Think of your favorite dishes to order at a Chinese restaurant — my personal favorites are Eggplant w/Garlic Sauce, Mapo Tofu, and Cumin Lamb. You’re probably thinking of something like this.
Now think about the frozen food aisle at your local grocery store and its Asian frozen food offerings. It probably looks something similar to this.
Orange chicken, chow mein and egg rolls dominate the list. Don’t get me wrong, I love the occasional Panda Express meal, but obviously there’s a difference in the two pictures above.
At first I thought I was looking in the wrong stores — I thought perhaps my local Chinese store would for sure have a wider selection of frozen meals. But I mostly just saw frozen carbs (dumplings, buns, etc). And as good as those are, there’s only so many buns you can eat and they don’t make up a full meal.
All I want is a homestyle frozen Chinese meal option — rice + 1 or 2 sides. Is that too much to ask for Christmas 2020?
(If you know of something like this that exists, send me a note. I will be forever indebted to you).
I’ve thought a lot about why these options don’t exist yet. Perhaps Chinese food doesn’t do as well in frozen form? But there’s plenty of other international cuisines that are packaged in frozen meal form — you can get enchiladas, tikka masala, burritos and sesame chicken all so easily. And those foods certainly are not meant to be frozen, yet they’re everywhere in stores. And if the food technology exists to make something as delicious as a Toaster Strudel in frozen form, you can bet it’s good enough to make Chinese food good frozen too.
It could also be a demand issue. True, “mainstream” Chinese food in the United States often consists of the entrees you see at Panda Express like General Tso’s chicken. If homestyle Chinese meals were introduced into grocery stores, would there be enough demand to make it profitable? Possibly, but probably would need more research. Asian Americans are the fastest growing demographic in the United States and anecdotally, have discussed the need for better frozen Chinese food with many friends. So based on this extensive market research, I’m confident that if you build it they will come.
So where do we start?
I won’t go too in-depth into each of the steps since it’s Christmas Eve and I have real Chinese food waiting for me, but at a high level we’ll need the following.
Market Research
Is there actually a market for this? Of the hundreds of Chinese dishes, which ones do people actually want to eat in frozen form? How do we keep competitors out of the market? What’s stopping General Mills from launching their own brand overnight to compete with ours? Where do we launch? At what price point?
Recipe development
We’ll need some Asian moms to perfect the recipes that we decide on. (If you know an Asian mom who wants to get involved, shoot me a note). We offer a comprehensive benefits package which includes healthcare, 401k and most importantly, an exclusive Wechat group.
Manufacturing Facilities
We’ll need a place to prepare, cook, freeze and package these meals. Thinking somewhere close to our target market to reduce supply chain costs.
Distribution Agreements/Markets?
Since we won’t be selling DTC, we’ll need to partner with stores to sell them to consumers. Do we put them in large chains like Whole Foods/Target? Or do we launch in local Asian supermarkets? How do we get the word out? If it pops up on shelves, will people buy it?
Risks
Like I hinted at above, the biggest risk is keeping larger competitors out of the market. If they also realize this is a big opportunity, they have the resources to enter quickly. Perhaps the way to mitigate this risk is to aim to be acquired by a larger company, after making back tuition money of course.
2020 was shitty. But who knows, maybe it could have been less shitty if we had better frozen Chinese food.
This is the second post in my collection of random business ideas. More random ideas coming soon hopefully. To connect/discuss further (or to provide seed funding?!), reach out to me here. As always, views are solely my own and do not represent my employer.
