China's Premade Meal Backlash Puts Restaurant Prices and Transparency Under Scrutiny

An expensive meal becomes a test of trust

Nearly 400 Xibei restaurants face changes to how they prepare food after a complaint on September 10 turned an expensive meal into a national argument about freshness, prices and honesty. Entrepreneur and livestreamer Luo Yonghao accused the chain of serving mostly premade dishes and called for compulsory menu labels. Xibei's founder, Jia Guolong, denied that description, but the company later apologized and announced nine measures to change its operations.

At the center of the dispute is a gap between China's official definition of a premade dish and what customers think they are buying. Under a 2024 regulatory notice, dishes prepared in a restaurant chain's central kitchen and delivered to its outlets are outside the premade category. Many diners use a broader definition: food that arrives frozen, vacuum packed or already marinated elsewhere feels premade, whatever its official classification.

China's debate has grown around disclosure rather than a wave of food poisoning or a major safety incident. Customers want to know how much cooking happens in the restaurant, particularly when prices and branding suggest a freshly prepared meal. Parents have also questioned ingredients with long shelf lives in children's dishes.

By December 7, 2025, the controversy had pushed restaurants to reconsider kitchen practices and menu descriptions while regulators prepared national standards for public comment. The argument reaches beyond one chain. It tests whether a restaurant industry built increasingly around speed, consistency and cost control can meet expectations rooted in fresh cooking and culinary pride.

What Luo said, and how Xibei answered

Luo's September 10 complaint followed a visit to a Xibei branch. He told his audience that the meal was expensive and mostly premade, then urged regulators to require restaurants to identify such food on their menus. Millions joined the discussion, bringing longstanding concerns about restaurant preparation into wider public view.

Luo Yonghao, the entrepreneur and prominent influencer whose complaint triggered the latest wave of attention, expressed his dissatisfaction in blunt terms:

Almost all premade. Still so expensive. Disgusting.

Luo later sharpened his argument around consumer rights, pricing and transparency. His demand was for national rules that would let customers make an informed choice. The complaint struck a nerve among diners who accept convenience food at home but expect value for money when eating out, especially at chains that appeal to families and present an image of fresh cooking.

Jia Guolong, Xibei's founder, responded that the chain used partially processed ingredients rather than premade dishes. He invited the public into its kitchens and defended the company's compliance with the rules and its practice of cooking at its outlets.

Jia gave a categorical denial of the description used by Luo:

Not a single dish in Xibei outlets is a premade dish.

Kitchen visits and livestreams did not deliver the reassurance Xibei sought. Images showed vacuum sealed items, frozen vegetables with shelf lives measured in many months, and widespread use of induction stoves. Videos of packaged and frozen components circulated online, weakening confidence in the chain's fresh cooking image.

Staff and media accounts described falling delivery orders and foot traffic at multiple locations. No numerical sales decline was given. Customers increasingly demanded labels distinguishing food cooked to order from dishes assembled using components prepared elsewhere.

Why the official definition matters

The State Administration for Market Regulation and related bodies issued a notice in 2024 defining premade dishes as prepackaged food made from one or more agricultural ingredients, processed in factories and intended to be eaten after heating or further cooking. Processing can include marinating, forming, frying or steaming.

The notice said these products do not rely on added preservatives. Their safety instead depends on cold storage, freezing and sterilization. Keeping food cold and controlling its processing are therefore central to how the category is regulated.

Fresh vegetables and basic preparation such as washing, peeling and cutting fall outside the definition. Ready to eat items, including salads and convenience buns, are also excluded. Crucially for restaurant chains, dishes produced in their own central kitchens and sent to outlets do not fall under the premade label in the current framework.

Xibei's defense rests on this regulatory boundary. Customers, however, often judge preparation by what they see: sealed bags, frozen ingredients or food marinated away from the restaurant. A dish can sit outside the official category while still falling short of a customer's expectation that most preparation takes place after an order is placed.

Parents were particularly troubled by images of ingredients with long shelf lives used in children's food. The combination of premium prices and preparation far from the dining room made the dispute about more than terminology. Customers wanted a straightforward account of what happened to their food before it reached the table.

