Sales conditions of the handmade string noodles We inquired of the Liu Xie Chang Noodles Factory about the current sales conditions of the handmade string noodles. They said that this product is for the most part consumed by ordinary families, which prefer handmade noodles and may buy it for their daily cooking or as presents for their relatives and friends. However, the factory also wholesales their products to the distributors (such as the Jin Yi Xiang Pastry Shop), and receive orders from some businesses, but due to the higher costs of handmade string noodles, the orders seldom come from the ordinary accounts but mostly from some specific accounts.

Demands from the restaurants

We inquired of many restaurants serving handmade string noodles and discovered that the Xiang Zi Kou (entrance of the lane) sesame-oil pork-liver string noodles sold at the area around Longchiang Road in the east district of Taipei are supplied by the Liu Xie Chang Noodles Factory; the well-known King of Delicious Pettitoes uses the handmade string noodles from Yaohe Street; the red string noodles are handmade string noodles from Dihua Street; the string noodles served by Maokong Qing Quan (Spring) Restaurant are handmade string noodles from Mucha, but the boss orders the noodles from the grocery; the sesame-oil string noodles served at Mucha Shun Yuen are from the Ri Fa Noodles Factory; the tea oil string noodles served at Shen Keng Restaurant are also from Dihua Street; many restaurants still insist on using handmade string noodles, especially for cooking pettitoes string noodles, tea oil/sesame oil string noodles, etc., for which reasonably higher prices are charged. Moreover, most restaurants in the area around Mucha prefer Mucha string noodles, whereas other restaurants, except a few that intend to avail themselves of the reputation of Mucha string noodles, prefer the string noodles of their familiar producers or from the nearby suppliers. It is obvious that the Mucha handmade string noodles are no long as prevailing as used to be, but thanks to its long standing fame, some restaurants which demand high-quality food materials still place orders to the string noodles makers here.

Retail conditions of the Mucha string noodles

We called at the stores near our school to investigate the retail conditions of the string noodles there, and the records thereof are as follows:

All the convenient stores sell string noodles, mostly machine-made, and the only one selling handmade string noodles is on Xinglong Road under the jurisdiction of Mucha.

The string noodles available at the Wellcome Supermarket are mostly machine-made, maybe because on one hand, the supermarket has difficulties in preservation of the handmade string noodles and on the other hand, the producers of handmade string noodles are unable to guarantee a fixed supply on a regular basis. Moreover, we also discovered that a lot of string noodles are produced in Zhahua where there are many string noodles factories.

We discovered that the major marketing channel for handmade string noodles is through the groceries and both the groceries we visited offer handmade string noodles. When Xiao-Han interviewed with the proprietress of the Hong Xing String noodles Grocery, the madam said that although the handmade string noodles are slightly more expensive (NT$116/kg), people prefer their taste and since nowadays the immoderate package of some machine-made string noodles has pushed up their prices, she will recommend the handmade string noodles to her customers when asked.