Bad Economies Make Great Sweets
When economies struggle, sweets sell. As retail sales decline globally, Hong Kong is turning towards egg tarts.
The origin story of the chocolate chip cookie is told like this: In 1930, after the first year of The Great Depression, a restaurateur named Ruth Wakefield was baking cookies. Working from her restaurant, The Toll House Inn, in Whitman, Massachusetts, she encountered a problem: She ran out of nuts that her recipe required. Glancing around her restaurant pantry, she noticed a bar of semi-sweet chocolate, and in a moment of quick improvisation, she chopped the chocolate bar into smaller pieces and mixed it into the dough.
The story is disputed by many close to Wakefield, but the myth does capture how one of the world’s most beloved sweet treats emerged out of the longest economic downturn in American history. In dire times we eat sweet treats.
Beyond The Great Depression, there are other points in history when sweet treats were consumed in difficult times. KitKats rose to prominence during World War II, as an affordable way to feed and energize soldiers in the trenches of war. Haribo, another candy, was created in post-WWI Germany, when the only startup capital a food company could get their hands on was a bag of sugar.
Today, as mainstream publications increasingly report dire times ahead—“recession indicators,” “white collar bloodbath,” etc.—more people are looking for emotional comforts without significant financial commitment. Consumers around the world, according to Deloitte and McKinsey, are more likely to say their recent splurge purchase was food and beverage—specifically, treats.
So the verdict is in: Sweet treats are coming back (think of how popular Dubai chocolates, pistachio-flavored treats, or cubed croissants have become in the last year or so). And if the KitKat and chocolate chip cookie can teach us one lesson, it’s this: If one wants to understand the economy, one can look to sweets. A rising demand for small, sweet indulgences is not just something public health officials need to pay attention to. No purchase is made in a vacuum, after all. Spending on treats is an important barometer for optimism, for how we feel about the future.
When the economy lagged and when war broke out, chocolate chip cookies and KitKats respectively became cheap forms of energy and nourishment. Likewise, our propensity towards the sweet in our current milieu has much to say about the world we live in and the future that consumers anticipate. What else can you do with a disposable income that’s too small to save on a home down payment and provide for a family, but enough to buy an endless number of overpriced pastries? We are savoring small pleasures today because we will never afford the future.
Bad times create good sweets. And here in Hong Kong, a new sweet treat is rising out of the city’s ongoing retail slump: the egg tart.
Hong Kong retail sales have officially entered their 14th consecutive month of decline. Stores have been closing in record numbers since last year. In popular downtown areas, retail lots remain vacant. The city, once known for food tourism and with the 5th most Michelin stars per capita, just recorded the first decline in the number of licensed restaurants in 6 years.
Against all odds, Cantonese egg tarts are beating the local retail gloom. Bakehouse, a popular bakery in the city, is selling roughly 30,000 egg tarts every day and is now investing in a US$3.98 million expansion. Bakeries in other parts of town are also performing very well. Even with increased closures of other stores, new bakeries are opening in popular areas like Causeway Bay and Tai Koo Shing.
It’s what Rubin Verebes, a friend of the newsletter and Managing Editor of Foodie, calls the “egg tart economy,” which describes “shifting tourist and local consumer tastes towards quick, cheap, snackable, and brand-heavy meals.” In a slumping retail market, where fine dining and expensive shopping were once (and are no longer) the norm, the people are now buying egg tarts.
“[There’s] a shift from people enjoying the theatrics of expensive dining experiences, and now tending towards cheaper thrills,” Rubin told THE CHOW over the phone. “Hong Kong, I feel, has commodified a lot of the very visual forward Instagrammable desserts. A lot of Hong Kong cafes are trying to bulk up their profit by selling something that is gonna get clicks and eyes.”
Hong Kong as a city is somehow very expensive but also overly reliant on tourism. Visitors from Mainland China, Japan, Korea, or the Philippines come frequently, but their budgets are tight. In a column published last week, Rubin writes, “Many tourists now enjoy the cheap side of the city when travelling here,” that is, snacking on egg tarts instead of a meal at a restaurant like Carbone.
“When [people from Hong Kong] go over to Thailand, Japan, we’re like, ‘Wow, it’s so cheap!’” Rubin added. “But we also forget, we’re accustomed to paying 100HKD (12USD) minimum for a drink at a bar, whereas for tourists that come here, that’s steep for them.”
An economy that relies on egg tarts, then, is also one where traditional retail is dying, where social platforms encourage the making of eye-catching desserts, and where tourist wallets grow thin. But until we can feel and imagine better times ahead, the sweets will be here to stay.