Xibei promises more cooking at its outlets

Xibei issued a public apology after days of pressure and promised changes across its nearly 400 restaurants. Its nine announced measures included moving more preparation into individual stores, working with suppliers to shorten shelf lives, and improving transparency.

Children's meals were a prominent part of the response. Xibei said beef patties and rice dishes for children would be cooked in the stores, and that children's fish dishes would use freshly cut fish. It also promised preparation of lamb skewers and pork ribs at its outlets.

The chain said it would switch to soybean oil that is not genetically modified and continue inviting customer feedback. Together, the commitments addressed several of the concerns raised during the kitchen visits: where food was prepared, how long ingredients could be stored and what customers were told.

The main steps in the dispute and the regulatory response span more than a year:

• 2024: The State Administration for Market Regulation and related bodies set out a definition of premade dishes and excluded food prepared in restaurant chains' central kitchens.
• September 10, 2025: Luo Yonghao criticized a meal at Xibei and called for mandatory menu labels.
• After days of public pressure: Xibei apologized and announced nine operational measures for nearly 400 outlets.
• By December 7, 2025: A draft national food safety standard was expected to open for public comment. No date for that consultation was given.

Other restaurants turn to labels and open kitchens

Restaurants beyond Xibei began taking steps to reassure customers. Some labeled dishes as fresh, partly prepared or premade. Others opened kitchen views to the public or started livestreams so diners could see how meals were handled.

Chains that already labeled their menus, including Home Original Chicken and Lao Xiang Ji, received consumer praise for making the choice plain. Their experience points to the central demand running through the controversy: customers want preparation information before they order, when they can still decide whether the meal suits their taste and budget.

Many diners said they did not oppose convenience food itself. Their objection was paying premium prices for preparation methods they felt had been hidden. Labels can make prices easier to understand by showing whether the restaurant is doing most of the cooking or completing work carried out elsewhere.

Food trust is especially sensitive in China, where pride in cuisine exists alongside memories of past safety scandals. Consumers already understand that chains use central kitchens, freezing and vacuum packing to maintain consistent quality and predictable costs. The demand is for those practices to be communicated openly rather than left for customers to discover through kitchen videos.

Why industrial preparation grew so quickly

More than 70,000 companies in China process premade food or precooked components, according to industry estimates. The sector's output value passed 500 billion yuan in 2023, and forecasts pointed to a market exceeding 1 trillion yuan by 2026. A large share of production goes to restaurants.

The forecast threshold is twice the 500 billion yuan threshold crossed in 2023, showing the scale of growth anticipated by the industry. The 2026 figure is a projection, while the 2023 figure describes output already recorded. Surveys in recent years found that many restaurant chains relied heavily on prepared components, sometimes for a majority of their menus.

Restaurants adopted these methods while operating on thin margins and facing rising rent, labor and energy costs. Delivery accounts for a large share of revenue for many brands, and customers expect quick, consistent food whether they eat in a dining room or receive it from a courier.

Central kitchens, freezing and precise portions help chains control quality, reduce waste and speed up service. They also reduce the training demands placed on staff at individual outlets. Preparing food through standardized processes can improve safety by reducing the risk of contamination passing between ingredients in a busy kitchen.

China's catering revenue reached 3.6 trillion yuan from January to August 2025, an increase of 3.6 percent from a year earlier. Growth was slower than in the same period of 2024 and far below the rebound after the pandemic in 2023. Rising output in premade food therefore sits alongside slower revenue growth for the businesses that serve many of those products.

Those pressures explain the appeal of centralized preparation. They also sharpen the pricing dispute: the cost savings that help a restaurant survive may feel unfair to diners when the bill suggests a level of fresh preparation they do not receive.

Freshness, wok hei and the limits of mall kitchens

Families who associate fresh Chinese cooking with wok hei may find a flat or watery dish especially disappointing. Wok hei, often described as the breath of the wok, is the smoky aroma and char produced by high heat, rapid movement and direct contact with a pan over an open flame.

