Food Delivery in Extreme Weather: The Other Side of City Convenience

This year, the north of China has seen an unusual amount of rain, from the violent summer downpours all the way through to the persistent autumn showers. This episode of Food Talk begins with that recent downpour. We are joined by Yuyang, a former delivery rider who now works as an editor at Foodthink, to pick up the thread from his article “Business Battles in the Downpour: A Delivery Rider’s Bitter Summer” and talk about the realities of food delivery in extreme weather.

In the episode, we hear further details about what life is really like for delivery riders. On rainy days and in extreme heat, there is no “weather allowance” – in fact, riders risk being fined simply for not clocking in. What look like caring gestures – the “heat allowance” and the “summer cool-down campaign” – turn out to be the platform’s way of using a neatly designed “tiered reward” scheme to shift even more risk and labour pressure onto the riders themselves.

In bad weather, riders have no sick leave and no circuit breaker mechanism. Delivery platforms build their model on sacrificing riders’ rights, in turn cultivating consumer dependence on “cheap delivery”. The paradox this creates is that when we ask “should I order delivery on a stormy day?”, we tend to assume the rider absorbs the cost on the consumer’s behalf, setting the two sides against each other. But has the cost really been transferred?

As physical markets and small family-run shops are squeezed out of existence – or simply vanish – we seem to be losing a warmer, healthier way of eating and living. Meanwhile, under the pressure of high commission rates, merchants produce cheap food that lacks proper safety guarantees, and delivery riders are involved in a steady stream of traffic accidents. These consequences can still come flying back, like boomerangs, to land on every one of us. Do we still have choices that could change things?

In this conversation about the downpour, many questions feel vast and unsolvable. A small but encouraging note is that we can still, together, imagine whether there might be another way to get through a rainy day – perhaps holding an umbrella and heading out to buy groceries, rummaging through the fridge, cooking a meal together with the family. After all, for each of us, those small shifts may well be where taking life back into our own hands begins.

Guests of This Episode

Tianle

Founding Editor, Foodthink

Yuyang

Editor at Foodthink

Host of This Episode

Xiaojing

Host of Food Talk, with a focus on food culture and sustainable living