Inside China’s Ready-to-Eat Meals Market

China’s prepared dishes market, 预制菜, is set to cross 749 billion yuan in 2026 according to iiMedia Research, with some industry estimates placing the real figure closer to 1 trillion yuan once catering supply chains are counted in. Convenience and price still drive the category. But since 2023, something else has entered the conversation: trust.

I’ve been running a marketing agency in Shanghai since 2012, and I’ve watched few categories flip this fast. Prepared meals went from a pandemic-era convenience story to a national controversy over what parents were feeding their kids at school, then to the subject of a draft national food safety standard. A foreign brand entering this market in 2026 isn’t just selling convenience anymore. It’s selling proof.

This article covers what the market actually looks like today, why Chinese consumers stopped trusting the category, what the incoming labeling rule changes, and what a realistic entry point looks like for a foreign ready-meal or ingredient brand. For the basics of exporting food products to China, we’ve covered that separately in our food market export guide.

Olivier Verot is the founder and CEO of Gentlemen Marketing Agency, based in Shanghai since 2012. He has advised food and beverage brands entering China through both retail and B2B channels, and has watched the prepared meals category move from convenience story to trust crisis firsthand.

The real size of China’s prepared meals market in 2026

Estimates vary because 预制菜 isn’t one product, it’s a supply chain step. iiMedia Research puts the 2026 market at roughly 749 billion yuan, up from 485 billion yuan in 2024, a 33.8% jump in a single year. Other research houses that count central-kitchen output sold straight into restaurants put the number closer to 1.07 trillion yuan for the same year. Either way, this is a market bigger than most countries’ entire packaged food industries.

The split between channels matters more than the headline number. Catering and food service, the B2B side, still account for roughly 55% of the market, but that share has been shrinking for years. Retail and e-commerce, what the industry calls C2C, sat around 38% a few years ago and now sits closer to 45%, growing at roughly 10% a year against 6% for the B2B side. Instant retail platforms like Meituan’s Xiaoxiang Supermarket and Dingdong Maicai, part of China’s broader fresh food e-commerce boom, are doing most of the pulling.

Older categories haven’t disappeared. Quick-frozen food and self-heating products, the instant noodles and self-heating hot pot that carried the category through the pandemic years, still represent a meaningful base. Growth has simply moved on to fresher, chilled, and higher-price formats.

Metric	2026 figure
Total market size	~¥749 billion (iiMedia), up to ~¥1.07 trillion under broader definitions
B2B / catering share of market	~55%
Retail & e-commerce (C2C) share	~45%, up from ~38% a few years ago
C2C channel growth rate	~10% per year
B2B channel growth rate	~6% per year
Consumers who prefer buying offline (supermarket/convenience)	79.1%
Consumers who also buy via fresh e-commerce (Hema, Dingdong Maicai)	49.2%

The trust crisis that never fully went away

In September 2023, parents in Ganzhou, in China’s Jiangxi province, started posting videos complaining about the quality of lunches a central kitchen was delivering to local schools. Some children got sick. Parents suspected the food was 预制菜, reheated rather than freshly cooked, and some quit their jobs to cook lunch for their kids themselves rather than trust the school canteen.

The story spread nationally and turned into a proxy for a bigger question: how much prepared food are Chinese consumers eating without knowing it. A survey by the Jiangsu Consumer Protection Commission found that 78.1% of consumers said restaurants using prepared dishes never told them in advance, and that labeling, when it existed at all, was incomplete.

By March 19, 2024, six national bodies, including the State Administration for Market Regulation, the Ministry of Education, and the National Health Commission, jointly issued a notice on strengthening food safety oversight for the prepared dishes industry. The Ministry of Education went further and said publicly that prepared meals should not be promoted into school campuses at all.

Two years later, the reputational damage hasn’t fully healed. Consumers didn’t stop buying prepared meals: categories like self-heating hot pot and instant rice are still everywhere on Tmall. What changed is that “预制菜” became a word people ask about before they order, not after.

The labeling rule that’s coming

On February 6, 2026, the National Health Commission and the State Administration for Market Regulation published a draft national food safety standard for prepared dishes, open for public comment. It’s the first standard of its kind for the category.

The draft defines 预制菜 narrowly: pre-cooked or partially cooked packaged dishes made from agricultural products, industrially processed, without added preservatives, meant to be reheated or finished before eating. It requires labeling that tells the consumer exactly what to do. Dishes that are fully cooked must say “reheat before eating.” Dishes that aren’t must say “cook before eating.” Packaging that touches the food during reheating has to meet heat-resistance requirements so it doesn’t melt or discolor.

The part that matters most for restaurants, and by extension for any brand supplying them: caterers have to proactively disclose to customers whether a dish uses prepared components. Not on request. By default.

As of mid-2026 this is still a draft standard, not a finalized law, so the exact wording could shift before it takes effect. But the direction is set, and it lines up with two years of regulatory signaling since the 2024 notice. Any brand planning a multi-year play in this category should build for disclosure being mandatory, not optional.

Where prepared meals actually sell

Tmall Global and JD Worldwide remain the main cross-border entry points for imported prepared foods sold directly to consumers, and prepared dishes have consistently been one of the stronger-performing categories on both. One thing to get right early: the case for a foreign brand in this market cannot be price. Domestic manufacturers will always undercut you. It has to be quality, safety documentation, or a format Chinese kitchens don’t already have.

Instant retail is where the retail growth is actually happening. Live-streaming has become a serious channel of its own. Dongfang Zhenxuan (Oriental Selection), the livestreaming operator that grew out of a former education company, sold more than 20 million yuan of prepared dishes in a single livestream session, a sign of how much volume a well-run stream can move in one sitting.

