Reading Macau Souvenir Snack Shop Prices Before You Buy by Weight

Macau law does not let a shop sell a sealed box of cookies "by the catty". The traditional Chinese units are legal in Macau only for goods that are not prepackaged or are weighed at the moment of sale; anything packed in advance must carry its net weight on the outside, in the metric system that has been the legal standard since 1 January 1993.

That split — loose goods by catty or tael, packed goods by net weight — is the key to reading a Macau snack shop, where the same product may be sold loose over a counter or in a sealed pack. This guide sets out the units, the price-display and weighing rules, the Consumer Council's code for souvenir food shops, and what to do if something goes wrong. It gives no prices, because no official source publishes any.

Catty, tael and the metric rule

Macau's legal system of units is the International System of Units, under Law 14/92/M, which came into force on 1 January 1993 and was republished in consolidated form in 2025. Article 5(2) makes one exception: goods "not prepackaged, and goods that must be weighed or measured at the time of the transaction" may use the Chinese traditional units in the law's annex "without stating the corresponding SI quantity".

The annex fixes those units exactly. One catty (斤, cate) is 0.60478982 kilograms, one tael (兩) is 37.79931 grams or one sixteenth of a catty, one mace (錢) is 3.779931 grams or one tenth of a tael, and one picul (擔) is 60.478982 kilograms. Macau's catty is therefore about 605 grams; Macau law defines only this catty and makes no reference to the mainland jin, so a price quoted by mainland habit may not match.

The weighing law, Law 15/92/M, applies the same logic in practice. All weighing must use the legal units except where the law expressly allows others, and only instruments in legal units may be used in trade. That is why a jerky counter can price by the catty but the scale that weighs your purchase is a certified instrument supervised by the Municipal Affairs Bureau.

The decoder below covers the words and marks you will see on tags and packs. The last column gives the legal value or, where it is a price, states that none is published.

What the price tag must show

The Consumer Rights Protection Law, Law 9/2021, in force since 1 January 2022, sets the display rule. Article 14(1) requires the trader to show "the price and unit of measure of the goods or services" in a way that is "visible, clearly legible and unambiguous" for the consumer to consult in advance. Article 14(2) requires prices in Macau's legal currency, the pataca.

Where the price goes depends on how the goods are sold. Article 14(3) says the price must be on the goods or their packaging, but where that is impossible or unsuitable — because the goods are small, "sold loose" or otherwise special — it must be shown "by another means sufficient to attract the consumer's attention". A jerky counter's price board is that other means, and it must still carry the unit.

The rule that protects you at the till is Article 14(5). If the price you are asked to pay differs from the price displayed, you "have the right to pay the displayed price", unless insisting would amount to abuse of rights. Breaching the display rules carries a fine of MOP 2,000 to 10,000, rising at the minimum by a quarter for a repeat offence within a year.

The consumer law, published in the Official Gazette on 12 July 2021, replaced two older consumer laws from 1988 and 1995. Before bringing charges over display and receipt breaches, the president of the Consumer Council's executive committee may first issue a warning and set a deadline to put things right. At the 2024 Lunar New Year market the Council reminded stall-holders that they "must mark prices on goods, and in patacas".

The law also sets information and receipt duties. Traders must inform consumers of the price and unit and of the goods' composition and specifications, and on request must issue a receipt showing the trader's identity, contact details, date, and each item's name and price with the total. Misleading practices include advertising a "special" or reduced price that is not below the lowest price charged in the previous 30 days, and falsely claiming certification from a consumer or food safety body. Aggressive practices include making you feel unable to leave without buying; these carry fines of MOP 20,000 to 60,000.

How weighing must be done

Weighing is where disputes happen, and Law 15/92/M sets three rules for it. When goods are weighed in front of you, the operation must be done so that you can "clearly see all the instruments or equipment used and the result of the weighing". For prepackaged goods, the seller must weigh them in front of you if you ask. And no one may, intentionally or negligently, supply less than the transaction requires or less than the goods' corresponding value.

The fines scale with intent. Breaking the visibility rule costs MOP 600 to 6,000; negligent short weight MOP 800 to 8,000; intentional short weight, or using an uncalibrated or banned scale, MOP 1,000 to 10,000. The Municipal Affairs Bureau calibrates and supervises weighing instruments and may ban unreliable ones, and uncalibrated or banned scales may not even be kept where goods are weighed for sale.

The souvenir code of practice turns those legal rights into shop rules for Certified Shops. It requires shops to keep scales clean and accurate and, "for goods sold by weight, clearly show the consumer every weighing result". It also requires a receipt given without being asked, showing "food name, price, weight, date of sale, shop name and contact details".

Boxes, vacuum packs and labels

Gift boxes and vacuum packs are prepackaged food, and a different law governs them. Decree-Law 50/92/M requires six items on the label of prepackaged food: the name, the ingredients, the date of minimum durability, the responsible party or importer, the net weight and the lot. Net weight is "the quantity of product in the pack", stated by weight for solid products.

Language is a check on origin claims. Labels may be in Chinese, Portuguese or English, but "prepackaged food produced in the Macao SAR must use both Chinese and Portuguese". The law uses "produced in the Macao SAR" only to trigger that bilingual rule and does not define it; no law read defines "Macau-made". A pack labelled only in Chinese may be legal, but it cannot be relying on the bilingual rule for Macau-produced food.

Date marks follow set wording: "use by", "best before" or "best before the end of", with day and month for products lasting under three months and month and year for those lasting three to eighteen months. Bread and pastries normally eaten within 24 hours are exempt from a date, and products lasting over eighteen months must show the production date. Loose food still needs its name, lot and date shown by the retailer.

