Brewing a recovery plan

One of the city's most prolific craft beer merchants has turned her flagship store into an 'open kitchen' for staff members and neighbors, He Qi reports.

Zhang Yindi has been stuck in her workplace since April 1, when the lockdown in Shanghai's Puxi area was implemented, but one could argue that her predicament is something that beer lovers might like to be a part of－her store is stocked with more than 10,000 kinds of beer from across the world.

Zhang, also affectionately known as "the beer lady", runs one of the biggest craft beer operations in Shanghai. Despite the recent closure of her 3,000-square-meter Beer Lady store in Baoshan district because of the declining customers after the earlier wave of the pandemic in 2020, the 60-year-old still operates five craft beer stores in Shanghai and Nanchang, Jiangxi province.

As it turns out, the closure of the Baoshan store came with a silver lining－it has ensured that Zhang and her employees have had more than enough to eat and drink during the current lockdown, which is now more than a month.

"The night before the lockdown in Puxi area, my team and I were busy transferring all the beer and food from the Baoshan store to the Songjiang flagship store," Zhang says.

"I thought the closure would last for only a couple of days, and this was why I decided to stay in the Songjiang store with my employees. In fact, I saw this as an opportunity to catch up with my employees and have a good time."

Located in the Yunjian Cultural and Creative Park in the suburban Songjiang district, a new business zone that was previously home to grain warehouses and old factories, Zhang's flagship store is more than just a drinking hole for craft beer aficionados－it also has an expansive kitchen that offers hotpot and catering services. As such, food storage and meal preparation have not been a problem.