Recently, it seems like the whole world is eating duck tongue, Li Na!
The reason is that Xu Fei recalled in the variety show "Friends Later" that Li Na taught her to eat duck tongue "like melon seeds." Even though the two had no contact for many years, Xu Fei still retained this habit.
After the show aired, duck tongue unexpectedly became popular. Netizens followed suit and placed orders, collectively "drawing the ground as a prison" to talk about duck tongue. "Wenzhou duck tongue" received a huge wave of traffic, search volume increased all the way, and duck tongue was sold out in many places.
According to data from the online service platform, from October 28 to November 3, the number of duck tongue-related group buying orders surged 1,443% month-on-month.
In previous years, the peak sales season for Wenzhou duck tongue was concentrated in late December, following the rhythm of New Year's goods and New Year's Eve banquets. But this time, the popularity has rushed into the off-season early, stirring up the entire industry.
Ten duck tongues are worth four in Wenzhou, and snacks have grown into a "hard dish" in the industry.
At the Wenzhou Modern Vegetable Basket Dayanmen Farmers Market, duck tongue is placed in the most conspicuous position at the braised food stall, and the red promotional card clearly states "Same Style as Variety Show".
Stall owner Huang Shouyi has been selling braised meat here for many years and has witnessed the sudden popularity with his own eyes. "I have been making braised food for more than ten years, and I have never seen sales like this in the off-season. In the past, hotels and restaurants mainly came to buy goods in large quantities, and there were not many individual customers. It is different recently. Many young people came here after watching the video, and the first thing they asked was whether it was the duck tongue from the variety show." Huang Shouyi said that now he can sell nearly 200 kilograms of duck tongue in a day. The stock is often out of stock in the evening, and many customers can only make reservations to pick up the goods the next day.
Online orders are also overwhelming factories. Wang Xiaoling, regional business manager of Wenzhou Xiuwen Food, has been dealing with production scheduling, logistics and order reminder customers almost every day during this period. "We predicted that the gourmet variety show would have the flavor of braised food, but we did not expect such a rapid growth. In the past half month, our sales have tripled month-on-month. The braised, cooled, and vacuum packaging assembly lines in the workshop are running continuously, and the cold chain trucks are loaded and shipped immediately. There is a steady stream of orders from all over the country. Even the dealers in New York have sold out and have been restocking."
Tengqiao Food also ushered in an outbreak. On November 2, the brand’s live broadcast sales tripled compared to the same day the previous week. In the live broadcast room, the anchor demonstrated the "eating method of eating melon seeds" with a duck tongue, and the barrage kept saying "place an order with the same style". Pan Yijie, head of the corporate marketing department, said with emotion that this variety show is equivalent to a nationwide grass planting for Wenzhou Duck Tongue.
Behind the popularity is Wenzhou’s industrial infrastructure that has been cultivated for many years. The annual local duck tongue production exceeds 12,000 tons, and there is a saying in the industry that "out of ten duck tongues come from Wenzhou".
In Ouhai District alone, the annual output value of duck tongue-related industries exceeds 450 million yuan. Tengqiao sells more than 200 million duck tongues a year, and local brands such as Chuxu and Xiuwen have formed a certain scale.
In the Wenzhou dialect, the pronunciation of "tongue" is close to "loss". The local people took the auspicious meaning and renamed duck tongue as "duck profit" to express the hope of attracting wealth. Gradually, the custom of "no feast without tongue" was gradually formed. A plate of sauce-flavored duck tongue is indispensable on the cold dishes of wedding banquets and family banquets.
The preference of the tongue spans a hundred years, from ancient book banquets to Ou Di braised pot.
Many diners think that duck tongue is a snack that is only popular in modern times. In fact, as early as the Qing Dynasty, the ancients had already played with duck tongue in various ways. The Qing Dynasty cookbook "Tiao Ding Ji" specifically records various methods such as boiling, cold dressing, fermentation, drunkenness, stir-frying, duck tongue soup, etc.
The memoirs of De Ling, a female official in the Qing Dynasty, recorded Cixi's preference for stewed duck tongue: This dish requires duck tongue to be stewed with duck meat. There are at least twenty or thirty duck tongues in a bowl, which are served separately in a large apricot-yellow bowl and placed close to the table when serving. A duck only has one tongue, and a bowl of delicacies requires dozens of ducks, which shows this love.
