600000 brands have been sold quietly, and the vacuum packaging | products | brands have been officially launched in the Zongzi war in Shanghai

"It's crazy! 600000 Zongzi have been sold this year, and the zongmiang in the factory needs to make 1000 Zongzi every day, so we can't pack and deliver them. The Dragon Boat Festival officially started last week, but the gross estimate is that 800000 or even 1 million will be sold by the Dragon Boat Festival." The excitement of Shen Chao, the head of the time-honored brand Shao Wansheng E-commerce, can be heard on the phone - and the reporter made several calls before getting through.

These two days, Zongzi has become the leading role of the traditional Dim sum market in Shanghai, appearing in the C position of the display cabinet. It is not difficult to find out that Zongzi is eaten every year, but there are still some changes this year: there are fewer new and unique Zongzi, but consumers' evaluation is high.

A small Zongzi once again brings the topic of "inheritance and innovation of traditional Dim sum" to people. Is there a new answer in the market?

Which Zongzi are the most popular?

At the entrance of Xinya Cantonese Restaurant on Nanjing East Road Pedestrian Street, two zongzi maids skillfully drew two zongzi leaves, bent them, scooped glutinous rice, and placed four pieces of fat and lean black haired pork, filled with glutinous rice, covered with zongzi leaves, and wrapped the thin rope more than 10 times. A super large black haired pork zongzi was completed. Put on the electronic scale, over 250 grams.

Seeing this scene, many passersby stopped and took out their phones to shoot videos. "It's not unusual to make Zongzi, but now there are more and more packaged products. I can't help recording when I see them on the spot," said Ms. Wang, who came to Shanghai with her children on a tour.

Xinya Cantonese Restaurant showed Zongzi on the spot, and many consumers stopped to watch

In the Shanghai market, Zongzi not only has different flavors, but also has different forms: some are sold in bulk after being cooked and cooled, some are vacuum packed, and some are frozen packed. Among them, Zongzi, which is sold in bulk or frozen after being cooked and cooled, is the most popular. They are also the flagship products of time-honored brands such as Xinya, Qiaojiazhai, Wangjiasha, Xinghualou, Shen Dacheng, Wangbaohe, etc.

"Cooked or frozen Zongzi can be called 'fresh food zongzi'. After being reheated, the taste of fresh food zongzi is almost the same as that of the existing ones, and you can fully feel the fragrance of zongzi leaves, the soft glutinous rice and the solid stuffing. For consumers who can't make Zongzi or don't want to make it because of trouble, this kind of Zongzi is just like that made by their elders," said Shen Yan, the relevant person in charge of Qiao Jiazhai.

However, the storage and transportation conditions of fresh Zongzi are relatively harsh, not suitable for long-distance transportation, and the shelf life of non frozen products is also very short. For consumers, this means they need to make offline purchases; For manufacturers, it also means missing out on consumer groups familiar with online shopping. However, there is never a shortage of fresh zongzi on the counters of time-honored brands. Ask them why, and the answer is almost the same: these products can best reflect the delicious Zongzi, and are also most popular with consumers, making them willing to sacrifice a little sales and insist on quality to win.

Xinya's Zongniang said that for food safety reasons, the raw Zongzi is not for sale, but it allows consumers to directly see the raw materials and production process of Zongzi. On the spot, many consumers actually bought fresh rice dumplings on the spot after seeing the process of making Zongzi. "A few years ago, many brands relied on new flavors to attract consumers, but we found that real ingredients are still the most attractive," said Zongniang.

There are also a lot of repeat customers in Qiaojiacha's store, all of whom come for the good taste of fresh Zongzi. For time-honored brands, unchanged quality is also the foundation for inheriting the brand and expanding its influence. Shen Yan revealed that although every Zongzi is handmade, there is no identical Zongzi; But the production standards are very strict, and there are regulations on what soy sauce to use and how long to soak the fresh meat in an egg yolk zongzi. It is also because of this sincerity that Qiao Jiasha's egg yolk and meat dumplings won the grand prize in the National Zongzi Skill Competition held by the Zongzi Industry Committee of the China Food Industry Association this year.

Zongzi has the function of reciprocity, in addition to its own consumption. From market feedback, there are few fancy packaging and gift boxes. On the contrary, many time-honored brands support simple packaging and free pairing: Xinya offers gift bags to consumers who choose to purchase 10 "master hand made internet famous zongzi"; Qiaojiasha provides different specifications and priced packaging boxes for consumers to choose by themselves and match with different flavors of Zongzi; Wang Baohe's gift box zongzi is a "family photo" of all flavors under his brand, and the box is free

The heads of many time-honored brands said that before the Zongzi war, there had been "more novel taste" and "more beautiful packaging", but after the baptism of the market, "real material" was verified to be the most important competitiveness. Therefore, there are fewer Zongzi with new and unique flavors in the market this year, and each family emphasizes the authenticity of classic flavors.

