Local Mooncakes in Yiwu

    Mid-Autumn Festival will come a month from now. Mooncakes, a Chinese bakery product traditionally eaten during the festival and symbolizing family reunion, have already been pre-ordered in the markets. In the past few days, pastry companies, bakeries, shopping malls, supermarkets, and online shops have released various kinds of mooncakes in order to attract more sales in the imminent mooncake season.

    Benefiting from the development of technology and logistics, nowadays customers can enjoy all kinds of mooncakes delivered directly to their doorstep. For the customers, the mooncakes have more flavors, lower price difference, and higher cost–performance. For mooncake sellers, however, it means fiercer market competition.

    While the mooncakes of other places are still in the pre-order period or are waiting for delivery, local mooncakes in Yiwu have already kicked off the mooncake season.

    “In early July, several regular customers asked me when I would start selling Yiwu mooncakes. They intended to send Yiwu mooncakes to relatives and friends as gifts,” said Wang Yimin, head of Yiwu Co-Op Group. “Many people from Yiwu who have lived away from home for business for many years not only like to eat Yiwu mooncakes themselves, but have also created fans of Yiwu mooncakes among their friends in their new cities.”

    Yiwu Co-Op Group was previously named the Yiting Supply and Marketing Cooperative Food Factory. The company has been producing Yiwu mooncakes using traditional methods for more than 60 years, which earns it the favor of local customers.

    Since last year, the company has new big customers from e-commerce and WeChat. This year, four or five e-commerce platforms and WeChat businesses expressed their intention to collaborate. In order to maintain the freshness of the mooncakes, the businesses purchase and sell on the same day. “Last year, one of these online retailers reached a total sale of 150,000 RMB during mooncake season. Online merchants are gradually catching up with traditional retailers,” said Wang Yimin.

    Yiting Town, where Yiwu Co-Op Group is located, currently has 20 mooncake manufacturers. As the most representative mooncake production base in Yiwu, its quality supervision has attracted public attention.

    According to the Yiting Market Supervision Office, on August 1^st it convened local mooncake manufacturers to attend the Yiting Mooncake Quality Improvement and Control Meeting. Directors from 20 mooncake manufacturers signed the Quality and Safety Responsibility Letter for Food Production Enterprises.

    The person in charge of the Yiting Market Supervision Office stated that they have carried out a number of inspections, such as inspection of the production site, health certificates checks, production process supervision, packaging and product description checks, and more. 

(By Zhou Lüjiang, translated by Li Ziyi, edited by Kendra Fiddler)