Zhongtai: Practicality and cost-effectiveness become mainstream consumer psychology, the "solitary dining" economy is rapidly expanding.

Zhongtai released a research report stating that based on China gradually entering a period of structural adjustment for shifting growth gears, industrial upgrading, and addressing aging population, the consumer market is transitioning from incremental expansion to stock reconstruction. It is expected that cost-effective retail and affordable dining will expand, while the trends of aging population, declining birth rates, and increasing number of singles may push the number of single individuals past 300 million, highlighting the importance of the single economy. The trend of "eating alone" is driving pre-packaged standardized food companies to gain new customers. It is recommended to focus on frozen food companies that can rapidly innovate and iterate various new products of various specifications and achieve standardized production, as well as enterprises with a diverse SKU range that provide convenient semi-finished or pre-packaged food ingredients close to communities. Zhongtai's main points are as follows: With the macroeconomic growth slowing down, consumer psychology becomes pragmatic and rational. Looking back at the development cycles of Japan and China, both countries have experienced a trajectory of high-speed growth to slowdown in growth. Referring to Japan's economic downturn in the 1990s, where the entire society entered a state of low desire, consumers reconstructed their lifestyles, seeking cost-effectiveness, health, spiritual comfort, and individual expression, resulting in phenomena such as a lonely society, consumer downgrading, the laying flat culture, and the silver hair economy. Currently, practicality and cost-effectiveness are the main consumer psychology trends in China. Domestic consumption is showing a trend of lightweight, segmentation, and scenarization, with excellent growth in the scale of "eating alone". According to the research report "Analysis of the Current Situation and Future Prospects of China's 'Eating Alone' Economy Industry Development in 2025-2030" released by the Zhongyi PwC Industry Research Institute, by 2025, the scale of the "eating alone" economy is expected to exceed 1.8 trillion yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of 15.3%. The single population, working professionals, and the elderly are all driving market expansion. On the store front, hotpot, fast food, Japanese cuisine, and Chinese cuisine are beginning to transition to single dining options, with HAIDILAO employing small pot models, small portion designs, and limited-time specials, and opening the first "rice-inducing hotpot dish" physical store nationwide to accurately enter the single dining scene. In the frozen food sector, Anjing, Qianwei, and Sanquan have introduced innovative "small packaging" and "small specification" products. On the takeaway front, businesses labeled with "eating alone" have seen a 26% increase in click rates and a 35% increase in sales of small portion dishes, indicating that "small portions + high efficiency" has become a necessity. Risk warning: Weak consumer demand, significant increase in raw material costs, underperformance in new product sales, delayed updates in research report information, distortion of third-party data, and deviation in market size calculations.