Established during 1862 to 1874, Zhaodayou has nearly 140 years of history. In 1911, directed by a mentor, a Ningbonese called Zhao Peide established “Zhaodayou Cake Shop” at Baizhang Street in Jiangdong District, offering joyous, seasonal and annual cakes including dragon and phoenix pudding, crystal oil cake, sweet-scented osmanthus cake, green pudding, snow pudding, preserved duck egg, rice cake made from finely ground flour, pepper mint patty, etc. Among them, dragon and phoenix pudding as well as crystal oil cake were the most famous.
Zhao the founder was from an old family which had made cakes for long at Shangyu, Ningbo. At that time, Shangyu was poor, so few people could make a living by selling cakes. In pursuit for a better life, Zhao and his families came to Ningbo with a boat of rice. They rented a shop in Jiangdong District, providing seasonal cakes with the brand name “Zhaodayou”. They started business in November (the lunar calendar) and had a trial sale for two months. As they used much more glutinous rice, Zhaodayou was popular among customers. Additionally, its excellent operation and superior stone mills made rice cake more refined, smooth and chewy. And Zhaodayou Shop never sold products with sour powder, leaking filling, obscured pattern or fallen skin.
At that time, there were two other cakes shops in Ningbo. Zhaodayou Shop was aware of the competition, so it kept the production day and night from July 1 of that year (by the lunar calendar), which led the other two cake shops doing the same. Three cake shops kept making cakes at night, illuminating the whole Baizhang Street. Zhaodayou was more popular as it offered best cakes in the eyes of customers. In about 3 or 5 years, only Zhaodayou survived on Baizhang Street.
The success of Zhaodayou Shop encouraged a lot of people of the Zhaos to open cake shops in Ningbo. Therefore, Zhaodayou Shop expanded from Jiangdong District to the downtown. People would buy the cakes from Zhaodayou Shop for every kind of events, such as travelling, visiting relatives, worshiping ancestors, celebrating birthdays, weddings and so on. Even Generalissimo of the national government Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975) would buy the cakes from Zhaodayou Shop for relatives and friends every time he passed by Ningbo.
From 2003 to 2008, the shop won a series of honorary titles including “recommended products by customers”, “honoring contracts and integrity”. In 2008, it won “the most favorite time-honored brand in China” in Chinese Time-honored Product Expo. Currently, Zhaodayou Shop has 160 kinds of products featuring soft cake and flaky pastries made from sticky rice sold at over 300 supermarkets in Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and other places inside or outside Zhejiang.
