author: red food network, from Figure title: Vision China
Summer is the peak season for drinks. When the tea market continues to be hot, there is also a Chinese dessert that is not of concern to most people, but is also very active.
However, unlike the infinite scenery of “close relatives” tea, Chinese desserts have been sold all over the country, but there is still no leader.
There is no rigorous and authoritative official definition of Chinese desserts. From the perspective of the industry, you might as well reduce the complexity to simplify cakes, baking, tea and sweets that are more retail-oriented (confectionery and desserts) Excluding them, the more important ones are Hong Kong-style desserts, Cantonese-style desserts and Taiwanese desserts, which are collectively called Chinese-style desserts.
Chinese desserts have a long history. During the Shang and Zhou dynasties, the ancestors had the habit of storing ice. At the end of the Spring and Autumn Period, cold drinks such as iced rice wine became popular. In the late Tang Dynasty, merchants added sugar to the ice to attract customers. There were abundant cold foods in Song and Yuan Dynasties, honey and pearl powder also became one of the ingredients. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, there were many cold food shops in street shops. Snow cheese, shaved ice, sour plum soup, etc. have been ordinary citizens’ pastimes…
The “steamed sugar-steamed cheese” in “Dream of Red Mansions”, according to expert research, is similar to the current Cantonese dessert double skin milk.
Nowadays, Chinese desserts are spread all over the country. There are stylishly decorated mid-to-high-end shopping malls dessert shops, and there are streetside sugar shops where you can sit down and drink at any time when you are tired.
△Huazhou SugarShow
Most Chinese desserts give the impression that they are cheap and affordable. Take Guangdong as an example. A bowl of syrup at a local sugar water shop costs a few yuan. Although the expensive one can sell for more than ten or twenty yuan, it is difficult to sell it for 20-30 yuan like tea, or even higher. Unless some valuable ingredients are added, such as bird’s nest, snow clams, etc., the cost must be increased.
In addition, desserts are originally small in quantity. A small portion sells for ten to twenty yuan. This is almost the price of a lunch. Most consumers will feel that the price is not high in their hearts. If they want to relieve the heat Or it is better to buy a cup of milk tea to quench your thirst.
Significant seasonality and limited consumption period
Desserts are seasonal. The first is that the ingredients are seasonal. For example, seasonal ingredients such as mango and durian are not available all year round. Even if they are stored through cold chain technology, the freshness of the products is discounted; the second is that consumers’ tastes change. They prefer cold food in summer and cold food in winter. Like hot food, fruit desserts are popular in summer, but hot in winter.
This kind of seasonality has a great influence on dessert brands that focus on a certain main ingredient, or restaurants whose products focus on a certain type of taste. At the same time, in the eyes of consumers, desserts are mostly recreational foods, with limited consumption periods.
Low industry threshold and fierce market competition
Chinese desserts are simple in materials and simple in practice. Steaming or boiling, adding sugar and ingredients, basically does not have very complicated processes. Even for Hong Kong-style and Taiwanese desserts, they are amazing at first with the combination of ingredients and innovative ingredients, but it is still difficult to create a moat with the ingredients at a glance.
For example, the once amazing mango fishing and Yangzhi nectar are now all over the streets, and they are no longer in the past.