China's mooncake market sees first decline in a decade in 2025, sales down 5.9% YoY

As the Mid-Autumn Festival approaches, mooncakes have once again entered their annual peak sales season.

For restaurant brands, cross-category mooncake sales are nothing new. They capture holiday consumption, tap into the gifting market, and for many brands, have become a key annual marketing event.

This year, some brands are still in the game—each with its own strategy.

Innovation in Flavors and Positioning

Some restaurant brands are targeting younger consumers with updated flavors. Ziguangyuan, for example, is promoting its milk-skin mooncakes, which tone down the traditional oily and overly sweet profile. Their gift boxes also include flavors like matcha and Oreo, aiming for a more everyday, youthful appeal.

Qingchun Pumen, a vegan organic chain, continues to align its mooncakes with its brand philosophy. This year's offerings are freshly made daily and feature fully upgraded organic ingredients, extending the brand's "natural eating" message to its holiday products.

Some mid-to-high-end restaurants are directly translating their signature dishes into mooncake fillings.

Xin Rongji is again主打 hand-made, freshly baked Suzhou-style mooncakes this year. The three core flavors remain pickled vegetable with pork, black truffle with pork, and Musang King durian. Some outlets also offer limited flavors like crab roe. Reports from some cities indicate black truffle mooncakes have sold out. Dong's sub-brand, Dongdao Home, sells black truffle mooncake gift boxes targeting the high-end corporate gifting market.

Haidilao has launched its "Yue Lao" gift box this year, redeemable with loyalty points. The chain is also using mooncakes as gifts for regular customers, with some high-frequency diners receiving complimentary boxes from their local stores.

Taotaoju has introduced multiple new Mid-Autumn products and collaborated with the game Wuthering Waves. The brand promotes its intangible cultural heritage techniques while launching low-sugar products to meet health-conscious demand, using the IP collaboration to reach younger consumers.

Bakery Chains Go Big

In the bakery sector, mooncakes represent a seasonal business highly aligned with existing products, stores, and consumption scenarios, leading to greater investment.

As early as late July, Ganso launched its Mid-Autumn marketing campaign nearly two months in advance. Over 800 offline stores and all online channels began pre-selling its flagship "Snow Mooncake," with the highest-priced version reaching 490 yuan.

Luxihe has brought back its freshly baked, juicy pork mooncakes this year, adding several new flavors. Its gift boxes now include various low-sugar versions, covering Suzhou-style flaky pastry, peach pastry mooncakes, Cantonese-style, and molten-center options. The brand sells both individual pieces and gift boxes.

In recent years, a number of bakery brands have emerged that focus specifically on mooncakes.

Mooncake Brother, a popular freshly baked mooncake brand from Changsha, Hunan, emphasizes short shelf life and no preservatives. It operates five stores nationwide, primarily in Hunan, with no permanent outlets elsewhere, relying mostly on online orders.

Tea and Dessert Brands Join the Fray

Starbucks, a veteran in this space, has launched two gift boxes this year: "Thousand Rivers Moon" (358 yuan) and "Cloud Sea Moon" (468 yuan). COSTA had mooncakes on its mini-program shortly after the Dragon Boat Festival. Häagen-Dazs differentiates itself by using its classic ice cream as the base, with gift boxes ranging from just over 200 yuan to nearly 700 yuan.

Meanwhile, More Brands Are Quietly Exiting the Mooncake Market

On one hand, restaurant brands are launching new flavors, pursuing collaborations, and competing for Mid-Autumn gifting business. On the other, some brands that previously ventured into mooncake sales have gone quiet this year, quietly discontinuing their mooncake gift boxes.

In past years, mooncakes were a key part of Mid-Autumn marketing for many restaurant brands.

Nayuki once partnered with the Forbidden City IP "Zhen De Xin Yi" for a Mid-Autumn gift box. Pizza Hut collaborated with the Dunhuang Art Museum on a "Flying Apsaras"-themed mooncake, blending dining with national trend culture. KFC partnered with the Palace Museum on a "Blossoms and Moon" limited-edition mooncake gift box.

But this year, these familiar tactics are diminishing. As of this Mid-Autumn Festival, brands like Nayuki, Heytea, and Pizza Hut have not launched concentrated marketing campaigns for mooncake products.

After all, for restaurant brands, mooncakes are not simply an additional SKU.

From production, packaging, warehousing, and transportation to in-store sales and inventory clearance, a seasonal product involves a whole set of additional operating costs. The sales cycle is highly concentrated; if too much stock is prepared in advance, inventory pressure mounts once the holiday window closes.

In fact, a recent article titled "Starbucks Forcing Employees to Sell Mooncakes? This Year's Mooncake KPIs Crush Frontline Workers" noted that many restaurant and hotel employees are burdened with Mid-Autumn mooncake sales targets. They must constantly pitch to customers, and if they fail to meet quotas, they may have to cover the cost themselves.

Take Nayuki as an example. Its bakery business has been under pressure in recent years. Amid business contraction and resource refocusing, low-efficiency, non-core derivative categories are being re-evaluated. IP collaborations, in particular, entail additional licensing and marketing budgets.

As more restaurants re-examine the mooncake business, the underlying shift is a change in mooncake consumption logic.

The 28.2 Billion Yuan Mooncake Market Contracts: Growth Slows for Leaders, but Margins Remain Attractive

In the lead-up to this Mid-Autumn Festival, topics like "Mooncakes aren't selling" and "No one is buying Mid-Autumn mooncakes" have trended online, sparking widespread discussion about a market cooldown.

