To celebrate the Year of the Rabbit, time-honored Beijing snack brand Daoxiangcun launched gift boxes featuring festive snacks and traditional Chinese packaging.

One of the gift boxes that has been particularly popular among young customers due to its cute appearance and trendy contents, features rabbit cake with soybean cheese carrot fillings, among other items.

Shi Yan, deputy general manager of Beijing Daoxiangcun, said that in addition to the brand's 200 or so regular snacks, it is creating new products to tempt the taste buds of younger shoppers, in addition to launching seasonal products such as autumn red-leaf cake.

"For those snacks that have been lost over the years, we are trying to replicate them by checking old recipe books and materials, as well as asking folklore experts about them," she said. "The current Chinachic trend is not just about a cool appearance, it has to resonate with traditional Chinese culture."

Chinese pastry brands are looking to this trend to attract young customers through inheriting traditional Chinese culture, creating stylish products, and collaborating with other domestic brands.

In August 2021, Daoxiangcun launched Location Zero, a renovated store in the Chinese capital's Dongcheng district, where a variety of authentic Beijing pastries with new twists are available.

"Unlike our regular stores that are solely for selling products, in this branch, we focus on the customer experience," Shi said.

"We have an open kitchen in the branch, where customers can not only watch pastry products being made, but also have lessons to make the pastry themselves.

"Typically, 80 percent of the customers at our regular stores are older than 45, but at the Location Zero store, 95 percent of the customers are young people."

Shi added that many internet celebrities visit this branch to take photos and post on social media platforms.

Location Zero has launched several beverage products based on Daoxiangcun's signature snacks such as ox tongue cake and jujube paste. The design for jujube paste cake is also used for accessories such as earrings and rings, which have proved popular.

Daoxiangcun recently opened its Chaoyang Time branch at a location that housed the brand's factory from 1992 to 2005.

"We have more than 200 stores in Beijing, and we will continue to explore the specialty of each branch and bring more experiences to customers," Shi said.

According to a report on the pastry industry in China issued in December by the Timon Research Institute, which focuses on the food industry, although Chinese pastry accounts for a small proportion of the overall market, the prospects are promising. For instance, the size of the Chinese pastry market grew to 248.2 billion yuan ($36.7 billion) in 2019, up from 220.3 billion yuan in 2013.

The report said that driven by China-chic, many new Chinese bakeries, such as Dim Sum Bureau of Momo and Tiger Attitude Chartered Pastry Bank, have entered the market in the past two years by focusing on Chinese style, which has attracted investors.

Founded in 2019 in Changsha, capital of Hunan province, Tiger Attitude Chartered Pastry Bank acquired several rounds of investment in 2021 from organizations such as Sequoia China and Tiger Global.

Aiming to revitalize Chinese pastry, the brand uses low-sugar content to attract young customers. It has also collaborated with Chinese sportswear brand Meihua, domestic beverage company Jianlibao, and Television Broadcasts Limited (Hong Kong).

In the first 10 months of last year, Tiger Attitude Chartered Pastry Bank's new retail team achieved total revenue of more than 200 million yuan, while the bakery's stores earned an average of over 800,000 yuan a month each during this period.

Hu Ting, the bakery's founder, said it is improving and adjusting the layout of its stores in major cities. It has also announced that it is open for franchising, and that the first batch of its partner stores will start business after Spring Festival.

"We will also launch our overseas business so that more customers can enjoy our products," Hu said.