Coffee World in Haikou is proud to present to new and loyal customers a totally new beverage concept, the Mooncake Frappe, for the Chinese National Holiday and Mid-Autumn Festival. The Frappe is a type of smoothie beverage, blended as a gentle smoothie and condensed beverage that is great for warm weather and as a refreshing thirst-quencher.

The Mooncake Frappe combines the traditional delicious moon cake with…

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a Frappe unique to our international brand–Coffee World. This is a new kind of frappe integrating Chinese and Western concepts and bursting in mooncake flavor. The Mooncake Frappe brings a new freshness to the National Holiday and arouses the romantic and warm feelings of the Festival mooncake.

In a trademark branded Coffee World cup, the aromatic and delicious Mooncake Frappe, topped with a favorite of young ladies, whipped cream, and mixed with mooncake fragments, it looks out-of-this-world, attractive and delicious. The feeling is fresh and relaxed. Once one has tasted this fine smoothie you will feel that it is the perfect drink for the season. With one sip, the gentle fragrance and sweetness mixes with the nostalgic scent of mooncakes. The sweetness lightly jumps on your tongue and the mooncake pieces sprinkled on top bring festival feelings to your side.

Source: http://sanyaexpat.com/index.php/tips-recommendations-sanya/restaurants/coffee-world-introduces-the-world-s-firs?blog=1

HONG KONG (AdAgeChina.com) — It’s mooncake season in Asia, and that’s big business for retailers, bakeries and hotels that churn out holiday pastries to celebrate the fall harvest, reaping tens of millions of dollars in revenue.

Mooncakes have become an indispensable delicacy during the weeks leading up to Mid-Autumn Festival, a lunar holiday that starts this year on Sept. 22.

Luxury hotel chains like the Mandarin Oriental, St. Regis and Hilton have become experts at catering to the tastes and desires of affluent Chinese, for whom mooncake season is all about gift-giving and status. For China’s jet-setting crowd, nothing sends good wishes for a parent, client or colleague’s prosperity like handing over a box of exquisitely-packaged white chocolate mooncakes with coconut ganache and gula melaka from the Mandarin Oriental or snow-skin mooncakes with Champagne truffle and ganache from the Raffles Hotel.

Shangri-la’s mooncake sales top $35 million
The Rolls Royce of Asia’s mooncake brands is the Hong Kong-based Shangri-La Hotels & Resorts chain, which has turned mooncakes into a valuable marketing tool and a sweet source of revenue. The hotel chain’s mooncake sales now top $35 million annually. Much of that mooncake revenue comes from the hotel’s properties in Asian countries like Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines, as well as Hong Kong and China.

The Shangri-La, owned by Malaysian-Chinese businessman Robert Kwok, has cornered the mooncake market through its canny understanding of Chinese culture and a solid distribution network. Shangri-La has over 30 properties in Greater China, covering just about every first and second-tier city in the mainland. Starting in August, the lobbies of hotels from Beihai to Zhongshan are filled with locals placing orders for boxes of mooncakes.

The chain’s flagship Island Shangri-La hotel in Hong Kong has sold abound 11,000 boxes of mooncakes since mid-July, according to a company spokeswoman. Mooncakes from that hotel’s Michelin-starred Summer Palace start at $34.50 for a four-pack. Gift hampers with eight mooncakes plus Chinese tea, home-made X.O. sauce, pistachios, honey, bamboo pith, chocolates and a bottle of Champagne cost $256.

The hotel puts enormous energy into its mooncake business. Each hotel decides which flavors it will offer based on local taste preferences. In late August, the hotel’s Changchun property in Northeast China’s Jilin Province attracted visitors from across China and overseas with a mooncake tasting event.

New flavors have helped tradition flourish
The origin of mooncakes dates back centuries when early Chinese offered sacrifices to the sun in spring and the moon in autumn. The holiday has been officially celebrated since the Song Dynasty in 420, and folk stories tell of Ming revolutionaries who used mooncakes to carry secret messages in their bid to overthrow Mongolian rulers during the Yuan dynasty.

