New mooncake flavors developed to cater to younger customers

Xinghualou Mooncake, a time-honored brand in Minhang District, is appealing to a younger generation of customers by developing unique flavors including Parma ham, peach oolong tea, avocado walnut and raw coconut latte.

The brand owner, Shanghai Xinghualou Food Co in Pujiang Town, recently launched its 2022 "furnace initiating" ceremony.

As plates of mooncakes moved along assembly lines toward a tunnel furnace, a new season of mooncake manufacturing for Mid-Autumn Festival was kicked off. This year's festival falls on September 10.

The brand has cultivated the new flavors to win younger customers. In addition, its mooncake gift boxes are being sold at retail stores and supermarkets, as well as through online channels like Taobao, Tmall and Pinduoduo.

Since 2018, the company has been investing heavily in workshop renovation, facility renewal and automation upgrades. It has introduced four automated cooling systems, two retrieving lines, six packaging machines from Japan and more than 10 sets of smart packaging robotic arms.

Other innovations this year are an advanced pastry machine and an automated filling-dividing machine from Japan.

The equipment and technology advances are estimated to reduce the company's mooncake production time this year to about 50 days compared with more than three months previously.

Automation is being used for most of its mooncake production, except for some very traditional varieties.

The company was in closed-loop management when Shanghai was most severely hit by the pandemic and has since overcome labor and raw material shortages, logistics problems and rising costs.