Vietnam mooncake sellers running sale though Mid-Autumn Festival’s still days away

Booths selling mooncakes, or the round, baked pastries with such fillings as red beans, lotus seeds, chicken, Chinese sausages, and salted duck eggs, are normally seen across Ho Chi Minh City and other Vietnamese localities one to two months ahead of the festival, which falls on September 27 this year.

But traders in the city have complained that business is becoming dampened this year as consumers seem to prefer homemade products to those offered by popular brands.

They thus have to run promotional campaigns to attract buyers.

Customers will get one freebie for every cake they buy, or enjoy a 50 percent discount, when they visit mooncake booths on Ly Thai To Street, District 1.

But buyers are still hard to find, some traders told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on Wednesday.

“It has rained during six out of seven days of the past week and customers are too lazy to get outside [to buy mooncakes],” Tin, who manages a mooncake booth on To Hien Thanh Street, District 10, explained.

“As the festival is drawing near, I have no choice but to bargain the cakes away.”

Tin could only manage to sell ten boxes of mooncakes, and around 15 to 20 single cakes, per day at most, a business result that is way worse than last year, when “a sea of customers visited [our] booth,” he said.

Mooncakes that fetch from VND250,000 (US$11.16) to under VND1 million ($45) per four-piece box are the bestsellers this year, according to traders.

In recent years Vietnamese consumers have complained that mooncakes mass-produced by local confectionery makers are oversweet and more expensive than their real value.

Homemade mooncakes, or products made by home bakers, have thus emerged as a better choice as they are made of natural ingredients and therefore taste moderately sweet and healthy.

Mai Hanh, one such home baker, said she had received orders for 4,000 cakes for the coming festival, compared to only 1,000 last year.

“I had to lease a baking facility to fulfill the huge orders, as I could not make 4,000 cakes in my kitchen anymore,” she said.

The Mid-Autumn Festival falls on the 15th day of the eighth month in the lunar calendar.

People celebrate the fest, considered a special occasion for family reunions, by getting together to enjoy mooncakes, the festival’s indispensable treat, over fragrant tea while admiring the full moon.

The mooncake is gradually losing its meaning in Vietnam, as the delicacy is no longer meant for kids, but for adults to build relations.

In big cities in Vietnam, mooncakes are mostly exchanged between adults as gifts, and their prices keep unreasonably skyrocketing festival after festival.

There is also a paradox in the country: those who buy mooncakes will not eat them, and those who eat the cakes do not have to buy them.