(Yicai Global) Jan. 17 -- In a break from tradition, an increasing number of Chinese people are choosing pre-cooked dishes for their Lunar New Year’s Eve banquets this year, as dining out loses its appeal amid the Covid-19 pandemic. And caterers, supermarkets and e-grocers are quick to develop new offerings to meet the growing demand.

Traditionally, families would gather around a table heaving with home-cooked delicacies to celebrate the Spring Festival. As incomes improved, booking a sumptuous banquet at a restaurant became the trend. But since the outbreak of Covid-19, people’s enthusiasm for eating out has waned and the ready meals sector has been developing rapidly, offering much greater choice. As a result, ‘ready-to-eat’ meals are now taking pride of place at many dinner tables.

And caterers, supermarkets and e-grocers are quick to jump on the bandwagon. Restaurant chain operator Inner Mongolia Xibei Catering Group is debuting more than 10 types of gift boxes containing pre-cooked meals as part of its Spring Festival special offers, Yicai Global has learned.

Over half of Hema Fresh’s customers eat pre-cooked meals and the proportion is even higher in the bigger cities, said Tian Xin, general manager at the “ready-to-cook, ready-to-heat and ready-to-eat foods” department of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding’s e-grocery arm, citing the results of a company survey.

“We have been developing new ready-to-eat meals all year, creating 20 to 30 types each month, so we have a full range of pre-cooked dishes ready to be served at the Lunar New Year banquet,” said Tian.

RT-Mart has a huge variety of ready meals available for the Spring Festival family reunion banquets, said Cai Zheng, a chef in charge of designing supermarket chain RT-Mart’s ready meals for the Lunar New Year.

The firm has created 44 different pre-cooked dishes, ranging from appetizers and main courses to hotpot broth, noodles and dumplings, Cai said. This is now the fifth year that RT-Mart has developed a ready-to-eat menu for the Lunar New Year.

Most of these ready meals are bought on e-grocer sites. Sales of Spring Festival commodities, including pre-made dishes, have more than tripled in the run up to the Lunar New Year from the same time last year, according to online grocer Dingdong Maicai. Some of these meals have around 5,000 orders each day.

Dingdong Maicai is also partnering with well-known restaurant “Shanghai Old Restaurant” to launch gift boxes containing a full-course New Year banquet, a company insider told Yicai Global. Almost 20,000 sets have been sold since it was debuted.

The size of China’s ready meals market reached CNY550 billion (USD81.3 billion) last year, largely driven by young consumers, according to a research report by UK professional services company Deloitte. And the compound annual growth rate is likely to be 13 percent over the next five years, it added.

Editors: Tang Shihua. Kim Taylor