Baidu SEO and WeChat still matter for building the kind of online reputation a skeptical buyer checks before adding a prepared meal to their cart. We’ve covered both in depth in our Baidu SEO guide and our China social media guide. For this category specifically, Xiaohongshu carries more weight than either. Reviews and unboxing videos are where Chinese consumers now go to find out what they’re actually eating, the same question the labeling law is trying to force restaurants to answer up front. We break down how to sell directly through the platform in our Xiaohongshu e-commerce guide.

What Chinese consumers actually want on the plate

Taste hasn’t stopped mattering just because trust became the headline. Chinese consumers still gravitate toward hot food and soup, and pair rice with sauce rather than eat dry. Japanese and Korean-style dishes travel well in this market. Western cold, dry formats generally don’t.

Kraft understood this when it adapted Oreo for the Chinese market: a less sweet recipe, in smaller, more affordable packs. The same lesson holds for prepared meals. A frozen dish that sells well in Stockholm or Lyon won’t automatically sell in Shanghai. Portion size, sauce ratio, and reheating method all need local testing before the packaging gets finalized, not after.

What a foreign ready-meal or ingredient brand can realistically target

Given the trust environment, the realistic paths for a foreign brand fall into two categories, and they aren’t the same play.

The first is direct-to-consumer retail: finished, branded ready meals sold on Tmall Global, JD Worldwide, or through instant retail partners. This works, but it’s slow. You are asking a Chinese consumer, in a category the state itself flagged as a trust problem in 2024, to trust an imported brand they have never heard of. Budget twelve to eighteen months of consistent Xiaohongshu and review-seeding activity before volume becomes meaningful.

The second, and the one I’d point most food brands toward first, is supplying ingredients or semi-finished components to Chinese manufacturers and central kitchens already selling under trusted domestic brands. You inherit less of the trust problem, because the domestic brand carries the consumer relationship. You also sidestep part of the labeling and disclosure burden, since that falls mainly on whoever sells the finished, branded product.

Emil, who runs a small Swedish producer of frozen meatballs and cream-based sauce pouches, tried the first path in 2024. He launched a “Swedish home-style dinner” line directly on Tmall Global, priced at roughly triple the domestic self-heating hot pot category average. Six months in, he had sold around 3,000 units, mostly to Chinese consumers who had lived in or visited Sweden. Reviews were good. The volume didn’t cover the freight and cold-chain cost of running a direct-to-consumer operation from Sweden.

What worked was switching to the second path. Emil found a mid-sized Chinese frozen food manufacturer already supplying supermarket chains, and offered his cream sauce recipe and meatball formulation as a licensed input for a “Nordic” sub-line the manufacturer could sell under its own, already-trusted brand. The manufacturer handled domestic labeling, disclosure, and retail relationships. Emil supplied the recipe, quality documentation, and a small volume of imported seasoning that gave the sub-line a genuine import story to market. Within a year, the sub-line was moving through roughly 40 supermarket locations across eastern China, generating more revenue for Emil’s company from ingredient supply than the direct retail attempt had produced in twice the time, without the marketing spend needed to build a standalone brand from zero.

Either path benefits from treating the new labeling standard as a marketing asset rather than a compliance headache. A supplier who can hand a Chinese manufacturer complete, verifiable sourcing and process documentation before the standard becomes mandatory is solving a problem that manufacturer has to solve anyway. That’s an easier sale than “try our sauce, it tastes better.”

FAQ

Is 预制菜 the same thing as frozen food in Western markets?

Not exactly. 预制菜 covers a wider range, from fully frozen meals to chilled, vacuum-packed dishes a restaurant reheats before serving. The category also includes B2B catering supply that never reaches a retail shelf, which is part of why market size estimates vary so much between research houses, from around 749 billion yuan to over 1 trillion yuan for the same year.

Can a foreign brand sell finished ready meals directly to Chinese consumers?

Yes, through Tmall Global or JD Worldwide, but budget for a slow build. Given the trust concerns that surfaced since 2023, a new imported brand needs sustained Xiaohongshu review-seeding and a clear reason a Chinese buyer should pick it over a cheaper domestic option, before volume becomes meaningful.

Does the new national standard mean every restaurant must tell me when a dish is 预制菜?

That is the direction of the February 2026 draft standard: caterers must proactively disclose the use of prepared components, not just answer if asked. It is still a draft open for public comment, so the final wording may shift, but the disclosure principle already has government backing dating back to the March 2024 notice.

What’s the fastest way for a foreign food brand to test this market without major upfront investment?

Supply a Chinese manufacturer or central kitchen that already sells under a trusted domestic brand, rather than launching your own label first. You skip most of the retail trust-building cost, and you get real sales data on your product before committing to a direct-to-consumer launch.

We help food and beverage brands sell prepared meals in China. Contact us!

We are a China-based marketing agency that has worked with food and beverage brands entering China through both retail and B2B channels since 2012. For a trust-sensitive category like prepared meals, that means building the review and content presence Chinese buyers check before they order, not just running ads.

Gentlemen Marketing Agency offers digital marketing and e-commerce solutions for food brands, including web design, e-commerce and social media strategy, localization, market research, and KOL marketing.

Whether you’re weighing a direct Tmall Global launch or an ingredient-supply deal with a domestic manufacturer, we can help you figure out which path fits your product and your timeline. Leave us a comment or contact us, so we can schedule a free consultation with one of our food and beverage specialists.