Many modern kitchens in shopping malls use induction stoves. Property managers and ventilation requirements often restrict open flames, although China has no blanket national ban on flames in shopping malls. The equipment shown in Xibei's kitchens therefore brought attention to a practical difference between standardized restaurant spaces and the cooking experience some customers imagine.

Parents and diners watching their spending asked why a restaurant should charge high prices when major parts of a meal had been prepared elsewhere and frozen for months. For them, freshness involved the place and timing of preparation as well as the taste on the plate.

Tan Guijun, director of the Nutrition Department at Tianjin First Central Hospital, offered a view centered on production and handling standards:

Premade dishes can adequately meet the body's requirements for calories and nutrition if production, storage, and cooking meet standards.

Tan's explanation puts nutrition alongside the consumer debate about taste, price and disclosure. Production, storage and final cooking all matter to whether a meal meets nutritional needs. Diners still want to choose how their food is prepared and know what they are paying for.

What the planned national standard would cover

A draft National Food Safety Standard for premade meals was expected to be opened for public comment. Officials had also signaled national standards covering disclosure of premade items in restaurants and keeping added preservatives out of these products.

The proposed framework would, for the first time, require restaurants to disclose whether and how they use premade food. It would clarify definitions, establish safety indicators, specify acceptable processing techniques, and guide storage and transport. Formal inspection methods and limits on additives would also form part of the rules.

Cold chain control and sterilization remain central to the approach. A cold chain is the system that keeps food at the required low temperature during storage and transport. The planned standard would underline that preservatives should not be added because safety is meant to come from those temperature controls and processing measures.

Businesses were preparing for higher costs as they adjusted to stricter requirements. Industry insiders predicted that compliance could raise production expenses by 15 to 30 percent for some processors. Smaller factories could face pressure to leave the market, while larger companies with stronger cold chain infrastructure could gain market share.

Stronger enforcement and clearer labeling would likely improve factory standards and traceability, meaning the ability to follow food through production and distribution. Restaurants would also have a clearer basis for matching descriptions and prices to their preparation methods. For diners, the tradeoff could be higher prices for some dishes alongside better information about what is freshly prepared and what is not.

Rebuilding trust means matching promises to the plate

Restaurants that have handled the backlash more successfully share a willingness to explain their preparation methods. Clear menu symbols, short descriptions beneath popular dishes and staff able to answer basic questions can help customers make decisions without needing to inspect a kitchen.

Moving some preparation back into stores, particularly for signature dishes, can address expectations about freshness. Shorter shelf life targets and fresher ingredients for children's meals respond to concerns that became especially visible during the Xibei dispute. The practical task is to bring marketing into line with what happens in the kitchen.

Prices are part of that conversation. A premade dish that is reheated can be presented around speed and convenience, with a price reflecting that process. A dish cooked to order over high heat may take longer or cost more, and the menu can explain the preparation behind the difference.

China's controversy touches culinary identity as well as household spending. Industrial preparation offers restaurants consistency and efficiency, while customers want freshness, choice and respect. Xibei's promised changes and the planned national standards address different parts of that tension: one changes restaurant operations, while the other seeks clearer rules for production, safety and disclosure.

What to Know

• Luo Yonghao's September 10 complaint about an expensive Xibei meal triggered national scrutiny of premade restaurant food.
• Xibei founder Jia Guolong denied using premade dishes under the official definition. The chain later apologized and announced nine measures across nearly 400 outlets.
• The 2024 regulatory definition excludes food made in restaurant chains' central kitchens, creating a gap with how many customers understand premade food.
• Xibei promised more preparation at its outlets, shorter shelf lives, changes to children's meals and soybean oil that is not genetically modified.
• Industry estimates put the sector above 70,000 companies and 500 billion yuan in output value in 2023, with forecasts exceeding 1 trillion yuan by 2026.
• Catering revenue rose 3.6 percent to 3.6 trillion yuan from January to August 2025, a slower pace than in the same period of 2024.
• Planned national standards would address restaurant disclosure, safety, processing, storage, transport and inspection, while keeping added preservatives out of premade products.
• Industry insiders expected compliance costs to rise by 15 to 30 percent for some processors.
• The central consumer demand is clear preparation information and prices that match the food and service being sold.