One Cake Store, Two Cake Store, Three Cake Store, More!

When we first arrived in Kaifeng, there were two stores out the South Gate road. The closest one was called "Gege Cake" (older brother cake), and the other was called "Tian Li Cake". Gege cake is a good cake store, and has the best deal on loaves of bread, however, many of the other kinds of pastries or baked items (think sandwiches, pigs-in-the-blanket, pizza slices, donuts, etc) are simply better at Tian Li Cake.

I like Gege Cake, but after finding egg shells in too many bread items I've kind of avoided them for snacking needs. I never really went to Tian Li cake, maybe because they were on the other side of the street or maybe because they were too far away or maybe because they were expensive. But Tian Li cake is seen as better than Gege by many people.

After a few months, another store opened, Jeanavice. This one reminded Ann and I of a Japanese bakery- so many different kinds of breads, so many fillings, so many tasty, tasty options. (Turns out the owner is Japanese!) And real meat in your bread, not just this fake dog-food hotdog stuff. It was even farther away than Tian Li (about twice the distance from our gate to Tian Li), but it was worth it, and this semester I'm more willing to make the trek.

But recently, something else has happened. Another store has opened, this one even closer to our campus! Gege cake has sent out 5 yuan coupons as retaliation, but this store also did so. This store sells ice cream and some tasty sweet pastries, it's biggest selling points.

Jeanavice is too far away to depend on customers from the school, so it doesn't need the south gate location. But Gege does. It doesn't have much else going for it, other than it is cheap and part of a chain. So they've pulled out a red carpet and are blasting out music in hopes to draw in customers from this new cake shop.

It's annoying. I understand Gege's worry, with three new competitors and two of them in a close location, but please, Gege, stop blasting music.