Only pre-processing, no pre-curing: Pengpeng Food Collection provides freely customizable pre-processed clean vegetables.

Against the backdrop of widespread pre-cooked dishes and severe homogenization of takeout flavors, returning to home cooking is becoming a lifestyle choice for a large number of urban residents. However, for most household users, there are two unavoidable major pain points when cooking at home: first, ingredient preparation is tedious and time-consuming, with complex processes of washing, sorting and cutting ingredients; second, ordinary users have limited cooking skills, so it is difficult to achieve the ideal taste even after bringing the ingredients home.

Targeting the real cooking difficulties of local families in Wuhan, the new local project "Pengpeng Food Collection" has officially launched its seed round financing. The project focuses on a one-stop community cooking solution featuring freely selectable pre-processed cleaned ingredients, independent small-packaging portions, and supporting video tutorials for dishes. It does not follow the pre-cooked dish route or fix set meal combinations, and focuses on the ordering-style service of "matching whatever users want to eat", with the first pilot launched in Xudong Community, Wuhan.

The traditional fresh cleaned ingredient model is rigid, and the pain points of home cooking have not been solved for a long time

At present, the mainstream community fresh food platforms in Wuhan are mainly represented by Pupu, Meituan Grocery and Freshippo. These platforms have complete categories and fast delivery speed, which basically meet the daily grocery shopping needs of residents, but there are obvious shortcomings in refined home cooking services.

First of all, most of the original fresh ingredients on market platforms are sold in large portions, which cannot be finished at one time by an ordinary family of two or three people, and the remaining ingredients are extremely easy to waste and inconvenient to store. Secondly, all ready-to-use cleaned ingredients on the market adopt the set meal mode with fixed collocations by merchants, where the proportion of dishes and the combination of meat and vegetables are all fixed, so users cannot freely add, subtract or replace according to their own taste, number of diners and preferences, resulting in extremely poor flexibility.

More critically, the vast majority of ordinary residents are not professional chefs. Even if they buy well-processed ingredients, it is difficult for them to control the heat, seasoning and cooking steps, which often leads to the problem of fresh ingredients but poor taste of finished dishes. Many people want to cook at home, but are restricted by ingredient preparation and cooking skills, which is also a realistic obstacle for many families to cook.

There is currently no fresh food brand on the market that can simultaneously meet the three major needs of matching ingredients on demand, small-portion packaging, and free cooking tutorials, which is also the core opportunity for Pengpeng Food Collection to enter the market.

Focus on differentiated services, to recreate homemade dishes with flavors from multiple regions at home

Different from the large and comprehensive integrated fresh food platforms, Pengpeng Food Collection focuses on the sub-track of pre-processed cleaned ingredients, and provides small but refined, localized and highly adapted home cooking services, adhering to the core principle of "only pre-processing, no pre-cooking and ripening", to 100% retain the fresh original taste of ingredients and the wok hei of freshly stir-fried dishes.

The project has three core differentiated advantages, which accurately hit the rigid needs of household users.

First, completely free selection without fixed set meals. Users do not have to be forced to accept fixed meat and vegetable collocations, they can freely select single ingredients and combine dishes arbitrarily according to the number of family members, taste preferences and dietary restrictions, completely getting rid of the rigid mode of set meal cleaned ingredients.

Second, accurate portioning with independent small packages. All cut and prepared ingredients are packaged in small portions for single person or double persons, with controllable portion, cleanness and hygiene, ready to take and cook at any time, which fundamentally solves the problems of ingredient waste and troublesome storage.

Third, each dish is matched with an exclusive cooking video. All dishes on the platform are equipped with easy-to-understand practical teaching videos, covering the order of putting ingredients into the pot, heat level and seasoning ratio, so that users with zero foundation can get started easily.

In terms of dish planning, the project is based on local Hubei cuisine in Wuhan, and also expands to Sichuan, Hunan, Guangdong and other cuisines. Users can make homemade dishes with flavors from different regions without going out. The team is also in contact with the Hubei Cuisine Research Institute, relying on professional catering resources to further polish the dish system adapted to local people's tastes. Different from the stereotyped general dishes on national platforms, it is more in line with the eating habits of Wuhan residents.

Deploy lightweight front warehouses to steadily run through the community business model

In order to control the early operation cost and accurately verify market demand, Pengpeng Food Collection selected the core Xudong Community in Wuhan as the first pilot, and planned a 300 ㎡ standardized front warehouse. The team adopts a lightweight personnel structure of "core full-time staff + flexible workers", with 4 fixed full-time staff responsible for ingredient acceptance, fine cutting and preparation, packaging and quality control, and temporary workers are equipped during peak order periods to minimize the fixed operation cost to the greatest extent.

In terms of business model, the project takes the private mini-program as the core order placing carrier, without relying on the traffic of third-party platforms. Users place orders online, the orders are processed immediately in the warehouse, and the goods are delivered to their homes in the same city. At the same time, a 36-yuan new user experience set meal is launched to lower the threshold for users to try for the first time, leverage the first batch of community seed users with high cost performance and good experience, and accumulate repurchase through real word-of-mouth.

Talking about the difficulties of project implementation, the founder is very pragmatic. He said that the biggest challenge for the new project is not the product and model, but the cultivation of consumption habits of community users. Users have been accustomed to the traditional grocery shopping mode for a long time, and the transformation of cognition and habit from "washing and cutting ingredients by themselves" to "professional pre-processed cleaned ingredients" requires gradual penetration, continuous service, and step-by-step occupation of community users' minds.

The funds from this seed round of financing will be fully used for the construction of Xudong front warehouse, procurement of professional cutting and preparation equipment, early market customer acquisition and polishing of standardized processes. After the pilot is launched, the team will focus on monitoring core operation data such as daily average orders, user repurchase rate and ingredient loss rate, to polish a standardized community operation model with replicability, low loss and high repurchase.

Led by senior catering practitioners, pragmatically deeply cultivate the local people's livelihood track

The core team of the project has solid catering implementation experience, and rejects the pure Internet shell model. The founder has been deeply engaged in the offline catering industry for many years, has managed a 1300 ㎡ large catering store, fully mastered the whole process of ingredient procurement, kitchen processing, ingredient loss control and dish quality control, is well versed in the pain points and standards of the catering ingredient industry, and can control product quality from a professional perspective.

Co-founder Xu Liang is responsible for the construction of the project's online system, covering core online modules such as mini-program development, dish listing, user community operation and after-sales maintenance, to realize the cooperation of offline quality control and online operation. The team has clear division of labor and extremely strong implementation ability.

At present, the project is in the seed preparation stage, has not been officially launched for pilot operation, and there is no relevant revenue data. Adhering to the steady and step-by-step idea, the team will not expand blindly, and will first deeply cultivate the single Xudong community. After the product, service, performance fulfillment and repurchase models are all run through and matured, it will gradually replicate and expand to communities across Wuhan, to build a refined local community cleaned ingredient service brand belonging to Wuhan.