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text/wang dong

a while ago, beijing's workers were flooded with messages on their screens.

an exposure program of cctv news accidentally exposed a black takeaway den:

the gaofen takeaway shop and the waste recycling station are opened together, and the processing environment is terrible...

i was about to criticize this behavior harshly, but when i opened the video, my eyes went dark.

——most of the numerous names that appear in the video are the ones i often order:

according to cctv news, one of these illegal takeout delivery sites is near the communication university of china:

at least half of the editorial staff live in this area.

san san, a colleague who graduated from communication university of china, said that apart from the school anniversary, he had not seen so much news related to his alma mater on wechat moments for a long time.

keith, who had just finished playing "black myth: wukong", was silent for a while and put down his phone, which was used to order takeout: i don't feel like eating at noon today.

the takeaway food that was carefully selected by the workers with caution still ended up stabbing them in the back.

perhaps this is the real "black myth" around us.

takeaway assassins are hard to guard against

sharing your own takeout experience is one of the most important daily social activities in the office.

when it comes to takeout, lao g is most concerned about health and hygiene.

he has his own criteria for judging: avoid pure takeaway restaurants, and give priority to ordering takeaways with store photos, especially those that don’t look big, have only a few tables but appear clean and tidy.

according to him, such stores are the cheapest as long as you can be assured.

the one that old g likes to order the most is a certain restaurant. the photos show that it looks clean and hygienic, and it doesn’t have the traditional chinese-style packaging and liquid spoons that are commonly seen in the “takeaway mine avoidance guide”.

although keith was always careful and cautious, he was still tricked: the restaurant he ate at most often appeared clearly in the screenshots that exposed the black takeout.

the clean and tidy photos are used to fool the platform and users. the actual situation on site may be horrible.

even many brands that have physical stores also have their own pure takeaway stores.

the actual conditions inside these dens (they can no longer be called stores) are so bad that robots would spit out oil.

there is more oil and dust on the screen window than on the range hood and vacuum cleaner filters that haven’t been cleaned for three years:

the door curtain looks like an old rag:

the shirtless guy was kneading mud while "cooking" (actually reheating various zombie meats and cooking bags), and it was unknown how much ingredients he added:

what appears clean and hygienic in the photo may actually be "bacteria and microorganisms".

the facade looks like a scrapyard because it is a scrapyard:

the reporter walked in and found that this was a waste recycling station. various wastes and garbage were piled up two stories high, and there was a choking smell in the air. the restaurant with the sign "live kitchen" was just five or six meters away from the waste pile.

workers transporting garbage on site and delivery guys riding electric bikes shuttled through the same "park", and sometimes they merged into one:

maybe here, takeout and garbage are the same thing.

the little tips on avoiding pitfalls that i learned on the internet are completely ineffective here: not only can photos be faked, even business licenses may not be reliable.

if you don’t have a license, you can find someone to rent it from. there are brokers who specialize in this business.

it doesn’t matter if you can’t rent one. one “food city” license is enough for dozens of stores.

the reporter interviewed the takeaway guys who shuttled here, and they said:

the conscientious delivery guy sometimes can't help but remind customers:

consumers who have suffered losses have summarized many tricks to avoid takeout pitfalls, but unfortunately, in the face of unscrupulous merchants who are always more evil than them, these tricks will become obsolete after one or two versions.

perhaps, only riders know all the secrets of the city:

then someone came up with an idea: why not use the help of the delivery guys to find out which takeouts are truly safe?

then a blogger launched a challenge, took out 100 yuan and asked the guy to take him to the cleanest restaurant nearby.

〓 tik tok @sun yanlei (clean restaurant)

this challenge eventually spread to beijing. the blogger followed suit and found a rider brother living downstairs from his home. the guy was also a kind man. after thinking for a while, he replied: there is none nearby.

the blogger's store exploration journey was unsuccessful, and the first battle was the decisive battle:

finding clean takeout has become an adventure.

"the fried rice that gambles the chef's career" turns out that the gamble is the diners' career;

"roll over fried rice" may be rolling in the stomach of consumers;

"i was reborn in this life and opened a takeaway shop selling rice noodles." i was reborn because my previous shop had just been closed down;

……

to have a meal, you have to go through many difficulties.

is it necessary to eat this takeaway?

takeaway food enters an era of high prices

for working people, takeout may be a helpless choice.

a survey was conducted in 2022, and the result showed that one-third of chinese people cannot eat breakfast every day. among the working class, the problem is even more serious.

for working people, having a leisurely breakfast is a luxury.

the high rent will discourage small breakfast shops from opening, and the long commuting time also leaves workers with no extra time to prepare breakfast.

everyone has a breakfast machine and egg steamer that are gathering dust at home. it is more cost-effective to get an extra half hour of sleep than a full meal.

the only energy intake in the morning is an extra scone ordered from luckin coffee’s 9.9 coffee takeout.

dinner may become an overtime meal at any time. even if workers are lucky enough to get off work on time, they are too lazy to cook for themselves because they feel too much like working.

takeout lunch is one of the few choices that workers can make on their own every day. how can it not be considered a form of flipping cards when carefully choosing from meituan and ele.me?

but this choice is as illusory as free will itself - i seemed to hear the owner of the "food city" say in my ear:click it, the whole screen is full of my people, what can you use to fight me?

the biggest killer of black takeout is the price, which is why it can impress consumers. takeout is getting more and more expensive nowadays.

in the past, you could not afford to spend 20 yuan on a takeaway meal, but now the average price of a decent takeaway meal is generally over 30 yuan:

on the surface this is just a price adjustment, but in reality the portion size may have also become smaller.

in this regard, li zhou, a loyal customer of zi yan baiwei chicken, has the most say.

as a lover of braised food, ziyan baiwei chicken was once li zhou's white moonlight. in the face of the ever-increasing prices of zhou hei ya and juewei, the beautiful ziyan is simply a conscientious enterprise.

li zhou, who has been a follower of "zi men" for several years, recently found that zi yan bai wei chicken is becoming increasingly out of his reach.

first, the portion size is smaller: the packaging is like a washed h&m t-shirt, shrinking every time you eat it.