Can vacuum zongzi taste good?

However, time-honored brands have not overlooked the market for new categories such as vacuum zongzi. Xu Gang, director of Xinghualou Food Factory, explained that vacuum packaging can break the bottleneck of storage and transportation, so that Zongzi in Shanghai can be sold to Xinjiang, Heilongjiang, Hainan and other regions, and spread the influence of Shanghai time-honored brands. This is an opportunity that cannot be missed.

But it is not easy to make vacuum packed Zongzi delicious.

In the store of Xinghualou, vacuum packed Zongzi can be divided into two types, namely, "short-term guaranteed products" for 5 days at room temperature and "long-term guaranteed products" for 60 days at room temperature, which can meet different consumption needs: non vacuum packed fresh food zongzi must be eaten or frozen as soon as possible after purchase, short-term guaranteed vacuum zongzi can meet the circulation of "parcel post area", and long-term guaranteed vacuum zongzi can let consumers in farther areas taste the taste of Shanghai.

Consumers choose Zongzi in bulk in Xinghua Building

However, vacuum zongzi cannot copy the process of fresh food zongzi, because they need to go through the high-temperature sterilization process, which will change the raw materials of Zongzi. Taking the "ingenious zongzi" series of short preserved rice dumpling as an example, Xinghualou finally used Ruo leaves produced in Mount Huangshan area after several screening. Xu Gang said that after high-temperature sterilization, this type of zongzi leaf still has a fragrant aroma, but some varieties of zongzi leaves will have a bitter taste.

Also, the bean paste zongzi is filled with the most well-known homemade bean paste from Xinghualou, but the finished product made by stir frying is drier than using bean paste filling for mooncakes. In this way, it can not only avoid that glutinous rice is embedded in bean paste when making Zongzi, which causes the rice to become "half cooked", but also naturally increase the humidity of bean paste during the process of cooking Zongzi, which ultimately makes the Zongzi filling as delicate as the moon cake filling.

"I didn't expect vacuum zongzi to be so delicious. The meat is large and fresh, with a faint aroma of lees, especially suitable for summer." This is Chen Cheng, born in the 1990s,'s evaluation of Shao Wansheng's vacuum zongzi. He likes to eat Zongzi, but he has not liked vacuum packed products before. "Glutinous rice is lumpy, and meat is firewood." This year, because of his curiosity about "bad meat zongzi", he tried Shao Wansheng's Zongzi through e-commerce, which was very surprising. He left a long comment on the store, and used "618" to promote the purchase of a lot of Zongzi and distribute it to relatives and friends.

"The consumers' feelings are not wrong. Due to the technology, vacuum packed Zongzi is prone to the problem of glutinous rice spoiling after excessive cooking and meat stuffing changing into firewood after high-temperature sterilization. Even experienced time-honored brands cannot use the old experience, but need to adjust the technology." Wang Weijie, deputy general manager of Shao Wansheng, said that they began to make Zongzi in 2021, and chose vacuum packed zongzi for hygiene reasons. In less than 3 years, various flavors of vacuum zongzi have won a good reputation in the market, which is closely related to the improvement of production technology.

Vacuum packed Zongzi usually has a large output, and some manufacturers will use steam cooking to shorten the time for glutinous rice to become soft. As a result, consumers feedback that "glutinous rice has become lumps, and the sense of grain is not enough". So, Shao Wansheng chose traditional braising and cooking. "People use small pots at home, we use large pots, but the cooking method is the same, it takes four to five hours and still needs to be braised." Although the efficiency is low, the taste of glutinous rice is greatly improved.

At the same time, Shao Wansheng tried different sterilization temperatures to balance the sterilization effect and taste, and ultimately found the "golden combination" of sterilization temperature and sterilization duration. To the delight of the R&D personnel, based on the "golden combination", the final Zongzi still retains the exclusive taste of the "king of bad wine", even if it uses the flavoring that is easy to change greatly in case of heat.

Several time-honored brands have mentioned that although brands have weight in the minds of consumers, whether consumers will buy them or not depends on the quality of the products. If we stick to conventions or blindly copy old techniques, even time-honored brands will be criticized by consumers as not tasty. This is clearly contrary to the original intention of old brands to expand their service scope and brand influence through new packaging.

How can "short-lived zongzi" extend its vitality?

Interestingly, although consumers like Zongzi, there is a saying of "short-lived zongzi" in the industry - as seasonal Dim sum, Zongzi has a relatively short sales period. In previous years, the sales cycle of Zongzi was from the beginning of May to the beginning of June. This year, because of the leap month, the Dragon Boat Festival was at the end of June, making the sales cycle of Zongzi longer by one month.

