Near the full moon of January, the closing date sold out 3 tons of five-color sticky rice

Having made five-color sticky rice for 5 years now, Ms. Nguyen Thi Thanh - the main seller of five-color sticky rice and Northwest specialties in Le Duc Tho (Nam Tu Liem, Hanoi), admits that this sticky rice dish is very popular, especially during holidays and Tet.

She shared that people's lives are getting busier and busier, so ready-made food is becoming more popular. She uses natural colors from leaves and flowers to make red, yellow, purple, green and blue sticky rice. The cooked sticky rice is cooled and wrapped in dong leaves to ensure freshness, along with a packet of sesame salt and then vacuum-packed.

This is to make it convenient for customers to store the product longer at room temperature, in the refrigerator or freeze it when needed.

Accordingly, it can be kept in the refrigerator for about 1 month, and frozen for about 6 months. If the sticky rice has been frozen, before using, put it in the refrigerator to defrost gradually and then steam it for 15-20 minutes until the sticky rice will be soft and chewy.

“I have facilities in Lao Cai and Hanoi. During the Lunar New Year, customers ordered a lot, so there were days when I sold out 6 tons of five-color sticky rice. During the days before the full moon, the number was around 3 tons of sticky rice a day,” Ms. Thanh revealed. Accordingly, most of the sticky rice was sold wholesale to wholesalers in all provinces from the North to the South, the amount of sticky rice sold to retail customers only accounted for a small portion.

Ms. Thanh also said that the closer to the full moon day of the first lunar month, the more popular the five-color sticky rice is. The sticky rice is quickly packaged and delivered to customers.

Therefore, her kitchen always has more than 10 workers doing all the work, from soaking rice to packing sticky rice into bags. To steam a batch of sticky rice, the rice needs to be soaked for 6-8 hours depending on the weather, steamed for 1 hour until the sticky rice is cooked, then waited for it to cool before dividing the weight into 300 grams, 800 grams and 1kg and vacuum-packed.

The price of sticky rice depends on whether the customer buys it wholesale or retail. She is currently selling it retail for 110,000 VND/kg, and the wholesale price is 69,000 VND/kg.

“On normal days, both wholesale and retail sell about 1 ton of sticky rice. On holidays, the amount of five-color sticky rice sold is 3-4 times more,” she said.

Five-color sticky rice is sold everywhere in the market at prices ranging from 100,000-130,000 VND/kg. This item is bought by housewives to prepare offerings for the Full Moon Festival of January. This is a readily available item, easy to preserve, so most customers who order it will receive delivery on the same day, or the next day.

Ms. Bui Phuong Hoa - a wholesaler of five-color sticky rice in Thanh Xuan, Hanoi - boasts that because this item is easy to preserve, customers order a lot, especially during the Full Moon Festival. Accordingly, from January 8th until now, she sells an average of nearly 200 kg of sticky rice per day.

“I don’t make this product myself, but I order it wholesale from a large kitchen in Dien Bien. They steam the sticky rice and vacuum-pack it and ship it to me in Hanoi every day,” she said. Therefore, she posts it for sale every day on the “online market”, especially online apartment markets.

Not counting other orders, just in an apartment complex in Linh Dam area, she just closed nearly 50kg of sticky rice in one morning.

According to Vietnamnet