〓 little red book @golden haired azalea

if it gets any thinner, zi yan's packaging will become flat. people who don't know would think someone has launched a dimensionality reduction attack on our takeout.

fortunately, the carefully designed bulge at the bottom of the bowl reminds you that this is still a 3d world.

〓 little red book @yioooooo

the measurement method is also tricky. you may think that the weight marked on the takeaway platform is the bare weight, but it is actually the total weight of the box and lid:

〓 some things don't weigh as much as they should.

ziyan is just a microcosm. for workers,there is an impossible triangle in takeout: health, taste and price.

k-ji and mai men are probably the best among the impossible triangle.

now even they are changing quietly.

at the end of last year, mcdonald's china announced a price increase across the board, with product prices generally increasing by 0.5 to 1 yuan.

the 1+1 package, which is jokingly called the "poor man's meal", had already increased in price twice before, from the initial 12 yuan to 13.9 yuan.

some tricks make the so-called casual matching look not so casual:

in addition to these obvious reductions, there are also some "hidden changes" passed down by word of mouth, which have become evidence of mcdonald's cunning: big mac and the word "giant" have nothing to do with each other, so the big chicken steak should be renamed "not-so-big chicken steak".

not to mention the 9 yuan delivery fee, which is even more shocking.

it is no wonder that working people fall step by step into the trap dug by low-priced black takeout.

price-sensitive users may be the fastest growing segment in china's consumer sector in recent years.

how many tens of thousands of dollars a month is needed to have peace of mind?

young people who have been frequently slandered by “takeaway assassins” are beginning to embrace dine-in meals.

in sharp contrast to the quiet price increase of takeout is the price war in offline catering.

not long after mcdonald’s “customize your choice” was reduced in size, someone openly stole the deal.

old rival burger king china announced that it will launch the "9.9 yuan era" from august 5, offering a burger for only 9.9 yuan every week. its signature items, such as the little whopper and fruitwood chicken drumstick, have also been reduced to less than 10 yuan.

it’s well known that kfc’s best dish is chicken, so when they put the original chicken burger and spicy chicken burger into the 9.9 meal, they must be doing something serious.

wallace's 4.8 hamburger, dicos' 1 yuan chicken leg... in order to attract workers to enter the store, fast food restaurants have become a red ocean.

a blogger made a calendar based on the "poor man's meal" of each restaurant:

monday is mcdonald's member-only day; tuesday is tustin's member "buy one, get one free" benefit day; wednesday is 30% off at pizza hut and domino's pizza; thursday is for the secret code kfcv50...

offline catering has never been so popular. as mcdonald’s ceo said: “whether in our industry or in the broader consumer goods industry, consumers arevery verylooking for a deal.”

even brands that consider themselves high-end are now forced to lower their prices.

even haidilao has started to focus on the “value for money” aspect.

last year, haidilao launched its affordable sub-brand "hi lao" hotpot, which was priced at 80 yuan per person. this year, the price has dropped to 50-60 yuan, directly entering the heartland of xiabu xiabu, and recently launched a weekday lunch at 39.8 yuan.

even haidilao’s own average customer spending fell below 100 yuan, returning to the pre-liberation era overnight and dropping to the level of 2017.

song hotpot, nan hotpot, coucou, xiabu xiabu... well-known hotpot brands are all cutting their prices, and huisheng hotpot has also been reborn with a floor price of 19.9.

the high-end healthy noodles and fu lao mian, which used to cost over 40 yuan per person, have been reduced to less than 30 yuan after a wave of price cuts. pizza hut has also launched the evaluation brand pizza hut wow.

〓 i saw a few words from the menu: saizeriya

fast food stalls have also become good business. from wumart to hema, they have all transformed into canteens for workers, with open kitchens and stoves, four dishes and a soup for 30 yuan, making supermarkets great again.

in the past two years, the newly popular restaurants xiao fang niu and chef fei simply refused to accept takeout:

〓 image source: chef fei’s wechat public account

as take-out becomes more and more expensive, dine-in restaurants are gaining ground by offering low prices.

although dining in is good, it has one biggest hidden cost: time.

for working people who may have to time themselves to go to the toilet, dining in is nice but not feasible.

as for the canteen, it is a treatment only available in state-owned units and some large factories.

you mean bring your own food?

for most people, a day is almost entirely occupied by work and commuting. after returning home, they have to wash, cut, and cook for 5 minutes, which takes an hour.

it's okay to change it up occasionally. bringing your own lunch every day is like having an extra job.

after all the twists and turns, takeout is still the only option left for workers.

we tolerate pre-prepared food, and we all know that it is high in oil and salt. as for the taste, we can make do with it.

it’s just that these illegal takeouts challenge everyone’s psychological bottom line, food safety.

ever since the black takeout incident, everyone in the office has started bringing their own lunch.

but we can’t stop ordering takeout forever. i just hope that in the future, all the garbage will go where it belongs and not end up in our lunch boxes.