Fast food chains offer new snacks to suit local preferences

It's not only Chinese restaurant in the west that are ”westernizing” their menus with sweet and sour pork and fried bananas in order to suit the local taste preferences. Several fast food outlets in China have started offering their customers Chinese snacks, such as moon cakes, zongzi and shaobing.

Chicken fast food giant KFC recently launched a new breakfast snack called shaobing. The snack is a toasted cake with sesame seeds that traces back to the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-24 AD).

KFC isn't first in line with their idea. Starbucks recently served moon cakes and zongzi as part of the Dragon Boat Festival. Zonzi is a pyramid-shaped dumpling made of glutinous rice wrapped in bamboo or reed leaves. And since many years back, upscale ice cream giant Haagen-Dazs is offering moon cakes filled with ice cream.

Most foreign fast-food chains originally entered China with the same menus that made them a success back home.

While many Chinese embraced the exotic taste of hamburgers, pizzas and fried chicken, the Western menus are somewhat limited, hence why chains like KFC Starbucks and Haagen-Dazs are embracing a shift in strategy.

According to Kuan Jie,a senior partner of Beijing-based Puhui Chuangzhan Management Consulting Co, Chinese food still take the lion's share.

"International restaurant chains aim to ride the fast-growing consuming market because of sluggish demand in their home markets," he said.