Business

Pastry of happiness: the story of Kuo Yuan-ye

Visitors take in the display at Kuo Yuan-ye Culture Museum of Cake and Pastry. (Courtesy of Kuo Yuan-ye Foods Co., Ltd.)

• Publication Date：07/09/2010
• Source： Taiwan Today
• By  Kwangyin Liu

People in Taiwan have always associated particular foods with special celebrations: moon cakes for the Mid-Autumn Festival, meat dumplings for the Lunar New Year, sweet sticky rice dumplings for the Lantern Festival.

Marriage, as one of life’s most important rites of passage, is no exception, and this has made making and selling “bride cakes” a special niche business in Taiwan.

“In the 1940s people in Taiwan developed the custom of giving away big, round cakes to fellow villagers on occasions worth celebrating,” said Lee Huey-shi, sales manager of Kuo Yuan-ye Foods Co., Ltd., Taiwan’s leading company in the bride cake business.

Because food resources were scarce at that time, sweets were considered an extravagance, and therefore a perfect gift for sharing a family’s happiness.

As one of the oldest food enterprises in Taiwan, the 144-year-old Kuo Yuan-ye has been leading the pastry industry for decades. In this time, the baking and symbolism of bride cakes have undergone dramatic changes.

However, bride cakes were unknown to Kuo Liang-chen, the company’s founder, who migrated from mainland China’s Fujian Province to Taiwan in 1867, and settled in what would later become part of the Shilin District of Taipei City. He was expert in making traditional Fujian-style sweets such as mung bean cakes and egg yolk pastries.

Kuo’s delicious cakes brought him immediate success, which persisted for his firm well into the 20th century. His successors, however, noticed a rising demand among Taiwan’s consumers for bride cakes.

In the early 1900s, bride cakes were offered only by individual pastry makers, in rather small quantities, with inconsistent quality and a limited choice of flavors.

Kuo Yuan-ye saw the opportunity and dedicated all its resources to establishing modern production lines for bride cakes, turning a new page in Taiwan’s pastry history. The brand has been a synonym for bride cakes for at least half a century.

In the 1970s, Hong Kong-based Maria’s Bakery introduced western-style cookie selections to Taiwan, just when the island was at the crossroads of modernization and people were happily opening up to western ideas. The boxes of cookies quickly caught on as engagement gifts from the family of the bride, while the big, round bride cakes fell out of fashion.

With nearly 80 percent of Taiwan’s bride cake market taken over by western cookies, Kuo Yuan-ye decided to change, for good. In 1981, the company—already past its centenary—set out to develop western-style bride cakes of its own.

“The image of Kuo Yuan-ye had always been traditionally Chinese and old-fashioned,” Lee said. “To make over the old brand, we had to change that.”

“Our role models include Shiatzy Chen and Anna Sui,” Lee said, referring to the well-known Taiwanese fashion house and the U.S.-based fashion designer of Chinese ethnicity. Both brands went global by making traditional Asian elements fashionable in modern designs.

After several failed attempts, Kuo Yuan-ye’s efforts to combine western flavors with traditional pastries finally paid off; in the late 1990s, the old brand again became Taiwan’s largest provider of bride cakes, in both western and Chinese styles.

However, people on the island are becoming less interested in supersweet, high calorie cakes; instead, they are adopting healthier diets containing less sugar and fat.

The traditional big, round bride cakes made with lard, sweet braised pork and egg yolk have been losing popularity, as more consumers opt for smaller, fruit-flavored cakes made with less fattening materials.

However, this is not the only crisis Kuo Yuan-ye has faced. Over the past 30 years, the number of Taiwanese couples getting married has dropped 35 percent, from 200,000 to 131,000 pairs per year. With the marriage rate plummeting, the market for wedding-related products such as bride cakes has shrunk dramatically, and the outlook will only be grimmer.

“This time, we had to change not only our products, but also our marketing strategies,” Lee said. “Nowadays, couples demand more than cakes; they yearn for a story, an unforgettable experience they can cherish for life.”

In the 1990s, the company began remaking its image, giving its products a more modern appearance, while at the same time establishing a subsidiary brand, “L’affection,” targeting young couples with its chic designs.

“We tried to become the ‘designer of household happiness,’ by participating in every turning point for a family—engagements, weddings, births and birthdays,” Lee said. “We want our customers to know that Kuo Yuan-ye is not only for the taste, but more importantly, it’s for the heart.”

In April, Kuo Yuan-ye launched an unprecedented campaign called “Marry Me” in all its stores island-wide. Hundreds of couples visited the shops, where salespeople encouraged the men to re-enact their marriage proposals right there in front of everyone.

“The aim was make our shops the location of the couples’ sweetest memories, so that we become part of their family history,” Lee said. “Our core value is to bring happiness to each family, whenever there is something worth celebrating,” he added.

The appeal worked well, as Kuo Yuan-ye currently holds a 25-percent share of Taiwan’s bride cake market, and has outshone all other pastry makers in the Taiwan Ideal Brand survey for eight years in a row.

Having gained the lead in the industry, the patisserie decided to return something to society. In 2001, Taiwan’s first cake-themed museum, the Kuo Yuan-ye Culture Museum of Cake and Pastry, was opened in Taoyuan County.

The museum immediately became a hit among children, with its display of pastry-making tools, full array of colorful cookie packages and a hands-on experience allowing people to bake their own pineapple tarts. The company had to open another museum in Shilin, where its headquarters is located, to cater to the growing flock of visitors.

So far the museums have attracted over 600,000 visitors, mostly elementary school students. “The museums have become a must-see,” Lee said. “If a class doesn’t book the tour a year ahead of time, they don’t get a chance,” he noted proudly.

Kuo Yuan-ye has been the leader in Taiwan’s pastry industry for most of the past 144 years, and it certainly hopes to remain in that position. With its marriage of traditional and new-fangled delicacies, it hopes to move forward into a brighter future. (THN)

Write to Kwangyin Liu at kwangyin@mail.gio.gov.tw