With the Mid-Autumn Festival around the corner, the demand for mooncakes from eager customers in East China's Shanghai is clearly on the rise.

This year's mooncake season started half a month earlier than previous years, attracting hordes of buyers for traditional brands and on e-commerce platforms.

One of the stars is the Shanghai First Foodhall. It has introduced new flavors of freshly baked mooncakes, including coconut latte and meigancai, a dry pickled Chinese mustard. Combining traditional production and modern technology allows customers to bake and enjoy the mooncakes at home.

Another top performer is the Longhua Temple. It offers vegetarian mooncakes with natural fruit flavors this year, including red dates, nuts and Chinese hawthorns to meet consumer demand for healthier options.

Also in the ascendant are Shanghai Guan Sheng Yuan and Mei Xin. The former, known for its White Rabbit Creamy Candy, now offers innovative crossover mooncakes with flavors such as matcha, chocolate and coffee that are delighting buyers. The latter has introduced special mooncakes with designs inspired by vintage-style radios and Disney cartoon characters, displaying a distinctive brand culture.

On e-commerce platforms, Dingdong Maicai and Meituan Maicai are shaking up the industry by introducing easy-to-heat packaging and improving the texture of fresh meat mooncakes. According to Meituan, this August has seen a 47 percent increase in mooncake sales compared with last year.