This Is How a Locked-Down Shanghai Apartment Gets Food

Tracy Alloway (0:10)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:15)

And I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:16)

Joe, it feels like everyone is a logistics expert nowadays.

Joe Weisenthal (0:20)

Yeah, everyone was a epidemiologist, and then everybody became a dredging expert, and now everyone is just a logistics expert overall.

Tracy Alloway (0:31)

I mean, I am joking, but there are a lot of people in China specifically that have been forced into becoming actual logistics experts because of the lockdowns that have been going on now for, in some cases, over a month in places like Shanghai.

Joe Weisenthal (0:48)

Yeah, this is a really good point. So when people joke about everyone becoming an expert, usually they just mean they're an expert on Twitter or whatever.

But for people who have to think about how do you get food or how do you distribute food and other key supplies during a mass lockdown, becoming a logistics expert actually is not just about tweeting, it's about serious stakes.

Tracy Alloway (1:09)

Yeah, so just to set the stage, various parts of Shanghai happen in lockdown. Again, in some cases for I think up to six weeks, something like that. The citywide lockdown has been ongoing for about a month since the start of April.

And what's been happening during that is, first of all, the government does deliver some groceries and needed supplies to people, but residents who are affected by the lockdown can also try to organize their own deliveries of essentials. And it's a phenomenon called group buying.

It's something that's actually existed in China for a while now. It's not necessarily lockdown specific, but it has seen a, I don't want to say a renaissance, but it has become a very vital part of actually getting supplies. So today, I'm very excited. We're gonna be speaking with someone who has been personally involved in group buying for their residential complex. Someone who has had to learn the intricacies of logistics and practice them on a day-to-day basis.

Joe Weisenthal (2:12)

This is gonna be really interesting.

There's been a lot of, I've seen various threads of people talking about what's available and going on the apps that they normally use to buy groceries and every once in a while, they are able to find something, but often not. Sometimes they're able to get a little bit of fresh food and people post images of what they're able to get in. But how this is all working, what the actual process is, how the big companies and the delivery system is working, I still don't have a great understanding, so I'm looking forward to hearing what's going on in practice.

Tracy Alloway (2:45)

Yep, and it might become information that's more useful to even more people at the moment, because of course there is a lot of chatter that Beijing might go into lockdown soon as well. And we are recording this on April 26th. So without further ado, let's bring on our guest. We're going to be speaking with David Fishman. He's a senior manager at the consulting firm Lantau Group over in Hong Kong, my former abode.

And he's currently based in Shanghai. So David, thanks so much for coming on Odd Lots.

David Fishman (3:15)

Thanks for having me, guys.

Tracy Alloway (3:16)

Maybe just to begin with, could you maybe set the scene for us? What exactly is group buying in China?

David Fishman (3:25)

Yeah, sure. So in its most pure basic economic sense, I guess, group buying is a bunch of people getting together and using the power of volume to secure a good deal, to secure a lower price or to incentivize a vendor or a supplier of something to maybe service an area that they wouldn't normally, at a price that they wouldn't normally, because now you have the power of a larger group of people all buying together.

Joe Weisenthal (3:52)

Well, can you, for our listeners to set the scene, describe roughly your living situation? Like how big of a building is it? Like how many unit residences? And a little bit about like a sort of like day to day, you know, pre-lockdown, what your current environment is like.

David Fishman (4:11)

Yeah, sure. So, I mean, I live in an apartment community in Shanghai, a pretty normal standard, I'd say middle class, maybe upper middle class apartment community. There's 25 floors in this building. Each floor has, I think, seven units.

And our apartment block has two buildings like that. It's on the smaller side, I would say, definitely for an apartment community in China. So we've got 25 times seven times two is how many households we have in ours.