Where do mooncakes go after Mid-Autumn Festival? [On the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival, the remaining gift boxes that were sold off from the supermarket "disappeared overnight"]
Moon cakes, as an indispensable seasonal food for this short holiday, will no longer have a "star halo" after the Mid-Autumn Festival. A reporter from Beijing Youth Daily learned on September 12 that moon cakes were sold as early as the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival.
After the festival, the remaining mooncakes "disappeared overnight" from the supermarket and were returned to the manufacturer for further processing.
supermarket
Mid-autumn afternoon moon cakes have begun to be busy withdrawing from Taiwan
"It was withdrawn yesterday, and now other goods have been placed." The staff of Wumart Supermarket in Tongzhou District said that the place where the mooncake gift box was originally placed has been replaced with daily necessities.
A few days ago, this location was still full of mooncake gift boxes, as well as promotional staff from different brands.
And on the first day of this small holiday, that is, the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival, after noon, the place was already busy withdrawing from Taiwan.
Not only this supermarket, Beiqing Daily reporters visited many supermarkets and found no trace of mooncake gift boxes.
"On the afternoon of the Mid-Autumn Festival, too few people came to buy moon cake gift boxes. Many manufacturers will come to collect the unsold goods on this day." A supermarket salesperson told the Beiqing Daily reporter.
Some mooncake manufacturers also choose to "drop the goods on the spot": some are gift boxes to buy one, get two free, some are sold in bulk after dismantling the box, and some are directly tied to the same brand of goods for clearance.
A reporter from Beiqing Daily learned that the promotion of moon cake gift boxes started as early as half a month before the Mid-Autumn Festival, and as the Mid-Autumn Festival approached, discounts and gifts for purchases became more and more intense.
Some supermarket staff said that on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, some bulk mooncakes were sold for one yuan a piece, and some customers came to buy cheap mooncakes when they were waiting for the sale.
Not only offline supermarkets, but also e-commerce companies with instant delivery online, although the links to various mooncakes are still there, the products have also shown "sold out".
However, it can be seen from the link that some mooncake gift boxes were also sold at a discount.
"Basically, the ones with big discounts are all sold out. A small amount of the remaining ones, especially gift boxes, have been returned to the manufacturers." A staff member of a supermarket said.
factory
The returned moon cake will be damaged in appearance
So, how are these returned moon cakes handled?
The Beiqing Daily reporter learned that some of the mooncakes returned to the manufacturers will be distributed to employees, and some will be donated to some welfare agencies.
However, if the expiring mooncakes are pulled back to the factory, the packaging may still be recycled, but the mooncakes themselves may be "disposed".
"Going through the scrapping process will first damage the appearance to avoid returning to the market. Then it will be taken away by a specialized company and used to make feed."
There are also pastry manufacturers who said that the company will destroy the moon cakes that are about to expire under the supervision of a third-party agency.
In order to avoid a large amount of surplus moon cakes, although the sales period is less than two months, many moon cake manufacturers have to do their "homework" for nearly half a year.
A person in charge of a moon cake manufacturer said that in the moon cake season every year, whether it is its own brand or customizing it for customers, the output is customized according to the sales volume of the previous year and market conditions.
Some companies began to explore the market in March of that year and set production plans.
"The production was basically stopped two weeks before the Mid-Autumn Festival." The person in charge of another moon cake manufacturer revealed that moon cakes are the most special seasonal food, and other seasonal foods, such as zongzi, can be sold for a while after the Dragon Boat Festival, but moon cakes have passed the Mid-Autumn Festival. During the festival, no one will buy again, so companies will make careful calculations, and even adjust the inventory by stopping production in advance.
"It is normal for some good-selling gift boxes to be out of stock a week before the Mid-Autumn Festival," and if there is a backlog of goods near the Mid-Autumn Festival, they will start a big promotion.
"It's usually a gift, after all, it's for clearing the goods." The person in charge said that even if some gifts are large, they may make a loss, but it is far less than if they can't be sold. .
consumer
Many tricks to deal with leftover mooncakes
However, a reporter from Beiqing Daily also found that not all moon cakes "disappeared overnight" from the market after the Mid-Autumn Festival.
In Hema, the pastry area also has freshly baked fresh meat mooncakes, as well as sea salt snowskin mooncakes frozen in the freezer.
In some Chinese dim sum shops, there are also freshly baked mooncakes for sale.
"It's not so much a moon cake as a snack. You can call it glutinous rice cake, or fresh meat cake."
The merchants also said that such products will generally be available in the medium and long term.
"Fresh meat mooncakes were sold in November last year, and this variety was temporarily withdrawn because the weather was too cold and affected the taste."
In addition, most of the moon cakes in the homes of citizens have not been completely eaten up.
Some netizens posted that they had received a bit too much moon cakes, and they really couldn't finish them and didn't know what to do.
The Beiqing Daily reporter noticed that the shelf life of different brands of moon cakes is different, but compared with packaged food, its shelf life is relatively short. Among them, the longest shelf life is 90 days, the shortest is only ten days, and some are marked with 45 days or 60 days.
For consumers, it is not too much time to digest the remaining moon cakes.
For this reason, how to deal with the remaining moon cakes has become a new topic after the Mid-Autumn Festival.
Some netizens said that they tried to fry moon cakes with green peppers, but the taste was unexpectedly good.
Some netizens froze Liuxin mooncakes and made them into desserts.
Nutrition expert Fan Zhihong said that moon cakes can be directly used as a staple food for breakfast.
If you feel that it is too sweet and too greasy, some traditional Cantonese-style mooncakes, such as lotus seed paste, five kernels, jujube paste, bean paste, etc., can be put into the beater together with the soy milk to make flavored soy milk; they can also be cut into small cubes and put In porridge; or sliced into toast for sandwiches.
Fan Zhihong suggested that moon cakes should not be stored at room temperature for a long time, but can be put in the refrigerator with packaging.
Text/Coordinator Zhang Xin, reporter of this newspaper/Yu Meiying