Is it worth putting in effort to make "short-lived zongzi" better?

"The value of Zongzi lies not only in the Dragon Boat Festival season, but also in providing ideas for the innovation of traditional Dim sum." Some brands answer this question with actions.

Firstly, it is a mix and match innovation.

"High school in one fell swoop" is the "homophonic stem" that Ding Dong and Qiao Jiasha thought of at the same time when they bought vegetables, which also enables their own brand Zongzi to enter the sales peak early.

Ding Dong said that in the last month, the search volume of "Zongzi" as the key word increased by 100% year on year, which means that gift boxes for "high school" are very popular. "This is also related to our close combination of Zongzi with the college entrance examination and the high school entrance examination. In terms of taste, we designed a Zongzi filled with ribs by hand, which fits the word" lift "in" Yiju High School "; the outer packaging is also designed as a festive admission notice model, which is highly recognizable, and consumers like it." Relevant R&D personnel share the "caution machine" in design.

Qiao Jiasha, as the king of cake group, combines Dingsheng cake, a star product, with Zongzi to form a "high school" combination. At the same time, the cross-border exploration of time-honored brand "coffee+Chinese Dim sum" has also brought new ideas: "American coffee+Dingsheng cake+Zongzi" is "good things come true, high school in one fell swoop"; "Hanger Coffee Energy Pack+Zongzi+Dingsheng Cake" is a "package in a package", priced at 167 yuan, which is homophonic to "Admission". The store staff said that these combinations gave Zongzi new selling points beyond the Dragon Boat Festival, and it was particularly popular with families of college entrance examination and high school entrance examination candidates.

Next is scene innovation.

In this year's new taste Zongzi, Hema's purple rice taro cheese cold eating zongzi is very special, turning Zongzi into a dessert, suitable for afternoon tea and more scenes.

Zhang Limin, the purchaser of Hema's prefabricated dishes department, introduced that this product combines cheese, taro, coconut, purple potatoes and other popular food materials. Although it is Zongzi in shape, it tastes more like instant desserts, which not only attracts young people more easily, but also breaks the tradition of "Zongzi needs to be hot", making Zongzi become afternoon tea. In the past, the sales peak of Zongzi was the week before the Dragon Boat Festival, but after the cold Zongzi was launched this year, many consumers placed an order to buy Zongzi in the afternoon tea time; In terms of overall sales, the sales of Zongzi on the platform doubled year on year.

Finally, traditional Dim sum can also serve the revitalization of the industry.

For example, highland barley in Xizang also joined the army of Zongzi this year, which is related to this. Last autumn, the research and development team of Hema received a task: to turn the highland barley in Shigatse, Xizang, which was assisted by Shanghai counterpart, into a product closer to consumers. One month later, the procurement and R&D teams jointly handed over two different flavors of highland barley Babaofan (Rice pudding with eight-delicious ingredients). During the Spring Festival, more than 50000 boxes of highland barley Babaofan (Rice pudding with eight-delicious ingredients) were sold in Hema, which became popular with one shot, breaking the traditional routine of highland barley processing products such as "highland barley milk tea" and "highland barley cake".

With the successful attempt of highland barley Babaofan (Rice pudding with eight-delicious ingredients), Hema has also used highland barley in this year's youth league, which is also recognized by the market. Zhang Limin said that two successful cases made them realize that the combination of special ingredients and traditional Dim sum can achieve multi win - consumers get different tastes, special agricultural products "break through" by virtue of the market influence of traditional Dim sum, and the production brand won public praise.

Therefore, Hema has planned more than 30 traditional meals containing highland barley, including Zongzi.

"It is difficult to make Zongzi with highland barley. Zongzi is soft and glutinous, but highland barley is hard. However, consumers now prefer healthy food. There are more and more coarse grain Zongzi on the market. Why can't highland barley, known as the 'king of coarse grain', try it?" Zhang Limin said. After several attempts, they used the food technology jointly developed by Shigatse Zangyan Food Co., Ltd. and the School of Food Engineering of Jiangnan University to pre mature highland barley first, and then mix it with glutinous rice to make Zongzi, which not only guaranteed the nutrition of highland barley, but also continued the sweet, soft and glutinous taste. At the same time, Hema uses molecular embedding technology to make highland barley into explosive beads, which are matched with crisp and elastic highland barley rice, adding "explosive" taste to highland barley Zongzi.

After the launch of this coconut flavored barley bursting pearl zongzi, it quickly became the most popular new flavor in the box market, and some stores even encountered stock shortages. This makes R&D personnel full of confidence: maybe Zongzi can only be sold for one or two months, but this R&D idea makes the market see the various possibilities of characteristic agricultural products such as highland barley, and also makes traditional Dim sum play a greater role in industrial revitalization.