Baoding center hawks ready meals to wholesalers

Calling herself a "lazy girl", Liu Yu said she always vowed that she would never cook, and only changed her mind after accidentally coming across ready meals while browsing online videos.

One recent weekend, the 27-year-old from Baoding, Hebei province, got up late, opened her refrigerator with a rumbling belly and took out a ready meal — sweet-and-sour spare ribs.

She placed the food in a pan over the stove and stir-fried it with accompanying spices.

In about three minutes, Liu was ready to enjoy her meal.

"Thanks to ready meals, I can now enjoy delicious food at home easily," Liu said.

Producers of the meals cook the dishes and leave the last couple of steps for customers to do on their own before eating, according to Yang Jianfei, general manager of a cold-chain logistics park in Baoding, where a ready meal food exhibition center opened in February. "It provides customers with great convenience at a lower price," he said.

The Shouheng Jing-Jin-Ji Ready-meal Dishes Exhibition and Sales Experience Center made its debut on Feb 21 in Gaobeidian city.

The first of its kind in the country, the center mainly serves as a wholesale market, where large quantities of ready meals are produced and sold to retailers, supermarkets, canteens, restaurants and e-commerce platforms. About 500 people from across the country attended the opening ceremony.

Covering an area of almost 5,000 square meters, the center features 100 leading ready meal brands, including Liangzhilong from Hubei province, Shuanghui from Henan province and Mucunhuang from Jiangsu province.

They collectively provide nearly 10,000 different dishes such as fried carp with sweet-and-sour sauce, spareribs braised in brown sauce and steamed perch, all of which would be complicated for a novice cook to make properly at home.

"The center mainly targets customers in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and other provinces in northern China, including Jilin and Shanxi," Yang said.

China now has over 63,000 companies producing ready meals or providing associated services, according to a report by Xinhua News Agency.

"Ready meals have gained a lot in popularity in recent years among both catering businesses and individuals," Yang said, adding that the sector has great potential for development.