By Foo Ming Li

Celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival with our family members and savouring mouth-watering mooncakes while basking in the beauty of the full moon is part of Chinese culture. However, the Covid-19 pandemic has heavily affected businesses as well as spending habits of consumers as many suffer loss of income.   

Loh Mun Loong, the owner of Ng Kee Cake Shop, says that people are buying smaller sized mooncakes as it is cheaper than those that are regular sized.

Ng Kee Cake Shop is a century-old shop in Penang known for its mooncakes and other pastries. Due to the economic consequences of the pandemic, Loh Mun Loong, owner of the shop, explains that the production of mooncakes has drastically reduced. 

“Prices of ingredients have increased. If I increase mooncake prices, I may lose the loyalty of customers who are now quite thrifty. I have had to reduce the production of mooncakes instead,” explains Loh.

Loh adds that nowadays, the smaller sized mooncakes are preferred over the bigger sized ones due to their cheaper price. Traditionally, it has been the norm for family members and friends to exchange mooncakes that are bigger in size to showcase generosity, but the pandemic has clearly changed the priorities of consumers as people decide to save more and spend less.

As Loh scales down the production of mooncakes during the pandemic, Loh has had to switch to purchasing mooncake packaging from a local supplier instead of buying packaging from his usual wholesale China supplier.

“After the government had implemented travel restrictions, I had to depend on a local supplier that produces packaging in lower quantities and whose packaging is costlier compared to those of the previous supplier from China,” he said.

Chen Seck Yin, the owner of Yong Pin Dim Sum Restaurant, says that the sales of mooncake have slowed down this year compared to sales in prior years.

Apart from buying mooncakes at Ng Kee Cake Shop, interested mooncake fans can also buy mooncakes at Yong Pin Dim Sum Restaurant, a dim sum restaurant which opened in 1981. The owner’s father, Chen Wah Kit, bought the shop that used to be a kopitiam and renovated it into a restaurant. A few years later, the owners began to sell mooncakes in response to recommendations from their customers.

“Usually customers will buy mooncakes at the end of July in the Chinese calendar, but this year they have only started buying mooncakes during August in the Chinese calendar. Customers are buying fewer mooncakes because they wish to save more in light of the pandemic,” says Chen Seck Yin, the owner of the dim sum restaurant.

Chen observes that there have been fewer customers who come from Penang Island. However, customers from other states like Johor, Kuala Lumpur, and Bukit Mertajam are buying mooncakes due to publicity received by Yong Pin Dim Sum via the advertisements found on the restaurant’s Facebook page.