Zhang Ailing also wrote about her childhood taste memories in "Talk about Eating and Painting Pancakes to Satisfy Hungry". She never forgets the duck tongue and radish soup in Tianjin, describing the duck tongue as "pure and tender", and also wrote down in detail how to eat the bones. Food lovers such as Jin Yong and Cai Lam also have a special liking for duck tongue.
The sauce-braised duck tongue we are now familiar with is a flavor slowly honed by Wenzhou braised food masters. Fresh duck tongue needs to go through multiple processes of pickling, drying, steaming, and stir-frying with marinade, so that the sauce aroma slowly penetrates into the texture. Wenzhou businessmen who worked abroad in the early years often used duck tongue as a souvenir from their hometown to relatives, friends and business partners. This flavor has followed Wenzhou people to all parts of the country.
"Before the 1980s, duck tongues were just scraps from meat duck processing, and most of them were discarded. In the early years, duck tongues were hand-braised in small workshops and braised meat shops along the streets, with limited output, and basically only eaten by locals. Later, with the rise of standardized factories, vacuum packaging and mature cold chains, duck tongues left Wenzhou and were sold across the country." Zheng Guangyu, a member of the Wenzhou CPPCC and president of the Wenzhou Snack Association, has been deeply involved in the snack industry for many years, and has witnessed with his own eyes that Wenzhou duck tongues eaten from small stalls have gone to national shelves.
Many people are curious, what is the fun of talking duck tongue? It is completely different from chewing a duck leg. The inside of the duck tongue has its own slender cartilage, which is part of the hyoid bone device. The cartilage is surrounded by muscles, fat, glands and connective tissue. It is not as refreshing as a large piece of meat. The fun lies in the process of slowly peeling it off and tasting it carefully. This is why netizens say "eating duck tongue like melon seeds".
It is worth reminding that this delicacy has a hidden calorie trap: although there is not much meat in a single duck tongue, every 100 grams of raw duck tongue has about 19.7 grams of edible fat and about 245 kcal of calories, which is roughly equivalent to 210 grams of cooked rice. The sauce braised version on the market is braised with extra sugar and oil, which has higher caloric and sodium content. It is suitable for a brief taste to satisfy cravings, but cannot be eaten without restraint.
Traffic is not the end point, turn the popularity of hot searches into long-term "retention".
Sudden traffic is both an opportunity and a test. Zheng Guangyu said bluntly in the interview: "Traffic is coming very fast, and it counts only if you can catch it. Hot searches will always pass. Whether you can retain customers depends on whether the company can stabilize quality and keep up with changes."
At present, Wenzhou is making every effort to establish itself as the "World Capital of Food", and duck tongue is one of the most recognizable food business cards. This round of popularity on the Internet has just added a boost to the work of establishing the city.
With the surge in orders, quality control is the first bottom line. Many companies said that despite the large number of orders, the marinating time, sterilization and cold chain storage and transportation are still strictly implemented in accordance with the original standards. At the same time, brands have also begun to adapt to the needs of young consumers, launching independent small packages, developing new flavors such as light and slightly spicy, adapting to light scenes such as single people watching dramas and sharing with friends, and jumping out of the past focus on banquets and large packaging for new year products.
"The variety show allows everyone to taste Wenzhou duck tongue for the first time. Only when they are satisfied with the first bite will they come back to buy it again." Pan Yijie also mentioned that the unit price of duck tongue was relatively high in the past and it was a niche snack. The biggest value of being out of the circle this time is not only the short-term sales increase, but also allowing more young people to know Wenzhou duck tongue and see the city of Wenzhou.
Hot searches will eventually cool down, and the peak of orders will slowly come down. But if we can take advantage of this network-wide attention to improve products, cultivate consumers, and build an urban food brand, this traffic carnival will eventually become Wenzhou Duck’s long-term market competitiveness.
A mouthful of braised aroma, an inch of ingenuity. This "duck tongue" out of the circle not only carries the taste memory of Wenzhou people, but also the city's long-term persistence in turning a snack into a big industry that enriches the people.
Author: Zhou Wei
