With heat wave advisories continuing across most of the country, the food industry is accelerating efforts to tap the convenience food market by reducing cooking steps and time. Formats are diversifying, from products that can be heated in a microwave for just a few minutes or cooked by adding water to frozen items, to sauces that are poured directly over prepped ingredients.
Moves to collaborate with famous restaurants or apply direct-fire equipment and rapid-freezing technology to achieve restaurant-level taste and texture are also gaining momentum. The judgment is that products must combine convenience and quality to win consumers' choices.
According to the food industry on Aug. 4, Daesang(001680) Chongjungwon's convenience food brand Homings recently unveiled five "super-simple stir-fry" items that can be cooked from frozen by adding only water. They include fire-flavor squid stir-fry, kimchi duruchigi, classic japchae, boneless soy-braised chicken, and ttukbaegi bulgogi.
Put the product and the specified amount of water in a frying pan, loosen the ingredients, and stir-fry for about 3 minutes 30 seconds to finish the dish. Processes were standardized so that cooking can be completed in a similar time even when the materials and supplies—such as meat, seafood, and vegetables—differ. It is packaged in portions suitable for one sitting, improving convenience of use for single-person and dual-income households.
This year has also seen the emergence of products that cut cooking steps across categories such as noodles and broth, bar snacks, and diet-management meals. NoodleLovers in June released three frozen noodle meal kits: Ojang-dong-style ganjaemi sashimi cold noodles, cold udon, and cold buckwheat soba. Frozen noodles, broth, sauce, and toppings are packed together so that a meal can be prepared without separately prepping ingredients or making seasonings.
The cold udon and cold buckwheat soba were changed from two-serving products to single-serving and used alternative sweeteners to reduce the sugar burden. NoodleLovers noted, "These new products reflect changing consumer trends such as growing demand for convenience foods and the increase in single-person households."
In moves to raise the menus and quality of convenience foods to dining-out levels, Shinsegae Food(031440) collaborated with Woojeong, a premium Korean beef, known as hanwoo restaurant in Seoul's Cheongdam-dong, to launch "Woojeong hanwoo tendon doenjang hot pot" and "Woojeong special oxtail soup." Shinsegae Food, encouraged by the response to its collaboration last year with the hangover-soup specialty restaurant Jungang Haejang—which saw sales of its hanwoo tripe hangover soup and hanwoo shank bone soup exceed 150,000 units within six months of launch—added more joint products with popular restaurants.
An industry official said, "Using the names and recipes of well-known restaurants familiar to consumers can lower the entry barrier for new products," adding, "With dining-out costs up, we can also capture demand from people who want to enjoy specialty-restaurant menus at relatively less burdensome prices."
Dongwon F&B introduced frozen cauldron rice that combines microwave cooking convenience with direct-fire technology. The "Yangban bibim deopbap cauldron rice" lineup includes three items: octopus and hijiki cauldron rice, ssamjang meat bracken cauldron rice, and garlic-butter steak cauldron rice.
Whereas the existing frozen rice market centered on popular menus such as kimchi fried rice and shrimp fried rice, the lineup has expanded to dishes you encounter at dining-out specialty restaurants, such as cauldron rice and steak. While maintaining the convenience of microwave cooking, the application of a direct-fire process emphasized the smoky aroma and firm, separated grains that are hard to achieve in frozen rice.
Looking at this year's launches, the competition standard in the convenience food market is shifting from "how many minutes it takes to cook" to "how many prep steps have been eliminated."
That is because it has become important to reduce the total time and effort consumers spend preparing meals—from thawing frozen products to prepping ingredients, measuring seasonings, and washing dishes after cooking. It also helps cut time spent in front of the stove during summer heat waves.
However, the more cooking steps are simplified, the more taste and texture can suffer, which is a challenge food companies must solve. Applying direct-fire equipment, rapid freezing, steam-pack packaging, and concentrated sauces, or using famous restaurants' recipes, are strategies to offset these limits.
An industry official said, "As it becomes harder to differentiate products by convenience alone, how closely a product reproduces dining-out menus has become a factor that determines price and competitiveness," adding, "Going forward, not only cooking time but also how much we can reduce the space taken up in the fridge and freezer, the steps of opening the package and cooking, and the dishwashing afterward will become new competition standards." The competition among food companies to deliver quality close to dining out while keeping cooking short is expected to intensify.