China’s Mid-Autumn mooncake sales fall back to Earth as consumption fails to take off
‘Why aren’t mooncakes selling?’ Online debate boils over as sales of traditional holiday delicacies lack the bite they used to see
China’s falling sales of mooncakes – a must-have product when families reunite for the Mid-Autumn Festival – has spelled more worries about the country’s weak consumption and also the national economy.
The volume of mooncake sales this year had dropped about 6 per cent from a year earlier to 300,000 tonnes, according to a market trend report released by the China Association of Bakery and Confectionery Industry last month.
The sales revenue was estimated to have declined by about 9 per cent to 20 billion yuan (US$2.82 billion), it added.
Mid-Autumn Festival, which fell on Tuesday, is usually an important occasion to gauge national consumption, including retail goods sales, travel, box office and catering.
This is the second straight year that the mooncake market has gone cold.
According to retail monitoring agency BrandCT.cn, the major sales price range of mooncakes was 70-200 yuan this year, compared with 80-280 yuan in 2023. Also, those priced above 500 yuan, often distributed as gifts, largely disappeared this year.
The top three bestselling mooncakes on Douyin Mall, TikTok’s sister app in China, were all priced below 30 yuan: 9.9 yuan for 10 pieces (300g), 29.9 yuan for 10 pieces (800g), and 19.9 yuan for eight pieces (300g).
Meanwhile, the question “why aren’t mooncakes selling?” has gained traction on Chinese microblogging platform Weibo since Tuesday, attracting more than 7,500 posts for discussion, with more than 81 million reads.