After the Mid-Autumn Festival, mooncakes, a kind of seasonal food, quickly disappeared from major stores, and "Where did the mooncakes go" became a hot topic after the festival. In an interview recently, the reporter found that this year’s moon cakes are not only "slim" in packaging, but also more rational in production and sales: supermarkets and stores purchase goods on demand, and manufacturers set production by sales. In previous years, the phenomenon of a large backlog and waste of moon cakes after holidays has been significantly improved. Practicing economy and opposing waste is becoming a new fashion of consumption.
Merchants purchase goods on demand: discount promotion and timely clearance.
On the morning of September 15th, the reporter visited a number of supermarkets in our city and found that the mooncakes in gift boxes that were sold hot before the Mid-Autumn Festival basically disappeared, and only a few mooncakes in bulk were on sale at a discount. The staff of a supermarket told reporters that after the Mid-Autumn Festival, almost no one bought moon cakes, and they were taken off the shelves one or two days after the festival.
"One or two days before the festival, supermarkets will carry out promotional activities. Some varieties buy one get one free, and many elderly people will buy some bulk moon cakes to eat at home." Zhang Peng, manager of suguo supermarket Jiangjun Avenue Store, told the reporter that compared with bulk mooncakes, gift box mooncakes are mainly used to send benefits to relatives and friends or companies. After the Mid-Autumn Festival, there is basically no market. At present, all of them have been removed from the shelves, and the stores are taking the return process with dealers. "We analyzed last year’s sales and this year’s market demand before we purchased the goods. We purchased the goods on demand and tried to balance sales and inventory, so there was not much left."
An old-fashioned pastry shop in Xinjiekou launched the activity of "buy one get one free for all the mooncakes" after the festival, which attracted many elderly customers to buy them. "It will be sold at a discount these days after the holiday, and the customers are mostly elderly people." The staff in the store told the reporter that the bulk moon cakes can basically be sold out after the discount, and the boxed moon cakes will be returned to the manufacturers if there is any surplus.
The reporter saw on an e-commerce platform that the moon cake interface showed "Replenishment" and it was no longer possible to place an order. The relevant person in charge of the e-commerce platform told the reporter that in order to avoid inventory backlog, this year’s moon cakes are basically purchased on demand. Most of the moon cakes have been sold out, and only a small amount will be left, and the rest will be returned to the manufacturers for unified handling.
Manufacturers set production by sales: follow the market to adjust production.
"Moon cake sales are mainly in two ways: store retail and social group purchase. We all determine the output according to market demand to avoid overproduction caused by blind production." Nanjing Xiaosuzhou Food Co., Ltd. is an important supplier of mooncake sales in supermarkets and hotels in Nanjing and surrounding areas. Hu Xiliang, the general manager of the company, told reporters that this year, enterprises analyzed the market demand and purchasing power before production, and social group purchases placed orders first before production. "In the production process, we track the market situation every day to fix production by sales."
Hu Xijin told reporters that the production of moon cakes reached its peak in mid-August this year, and it will not be produced around September 5. "This year, a total of more than 6 million mooncakes were produced. Because of the market analysis in the early stage, the basic products produced were sold, and the sales rate reached 99.8%. The remaining small amount of moon cakes are all distributed to employees, and there is no stock at present. "
In the interview, the reporter learned that in recent years, "fixing production by sales" has become the main tone of the production and sales of Mid-Autumn Festival moon cakes. Most manufacturers will arrange production plans according to the order quantity of moon cakes, the sales data of the previous year, the changes in market conditions and the inventory dynamics, so as to avoid the moon cakes returning to the factory or being scrapped due to overproduction or unsold.
The shelf life of most moon cakes on the market is less than 3 months, and the short shelf life is only ten or even a few days. Many consumers are concerned about the whereabouts of the remaining moon cakes, fearing that they will eat aged moon cakes in the next year.
In this regard, a person in charge of a moon cake manufacturer told reporters that the cost of cold storage and storage of moon cakes is higher than that of re-production. Normally, they will not choose to freeze for one year and then sell aged moon cakes. For a small amount of surplus moon cakes, in addition to distributing them to employees as welfare, some manufacturers will also sell them to related enterprises at a discount for reuse and make them into animal feed.
Closed-loop supervision of departments: dynamically tracking the flow direction of moon cakes
"Where did the moon cake go?" is not a new topic. Almost every year after the Mid-Autumn Festival, such a question will appear. The insiders of the market supervision department believe that such a topic is not "old-fashioned", which just reflects the public’s concern about food safety and food waste.
In order to protect food safety and put an end to food waste, after the Mid-Autumn Festival, the market supervision department of our city carried out the dynamic supervision of seasonal food, inspected and visited shopping malls, supermarkets, pastry shops and moon cake production enterprises in the jurisdiction, and "tracked" the trend of moon cakes after the holiday.
In a large supermarket in Jiangning, all kinds of mooncake gift boxes that were placed in a conspicuous position last week have been removed from the shelves. Law enforcement officers inspected the sales ledger to learn more about the sales and disposal of the remaining moon cakes, and urged the operators to record the loss or return of unsold products, forming a closed loop of the ledger. Law enforcement officers also visited a number of moon cake production enterprises, inspected raw and auxiliary materials warehouses, production workshops, finished product warehouses, packaging workshops and other places, and compared the enterprise accounts to prevent unqualified moon cake food from flowing to the market.
The new fashion of "saving strictly and opposing waste" has given more "opening ways" to mooncakes that have not been eaten at home during the holidays. Mooncake porridge, baked mooncakes, mooncake cakes, fried mooncakes with fruits … Many consumers turn the endless mooncakes into daily food through cooking. Various creative "mooncake cooking" videos on social platforms are very popular among netizens, and some college students have exposed "fancy eating methods" such as fried mooncakes with green peppers and mooncakes with Hu spicy soup introduced in the school cafeteria.
The market supervision department said that it will continue to carry out dynamic supervision of moon cakes, accurately grasp the flow of moon cakes in sale and inventory, form a closed-loop supervision from pre-holiday protection to post-holiday inspection, and effectively protect people’s food safety. If consumers find that businesses use expired moon cakes as other food materials or change packaging to sell them in other forms, they can call the 12315 hotline to report to the market supervision department.
Nanjing Daily/Purple Mountain Journalist Zhu Kai Huang Linyan
