Intellectual property | Experience copy-cat Macau food at Gongbei plaza

Mainland tourists can experience some of Macau’s specialty food products without setting foot in the city by visiting shops at and around the Gongbei underground plaza, in Zhuhai

It is convenient to access Macau specialty products in the neighboring mainland city, since it generally takes only 30 minutes to cross from Zhuhai to Macau.
Due to such ease, Gongbei, which is the closest location in Zhuhai to Macau, has been providing Macau products, authentic or not, to tourists, particularly those from the mainland.

Shops claiming to sell authentic Macau souvenirs can be found at the major entrance of the Gongbei underground plaza.

A Koi Kei Bakery type of souvenir store, named “Imported Snacks”, is located at the north side of Gongbei underground plaza, where it sells cookies and meat jerky in the style of the Macau SAR.

The shop advertises that it sells “Hong Kong and Macau special food, Macau cookies.” In addition to cookies from Macau, the shop sells other allegedly imported snacks.

Macau’s specialty bakeries are common at the Gongbei underground plaza, with similar shops also found in the general vicinity of the plaza.

Just about 200 meters north of the Gongbei underground plaza, another Macau bakery can be found next to the Gongbei Port bus stop, named “Koi Kei Heong Macau Souvenir”. The characters for Koi Kei share the same pronunciation as the Koi Kei bakeries in Macau. However, the characters are slightly different, with the third character, heong, meaning “to smell good”. Despite this shop advertising itself as a Zhuhai branch, its parent company remains unclear.

Macau has Koi Kei bakeries and stores selling Heong Kei meat jerky. However, according to the Koi Kei Bakery website, this Macau company has not opened a store anywhere on the mainland.

The Macau bakery, Heong Kei Meat Jerky, is also not the operator behind Koi Kei Heong Macau Souvenir in Zhuhai.

In 2015, Heong Kei Meat Jerky issued a statement clarifying that it has no relationship with mainland China’s “Heong Kei Food” bakeries.

Previously in Zhuhai, different imitations of Macau’s Koi Kei Bakeries were spread in various districts. At the Wanzai Macau Street in Zhuhai, Koi Kei and Koi Hong were two of the brands imitated from Macau’s famous bakeries. Staff reporter