While mooncakes made in Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia remain popular, the upswing towards Australian-made products has ramped up this year.
Omar Hsu is the owner of Ommi’s Food and Catering, located in Sydney’s inner west, and says business had more than doubled compared to last year. And the selling point for customers has been freshly made, Taiwanese-style mooncakes, not imported ones.
“All the customers really aim for Australian-made and supporting small, local business and I really appreciate that,” he said.
“We produce [everything] here and we use local ingredients so I think [it’s] better than importing.”
Mooncakes from Ommi's Food and Catering. Source: SBS / Kevin Cheng
He has created traditional flavours including red bean paste with salted duck yolk and Taiwanese pineapple with salted duck yolk.
“A lot of people love Australian-made products … they want to support local growers. So we use a lot of Australian ingredients,” he said.
“They’re proud of buying that [compared] to overseas.”
Mid-Autumn Festival - sometimes known as Moon Festival - is celebrated in Chinese culture, with similar holidays also observed in South Korea, Japan and parts of southeast Asia.
The festival is held on the 15th day of the eighth month of the Chinese lunisolar calendar. Mooncakes - a pastry traditionally featuring fillings including lotus seed paste - are eaten and shared throughout the festival.
‘The oven is always warm’
Steve Hou, the managing director of Sweet Lu bakery located in Sydney’s Chinatown, says his mooncakes are "flying out the bakery door" with his team making them non-stop since June.
“[It is] unbelievable, it is so busy. We are just making mooncakes all the time. Some of my mooncakes are already sold out,” he said.
“Our factory has three shifts from morning to 3am. The staff can rest but the factory never rests. The oven is always warm - it’s on all the time.”
Mr Hou says Sweet Lu has already sold more than 10,000 mooncake gift boxes this year.
While locals are beginning to warm to the idea of Australian-made mooncakes, Mr Hou says this year’s popularity also reflected the trust he had built into the brand and products.
He says his products have been snapped up by The Langham Hotel and luxury brands including Cartier and Celine.
Our $52 gift boxes - we have sold thousands of them, they’re all gone [sold out] … One customer bought 1,100 boxes [alone].
“Of course they prefer our products because they are locally made … We built up this reputation year after year - [we’ve been making mooncakes] for six years now and are proud of our products,” he said.
With a range of traditional and modern flavours including white lotus paste with egg yolk, oolong tea with bird’s nest and even durian, Sweet Lu’s signature lava custard mooncakes continue to be the main drawcard for customers this year.
“I feel our product is great this year, [for example] the white lotus paste is not too sweet,” he said.
Overseas shipping and supply impacting on choice
Gong Grocer, a supermarket located in Sydney’s east that sells a wide range of mooncakes, is hosting a pop-up store in Darling Square in the Sydney CBD to meet demand.
Brand manager, Vivian Nguyen, says Gong has stocked at least 30 different mooncake brands at its pop-up from 1-10 September.
“Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the events we most look forward to every year, especially because of our love of eating and sharing mooncakes, so we try to stock as many international brands - Chinese, Hong Kong, Taiwanese and Malaysian - and local Sydney brands as possible,” she said.
“To name a few, from Meixin, Wing Wah, Kee Wah, KLT, to local legends Golden Century, Dulcet and Sweet Lu. We’re also really excited to have got our hands on the famous Hong Kong Peninsula Hotels mooncakes this year.”
Gong Grocer is selling more than 30 different brands of mooncakes at its upcoming Darling Square pop-up in Sydney's CBD. Source: Supplied / Gong Grocer
“It’s a mixture of suppliers struggling to ship stock in from overseas with the rising costs of freight, as well as general hesitancy in purchasing a lot of stock to import for fear of not being able to sell it all," she said.
“As well, smaller independents will find it harder to secure stock because of limited buying power and expensive cost.”
Ms Nguyen says there is definitely increasing popularity for local mooncake brands.
“I think, especially in Sydney, we’re spoiled with great local pastry talent, famous brands like Golden Century have become a cult classic, and Dulcet, Sweet Lu and Ommi’s are always innovating with unique flavour profiles while keeping authenticity,” she said.
“We also have a lot of traditional local Vietnamese mooncakes available as well, like Vinh Quang’s signature Mung Bean mooncakes.
“I’ve also noticed more varieties of mooncakes that are from provincial areas gaining popularity in the market, such as mooncakes with meat filling traditional to areas like Shanghai, and Teochew-style puff pastry mooncakes to name a few.”
Mr Hsu says feedback from customers indicated a preference for Australian-made mooncakes, rather than relying on international shipping.
“Especially recently, international shipping has been struggling (to keep up) so sometimes if you get from overseas, you need to wait and then maybe when you get it, it’s already past the Moon Festival,” he said.
“So a lot of people (are) looking to buy locally made and Australian-made mooncakes.”
Evolving tastes
As the Asian and Chinese diaspora in Australia continues to grow, Mr Hsu says the taste preferences for mooncakes was also changing, particularly among the younger generation.
“We always consider mixing traditional and modern. We don’t want to lose that traditional flavour from our memory. We want to make something that people already love and make it better,” he said.
“(As) For the traditional ones, [people love] the golden mung bean with pork because most of our customers are Taiwanese - at least 50 per cent … so this is like a very Taiwanese flavour so a lot of people love we're doing this.
“(As for) A lot of young people … they love the tiger marble milk with brown sugar and because that’s like bubble tea flavour and you can chew the mochi, and then have that brown sugar texture there.”
For Sweet Lu, “lava custard is the most popular flavour”, and Mr Hou said the secret was sourcing local produce for the mooncakes.
“We feel like we have all of the duck yolks in Australia in our factory. They need more than 40 days to get them ready. We approached the farms from April,” he said.