Traditional chinese mooncakes are imprinted with the Chinese characters for “longevity” or “harmony” and stuffed with red lotus seed paste, red bean paste or black sesame paste alongside a salted egg yolk that symbolizes the full moon.

A tin of basic mooncakes only costs a few dollars, but rising disposable income inside China — and the prosperity of ethnic Chinese in the rest of Asia — are inspiring bakers to cater to the culinary curiosity of modern consumers with creative ingredients.

Gourmet mooncakes can cost hundreds of dollars for limited-edition packages flavored with coconuts, dried scallops, goose liver, red wine, beef with scallions, seaweed, truffles with bacon, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, marshmallows, bird’s nest, ginger and many other foods.

New flavors have helped the mooncake tradition flourish as China’s society grapples with the rapid urbanization of its culture. Mooncakes are usually bought as gifts to give friends, family and business associates. Most consumers today find the old-fashioned kind, which are chewy and dense, about as desirable as the unwanted fruitcake many Americans exhange at Christmas. Inventive flavors and eye-catching packaging have helped the treats remain fashionable in a culture that seems to change by the hour.

Western marketers are now tapping into the popularity of mooncakes too. Starbucks sells mooncakes stamped with its mermaid logo and stuffed with coffee, green tea and berries.

Haagen-Dazs produces mooncakes made of macadamia nut, chocolate and cookies & cream ice cream with a mango sorbet “yolk,” and Hong Kong’s Mira Hotel teamed up with Lindt to produce a line of chocolate mooncakes in four flavors, sour, sweet, bitter and spicy.

Source: http://adage.com/globalnews/article?article_id=145908

This year’s Mid-Autumn falls on September 22 and it’s coming soon. People will start to buy moon cakes for the festival – a traditional snack for most of the Chinese people on that day. Also, people will send mooncakes to family members and friends in other countries. However, the moon cake export in China faces up with strict standards set by other countries.

According to Deutsche Welle, Chinese media complain that many European countries including Germany ban the mailed moon cakes from China.

German Customs Information Center states there are no special regulations on Chinese moon cakes, but the strict system of customs declaration does make troubles for the import of Chinese moon cakes. It also points out not all Chinese moon cakes fail to meet the German standard.

It’s not difficult for Chinese to buy mooncakes in local Asian supermarkets in Germany. But the flavours of moon cakes are subject to limitation. It will be likely even more difficult to buy moon cakes of limited flavours in the future.

Deutsche Welle says no matter where moon cakes come from, German customs will do strict check and declaration according to relevant regulations on import and export of food.

According to the national Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine authority, many countries and regions are focusing more efforts in inspecting mailed moon cakes from China during the weeks leading up to the Chinese Mid-Autumn and they have set various requirements for those gifts.

According to Shanghai Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau, the mailed moon cakes must meet the other country’s standards.

For example, Australia has announced several requirements: senders are expected to make a comment on the mail saying this is a festival gift, and the moon cakes are not made of meat, yolk or nuts.

In the United States, mailed moon cakes made of meat, poultry or yolk are expected to be produced under the surveillance of the American inspection administration or their designated food inspection administrations in other countries.

In Japan, the authority requires that mailed moon cakes under the weight of 10 kilograms must be labeled with the contents and expiration dates, and for the packages above 10 kilograms, the animal and plant quarantine certificate is required from receivers. The country has also set limitations on the sweetening agent, aseptic, in the moon cakes festival.

If the mailed moon cakes do not meet these standards, they will be returned to the senders or destroyed.

In face of strict requirements on Chinese moon cakes by foreign countries, some people suggest Chinese export food companies think more of how to make moon cakes to meet foreign standards. However, some others object to this idea by saying if moon cakes are made by foreign standards, they’re not moon cakes any more.

Source: http://www.peopleforum.cn/viewthread.php?tid=37522&extra=page%3D1