Sweet toothed Hanoi shoppers spend more this holiday season

Confectionary outpaced all other food and drink categories including Christmas cakes; puddings; beers, wines and spirits; salty snacks and fresh poultry for the first few weeks of December driven by foreign sector premium products.

Foreign brands from Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the US such as Oreo, Ritz, LU, Cholairs and Kitkat are experiencing the highest growth, commented Nguyen Thang, a shop owner on Xuan Thuy Street in the Cau Giay District of Hanoi.

Mr Thang noted the higher level of sales shows that people are feeling better off this holiday season compared to last year and that prices are reasonable and within the budgets of most residents.

The increase in sales of Christmas cakes, puddings and confectionery could be due to the rise in incomes over the past year for many Hanoians and that’s giving them an urge to splurge on their taste for sweets.

With a little more money in their pocket they want to feature high quality cakes and desserts as centrepieces of their Christmas meal or party spread and now can afford to buy instead of creating themselves.

But don’t count the domestic brands out yet, quipped Mr Thang.

TET holiday baskets are just starting to hit the supermarket shelves and the domestic sector is just starting to shift into a higher gear with a big push on all the traditional sweets, chocolates, and other confectionaries.

Prices of imported confectionaries are across the gamut, he noted, running from expensive to very reasonable.

Some high-end cakes, he said, sell for US$11-US$22 (VND250,000-500,000) per box while popular sweets from Thailand are most reasonable at US$1-US$2 (VND25,000-50,000) per pack.

However, the selection is much greater than last year, he noted, citing a noticeable influx in number of brands and quantities of candies, chocolates, chestnuts, dried grapefruit from Germany, Belgium, Russia, the US, and Switzerland.

Traditional Tet gift baskets consisting of cakes, chocolates, tea, and coffee are running around US$13-US$14 (VND300,000-VND1 million) each depending on size with a bevy of design options to select from.

Vu Vinh Phu, president of Hanoi Supermarket Association, said he sees some positive signs in this year’s sales.

In prior year’s, this time of year, the market would have been flooded with cheap low quality imports from China, said Mr Phu, but this year that’s all changed— with a wide and varied selection of domestic and foreign brands.

Thai products, Mr Phu noted, are running about 10% higher in price compared to Chinese, but their quality is much higher and they are an all-around much better deal for the sweet toothed Hanoi shopper.