window also waited for many takeaway brothers who took meals. But the reporter found that only one clerk in the kitchen was busy.
"How long will it take to order now?" In the face of a reporter’s inquiry, the staff of the ordering desk replied that it can be made in 5 minutes if you place an order now.
"With so many people eating, there is only one person in the kitchen, and the speed of serving can be guaranteed. Did you use prefabricated dishes?" In the face of questions, the clerk was silent for a while and did not give a positive answer. He just told reporters that the chicken chops with honey sauce were fried and the braised pork was "done" before.
Other restaurants visited, faced with the reporter’s question about whether they used prefabricated dishes, only the clerk of a small bowl restaurant replied that "some dishes are prefabricated dishes", while other stores ignored him. For example, a grilled fish shop did not give an answer whether it was a prepared dish or not, only that the fish and boiled meat slices in the shop were "distributed". In a rice noodle shop, the clerk told reporters that the braised chicken is semi-processed and the chicken pieces are cooked in advance.
Some merchants revealed to reporters that although they used prefabricated dishes, they did not dare to publicize them, because some consumers did not have high recognition of prefabricated dishes and felt that they were not fresh and nutritious, and the prefabricated dish industry did have many problems in the rapid development process in recent years, which had a certain negative impact on catering stores.
Should businesses inform consumers when they use prefabricated dishes?
Lei fu, director of the Management Committee of Beijing Yingke (Hefei) Law Firm, believes that customers have reasonable expectations for the dishes they choose, hoping for value for money, which is also the service standard that businesses and consumers should have in their contracts. Because prefabricated dishes are the product of Chinese food industrialization, the cost is much lower than that of frying and cooking now, which will aggravate the violation of consumers’ right to know and choose. If restaurants and take-away shops use prefabricated dishes, they should fulfill their obligation of informing and reminding, and guests can choose to consume or not.
According to Xiaojuan Zhu, director and deputy secretary-general of china law society Commercial Law Research Association, there is a difference in the cost of pre-cooked dishes and ready-made dishes, and restaurants can set prices separately, giving consumers more choices.
"Operators should provide real information about prepared dishes, and cannot mislead consumers through false and exaggerated propaganda. The amount of prefabricated dishes provided by operators should also be consistent with the marked quantity, and it is not allowed to cut corners and be short of weight, otherwise it will be suspected of infringing consumers’ fair trading rights. " Chen Yinjiang, deputy secretary general of china law society Consumer Protection Law Research Association, said.
Make standards and fulfill the obligation to inform.
Strengthen the management and supervision of prefabricated vegetables
The reporter found out that although there is no national standard for prefabricated dishes at present, since 2022, many provinces and cities have introduced relevant standards and specifications for prefabricated dishes. In April, 2022, Jiangsu Catering Industry Association issued the group standard "Standard for Quality Evaluation of Precast Dishes"; In November 2022, Chongqing Municipal Market Supervision Administration issued the "Twenty Articles on Implementing the Main Responsibility of Food Safety" for the production and operation of prefabricated vegetables; In January this year, the Shanghai Municipal Market Supervision Administration issued the "Examination Plan for the Production License of Shanghai Prefabricated Vegetables" to explore and standardize the food safety of prefabricated vegetables.
The national level also attaches great importance to the development of prefabricated dishes. In 2023, the No.1 Document of the Central Committee clearly stated that "the standardization and standardization level of clean vegetables, central kitchens and other industries should be improved. Cultivate and develop the prefabricated vegetable industry. " On July 31st, the State Council forwarded the Notice of National Development and Reform Commission on Measures to Restore and Expand Consumption, specifically proposing to expand the consumption of catering services, cultivate the mode of "breeding base+central kitchen+cold chain logistics+catering stores", and tap the potential of prefabricated vegetable market.
Recently, through the coordination and docking between Shandong Provincial Market Supervision Administration and State Administration of Market Supervision, two items of "prefabricated vegetable processing" and "prefabricated vegetable sales" have been added to the standardized management system of business scope. On August 3, the person in charge of Liaocheng Fudelin Catering Management Co., Ltd. in Shandong Province took over the first business license of the city’s business scope of "prefabricated vegetable processing" and "prefabricated vegetable sales" from the staff.
In Chen Yinjiang’s view, the standard system of pre-cooked dishes has not been established before, nor has it been included in the scope of special food business projects. Generally, as long as you have a catering service license or a food business license, you can engage in related business activities. Including "pre-cooked dish processing" and "pre-cooked dish sales" in the special business scope can promote the establishment and improvement of the standard system of pre-cooked dishes in the future and promote the standardized and high-quality development of the industry.
Experts interviewed by reporters believe that for prefabricated vegetable enterprises, delicious food determines how high it can go, and safety determines how far it can go.
Sun Juanjuan, a researcher at the Collaborative Innovation Center for Food Safety Governance of Renmin University of China, believes that the pre-cooked food for consumers is prepackaged foods, and the compliance management of producers and operators needs to pay attention to the legal compliance of identification information, including not misleading consumers in principle, but also specific information identification requirements such as name, ingredients and date. It is worth mentioning that the intuition of logo information makes logo non-compliance an important object of consumer rights protection. Especially, the producers and operators of pre-cooked vegetables who change from B2B (business-to-business) to B2C (enterprises provide goods or services directly to consumers) should pay attention to the compliance challenges brought by the scene change.
"Consumers can actively choose prefabricated dishes in the B2C scenario and passively consume prefabricated dishes in the B2B scenario. The latter’s informed choice has triggered disputes on the protection of consumers’ rights and interests. The transparency of supply chain has attracted increasing attention. In addition to food safety, consumers also pay attention to their consumption content from other dimensions such as economic benefits, including food production methods. Facing the competition brought by catering industrialization, handmade production still has its own existence scene. Information disclosure is undoubtedly a prerequisite for meeting consumers’ different expectations and making informed choices. " Sun Juanjuan said.
Lei fu said that the emergence of a new thing will inevitably lead to changes in the upstream and downstream industries, and it is essential to formulate industry standards and standardize guidance. The development of prefabricated vegetables needs to be controlled from the source. Production must have a food production license, transportation and storage also need synchronous supervision, storage conditions and transportation equipment standards need to be updated simultaneously for catering sales, and sellers who send them to consumers’ tables also need corresponding licenses.
In Xiaojuan Zhu’s view, the relevant state departments should formulate and promulgate specific standards for prepared dishes, including raw material standards and finished product standards; Pre-cooked vegetable production enterprises should fulfill the responsibilities of producers and operators, produce standard and healthy products, and indicate raw materials and cooking methods; Trade associations should also formulate trade rules to advocate prefabricated vegetable enterprises to actively fulfill their social responsibilities and establish a good social image.
"The relevant regulatory authorities should implement the supervision, not only strengthen the daily supervision and inspection, but also carry out targeted special supervision and inspection for the problems that consumers reflect more intensively and prominently, and crack down on violations of laws and regulations or damage to consumers’ rights and interests according to law." Chen Yinjiang suggested.