Labelling is enforced by the Economic and Technological Development Bureau rather than the municipal bureau. Missing, inaccurate or altered label information is fined at the value of the food but not less than MOP 1,000 or more than MOP 50,000, and selling past the date of minimum durability costs MOP 1,000 to 10,000, with the goods seized. The Food Safety Law of 2013 gives the Municipal Affairs Bureau food-safety powers but contains no labelling provisions.

The comparison below sets out what changes with the way the snack is sold. It uses only the legal rules above.

Certified Shops and the souvenir code

The Consumer Council's Certified Shop scheme (誠信店) was launched in 2001, building on an affiliated-shop mechanism set up in 1998 under which member shops accept arbitration of consumer disputes up to MOP 100,000. Certified Shops must follow 18 rules, including showing the actual final price in patacas "or clearly listing all components of the final price so that consumers can calculate the final amount themselves", posting accepted currencies and exchange rates, issuing receipts, answering complaints within 14 days and complying with arbitration awards.

The souvenir trade has its own code. On 26 June 2024 the Council and the Macao pastry and souvenir trade chamber published a revised code of practice for souvenir food retail with 16 rules, binding on Certified Shops in the trade. Besides pataca prices "with the corresponding unit of measurement", clear weighing results and full receipts, it bans "forced bundling, coercion or urging", requires promotions to show the offer period and original price, and asks shops to avoid over-packaging food.

What the code leaves out is telling. Unlike the Council's code for bird's nest, ginseng and dried seafood shops, it does not require a posted chart converting catty, tael and mace, and it has no return or exchange clause, unlike the clothing and leather code's seven-day exchange. It says nothing about free tasting. There is also no general statutory seven-day return right for ordinary in-shop purchases; the consumer law's seven-day cancellation applies only to distance, off-premises and prepaid contracts.

Membership is policed rather than permanent. The Council inspects Certified Shops at irregular intervals, suspends those that fall short, and forbids the certification logo on product labels, packaging or shopping bags, so a logo printed on a box of cookies is not a certification. At its December 2025 awards 400 shops competed; 50 were rated excellent, the top 20 of them best Certified Shops, and 43 shops also received a star tourism service award run with the tourism office.

The directory is the only official list of souvenir snack shops, and it is large. Its header read 6,452 Certified Shops when checked; a name search for "手信" returned 61 listings, "鉅記" 29 and "咀香園" (Choi Heong Yuen) 15, all classed as tourism souvenirs (food). The Council's own announced totals do not agree — over 4,500 at the end of September 2025, over 5,500 in December 2025 — and the reason for the higher directory figure is not explained. The street's history as a snack strip is covered in the Rua do Cunha snack street guide.

The tourism office names souvenir shops too, but differently. Its souvenirs page lists 16 shops, including Pan Fong, described as in the pastry business for over 80 years since 1936, Casa de Bolos Man Kei and Cinco de Outubro Pastelaria, and does not list Koi Kei or Choi Heong Yuen. Its local food page describes almond cookies as having "a lot of almonds, meaning every bite is crunchy", recommends eating them "with a drink because it's dry", and names no shops or prices.

If something goes wrong

The official route is the Consumer Council. Its hotline is +853 8988 9315, with a 24-hour recorded line, and complaints can also be lodged through its online platform or its WeChat account. The Council regularly advises consumers to keep receipts and other proof of purchase to support a complaint. For problems with tour-group shopping, the tourism office's 24-hour hotline is +853 2833 3000.

Cross-border help exists. The Council's 2026 visitor guide, issued jointly with the Zhuhai and Hengqin consumer bodies, describes case-referral links with 49 mainland provincial and city consumer organisations and cross-border mediation and arbitration. The Council and the tourism office have run joint inspections of tour-group shopping points since reports in 2023 of tour groups being forced to shop.

The complaint statistics show where snack disputes sit, which is inside larger categories. In 2025 the Council recorded 5,890 complaints, of which entertainment accounted for 1,525, tourism 669, catering 527 and food and drink 375; there is no souvenir or jerky category, and the word 手信 does not appear in the 2024 or 2025 tables. No official figure exists for catty-to-tael overcharging at Macau jerky shops.

Visitor spending gives the only official scale. In the second quarter of 2023 visitors spent MOP 1,266 per head on shopping, mainly on food products at MOP 300; that is the latest itemised figure found. A year earlier, in the first quarter of 2022, per-head shopping was MOP 2,464 with MOP 374 of it on food products. For the whole of 2025 shopping accounted for 45.4 per cent of non-gaming visitor spending, with no item breakdown. Food and non-alcoholic beverage prices rose 1.12 per cent year on year in March 2026. Whether you pay in patacas or Hong Kong dollars is its own decision, set out in the patacas or Hong Kong dollars guide.

What this guide does not cover

No prices appear. No Consumer Council price survey of almond cookies or jerky exists among its press releases from August 2021 to September 2026; the nearest is a Lunar New Year gift food survey, 44 items in 2024 and 45 in 2025, covering sweets, biscuits and pastries, prepackaged abalone and bird's nest, published through the Council's price information station. Its January 2023 edition included an almond candy but no almond cookie and no jerky. No official reference price exists either.

Koi Kei's own site blocked access and Choi Heong Yuen's could not be reached, so their founding years, shop counts, product weights and prices are not given. Meat import rules for your home country are outside scope here and are covered in the snacks you can carry home guide, and a Hong Kong traveller allowance for meat could not be verified. No legal rule requiring unit pricing per 100 grams on prepackaged goods was found, and no definition of "Macau-made" exists in the laws read.

The article number of the consumer law's pre-charge warning power could not be captured, and the Council's own page gives two different maximum suspension periods for Certified Shops, one year and two years. The statistics bureau's release for the second quarter of 2026 was not located. The tourism office's Rua do Cunha pages and one shop page did not render their descriptions.