But looking at the longer term, a clearer structural shift in consumption is underway.

In 2025, China's mooncake sales reached 28.24 billion yuan, down 5.9% year-on-year. Production volume was 518,000 tons, down 5.4% year-on-year. This marks the first negative growth in the mooncake market in nearly a decade. Previously, the market had experienced rapid expansion. From 2022 to 2024, sales grew from 24.38 billion yuan to 30.01 billion yuan, with a compound annual growth rate exceeding 10%.

The first segment to be squeezed was high-end gift boxes, which previously drove high average transaction values. Data shows that sales of mooncake gift boxes priced above 1,000 yuan fell another 76% year-on-year. The market share of boxes over 500 yuan dropped from 7.2% to 1.8%. Meanwhile, the share of affordable boxes priced between 68 and 200 yuan has risen to over 60%, becoming the absolute mainstream.

Behind these numbers lies a shift in mooncake consumption scenarios.

In the past, a box of mooncakes could serve business exchanges, corporate benefits, holiday gifting, and social reciprocity. The higher the price and the more elaborate the packaging, the greater its perceived gifting value. Today, that logic is being re-evaluated.

This change is also reflected in the performance of leading brands.

Guangzhou Restaurant Group's 2025 annual report shows its mooncake series revenue reached 1.652 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of just 0.96%. For a time-honored brand with a mature mooncake business, revenue remains substantial, but growth has clearly slowed. Notably, the gross margin for this segment is as high as 53.31%, indicating that mooncakes remain a profitable business.

Wufangzhai's performance is even more telling. As a zongzi (rice dumpling) leader, its mooncake business is itself a cross-category extension. In 2025, Wufangzhai's mooncake revenue was 201 million yuan, down 15.03% year-on-year, yet its gross margin improved to 21.29%.

The market and profits still exist, but relying on past high-growth logic for further expansion is increasingly difficult.

On one side, the market is contracting and high-end gift boxes are shrinking rapidly. On the other, demand for affordable, self-use, healthy, and innovative products continues to emerge. Mooncakes are undergoing a transition from "gift" to "food."

For restaurant brands, this shift is particularly significant.

As mooncakes increasingly return to being about "eating," the advantage that restaurant brands once had—relying on gifting, group purchases, and holiday atmosphere to drive sales—will weaken. Conversely, brands with genuine product capabilities, store experiences, and unique characteristics need to rethink what kind of product experience they should offer consumers.

How Should Restaurants Still Making Mooncakes Proceed?

Based on this year's new products, restaurants are exploring answers in four directions.

Health-Conscious: Returning Mooncakes to Their "Food" Essence

Many restaurant brands are starting with "lightening the load." In the past, mooncakes were often associated with sweetness, greasiness, and high calories. Now, health-consciousness is becoming an increasingly clear trend in mooncake innovation. Searches for "low-sugar mooncakes" have surged 320% year-on-year, and 73% of consumers check ingredient labels before purchasing. This demand shift is directly reflected in sales: low-sugar, low-fat mooncake sales are up 35% year-on-year.

Freshly Made: The Trend of On-Site Production Reaches Mooncakes

In Shanghai, the freshly baked mooncakes at Longhua Temple have become not just a seasonal food item but a Mid-Autumn check-in experience. Consumers visit, queue, watch the production process, and taste the product immediately—all in one trip.

For restaurant brands, the value of freshly baked mooncakes goes beyond "freshness." When consumers watch the rolling of dough, filling, baking, and final product emerge, the production process itself becomes content. The heat of the just-baked mooncake, the sound of flaky pastry, the aroma of fillings, and the immediate feedback from customers all become part of the in-store experience.

Local Flavors: Regional Mooncake Varieties Gaining National Attention

This Mid-Autumn Festival, regional flavors are becoming a new trend in the mooncake market. Outside time-honored stores on Shanghai's East Nanjing Road, long queues form. Taikang Food's stinky tofu and pork mooncake has become a hot item, with single-store daily sales reaching 3,000–4,000 units and maximum wait times of 2 to 2.5 hours, even attracting foreign tourists.

Similar changes are occurring with Yunnan-style ham mooncakes. Previously, their consumption was largely concentrated in Yunnan and surrounding areas. With the expansion of online channels, local flavors are breaking geographical boundaries. When first launched online in 2022, orders mainly came from Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan. Now, the Yangtze River Delta, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, and other areas are also becoming growth markets.

Signature Flavors: Putting the Brand's Own Taste into Mooncakes

In recent years, mooncake flavors have become increasingly diverse and adventurous. Compared to professional mooncake brands, restaurants' biggest advantage may not be mooncake-making experience, but rather their existing portfolio of recognizable flavors.

For example, Ziguangyuan's milk-skin mooncakes incorporate the brand's familiar dairy products and regional food memories into a seasonal item. CHAGEE infuses its tea base flavors into mooncakes. In these cases, the mooncake is no longer an isolated Mid-Autumn product but becomes part of the brand's overall product system.

Conclusion

For most restaurant brands, mooncakes are not a standalone category requiring long-term management. They have only one sales window per year, requiring rapid execution from R&D, packaging, and production to distribution. At the same time, consumers are increasingly price-sensitive, and the trends toward health-consciousness and affordability are compressing the profit margins of high-priced gift boxes.

Therefore, the real profit for restaurants making mooncakes may not come from the mooncakes themselves. It's more like a "holiday marketing expense." The more important value is leveraging the Mid-Autumn Festival—a natural consumption node—to keep the restaurant top-of-mind for consumers.

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