中秋节过后，没卖出的月饼都去哪里了？丨What happens to unsold mooncakes?
中秋节已过，超市里的月饼也已货去架空。那么问题来了，这些节后的月饼都去了哪里？会不会留到明年再包装重新卖给消费者？一起来看报道。
Almost overnight, the tens of thousands of mooncakes in supermarkets and gift stores disappeared.
Where have they gone? Many worry that some of them might go back to the factories that produced them, be repacked and appear again in supermarkets at Mid-Autumn next year.
To learn whether that's true, several media outlets launched their own probe.
On Mid-Autumn day afternoon:
Mooncakes are on sale
Most families tend to prepare their mooncakes in advance, so mooncake sales had already been dropping on the very day.
On Oct 1, or Mid-Autumn Day this year, supermarkets were seen putting their mooncakes on sale at quite high discounts, as much as 70 or even more percent off the label price, to their own staff.
The majority of the mooncakes could be sold out this way. As CCTV reported, at 3 pm in a supermarket in Zhengzhou city, capital of Central China's Henan province, mooncake shelves were already cleared and new commodities stacked in their place.
Unsold mooncakes:
Go back to the producer
Even with discounts, there are always some mooncakes that cannot be sold. After the festival, these mooncakes will be returned to the factory that produced them.
Then there are two more possibilities. Some will be sold by the factories to their own staff at much lower prices, like they did in the supermarkets, while the rest will be unpacked and recycled.
Don't worry, the mooncakes will never be recycled to customers to eat. They will be picked out and sent to machines that destroy them to make sure people do not get expired food.
The usual quality guarantee period for mooncakes is three months, which means mooncakes can't last a year until the next festival.
But not the boxes. The "recycle" here refers to them. The mooncake makers open the packages, pick out the mooncakes and recycle the boxes for next year.
After all, "It is the boxes that decide the prices," to quote a sales promoter in the CCTV report.
记者：张周项
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