Vietnamese mooncakes are too expensive

Mooncakes are part of a traditional festival, but they have increasingly become a commercial product that costs much more than their real value, according to readers.

“There’s only one season of mooncakes a year, so people are selling them at any prices they want. I’ve checked prices of mooncake ingredients in supermarkets, and one can certainly secure a 50% profit just by selling at VND20,000 (less than a dollar) a cake. But mooncakes on the market are priced at least three or four times more than that.”
Long

“My family has stopped buying mooncakes for several years. Spending VND60,000-80,000 on a mooncake is too much. That price is more than half a kilo of fine pork. Some high-end cakes cost as much as VND1 million, only to contain too much fat, sweetness and processed food.”
Quangdp

“I’d rather buy toys for the kids during the Mid-Autumn Festival. The cakes are unreasonably expensive and not everyone loves them as they are too sweet.”
Quangthiep

“I used to work as a consultant for a major confectionary company. Every Mid-Autumn Festival, that company shared 40% of revenues to the distributors, and yet it still secured a 100% profit, or even more. A cake that is sold for VND50,000 might cost less than VND10,000.”
Godfather

“The prices of Vietnamese mooncakes are nine times the prices of imported cakes. With VND30,000, you can buy several mooncakes of a foreign brand, but cannot by one made in Vietnam. Vietnamese businesses need to review the way they price their products, or Vietnamese mooncakes will lose to imported ones.”
Messiah

By Thanh Le – VnExpress.net – September 19, 2023