Workers at a plant in a village in Shijiazhuang, North China’s Hebei Province make handmade mooncakes for the upcoming Mid-Autumn Festival this year. The village has over 40 mooncake companies employing over 2,000 people. China’s mooncake market is expected to hit 21.8 billion yuan ($3.38 billion) in 2021, according to a report by iiMedia in August. Photo: VCG

Like most people in China, mooncake is a must for Wang Qiong during the Mid-Autumn Festival, which is usually marked by family reunions, enjoying the full moon and eating the delicacy.

But this time, she decided to bring ice cream mooncakes home from Häagen-Dazs.

"They have a strong sense of design in and out, and I have long wanted to buy some," Wang said when picking up her reserved mooncakes in a Häagen-Dazs store in Taiyuan, capital city of North China's Shanxi Province.

In August, Häagen-Dazs China and France's Louvre Museum jointly rolled out seven sets of specially designed ice cream mooncakes, featuring iconic museum collections including the Louvre Pyramid and Mona Lisa, the Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece.

The trendy products soon went viral among young Chinese, bringing new dynamics to the traditional mooncake industry in China.

Foreign competition newcomers have sensed the new bonanza for the traditional Chinese festival. US fast-food chain Pizza Hut co-launched mooncakes with the Summer Palace, a vast imperial garden of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) and a popular tourist attraction in Beijing, while Hyatt Hotels have teamed with the Shanghai Museum to display ancient Chinese art through the pastry.

Additionally, the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, the Shanghai Museum, as well as the Chinese snack food chain LYFEN, designed mooncake gift boxes inspired by cultural relics.

The gift box contains elements inspired by world-renowned paintings on the outer packaging and mooncakes with patterns akin to museum collections. Notably, common ingredients in Western kitchens such as oats, black truffles and cheese are also used in the cakes, according to LYFEN.

China's mooncake market is riding high as statistics released by iiMedia Research have suggested that the total sales volume of mooncakes soared from 13.18 billion yuan ($2.04 billion) in 2015 to about 20.52 billion yuan in 2020. 

The figure is expected to reach 21.81 billion yuan in 2021.

Mooncake products that combine traditional and foreign elements and contain fashionable ingredients will continue to top the charts as the most sought-after in the consumption market, according to Zhang Shuai, vice chairman and secretary-general of the China Association Of Bakery & Confectionery Industry.

"The popularity of mooncakes with rich cultural content reflects the changes in Chinese consumers and the continuous upgrade of the country's consumption structure," said Zhu Danpeng, a Chinese analyst focusing on the food industry.

Foreign brands and institutions need to introduce more customized and localized products to catch up with the growing Chinese market and its consumers, Zhu added.