
Mable Jiang | We're Hiring!
15ساعة
today is the opening ceremony of DrinknJump Living, a co-living space for young people, built by DrinknJump (跳海), a community-oriented draft beer brand that has opened 50+ stores in mainland China, and has opened its store in Singapore, Hong Kong, and soon Tokyo
ive been reading up some writings by @balajis and some others lately about how they want to long China, long its consumer, and long the engineering tech etc., I thought it was fascinating - even myself didn’t have such explosive interests - so i was inspired to share the following story
it was late 2019, a 26-yo young guy who sold his company for some paper value realized that whatever equities he received from the acquisition don’t worth anything. He did not know what to do with his life, so he installed a home bar (with three taps) and started to host friends almost everyday (whoever comes pays a ticket and they can all-you-can-drink). His name is 2dogs (二狗)
2dogs knows good music and good wines / beers. gradually his friends started to tell him that you’re very good at curating crowds and gathering people. Why don’t you run this as a business?
he didn’t think of it before, but thought maybe that was a good idea so he started his first store in another Beijing Hutong (the old lanes in central areas of Beijing)
the store went surprisingly well, and within no time he had the second store (which is the Genesis store because the first one is gone now). People love it because they treat the bar as their public living room - they help themselves, tap their own drinks, play their own music, and show their own movies
but very soon he realized the problem: he likes to go outdoors and travel around. He can’t just be in the store everyday to host people. Yet 90% of the guests came for him. as an “Internet entrepreneur” he immediately started to think how he can scale the model while keeping the value, vibes, and ethos of the store
then he thought of the idea “open sourced bartending” - set certain basic rules, ask his friends to be the hosts of the store when he’s away, and share the additional revenue above the bottom-line income with the friends who are hosting (they may be able to bring additional revenue because they often bring a different crowd)
this model went drastically well - 2dogs could leave when he needs to and “outsource” the whole operation to others. Friends who hosted on his behalf also brought new guests. People love the model because when their friends are hosting they get 10% off; when they are hosting themselves they get to curate the music list, the movie list, or even the event type
more and more people started to get interested in this open sourced bartending model, because they get to enjoy the B-side of their life. Their A-sides are white collars in Bytedance, Xiaohongshu, or Alibaba, but they want to enjoy a different lifestyle without having to sacrifice their stability
unlike cocktails or wines, for beer bartenders you just need to know how to wash the glasses and tap the beer. If you don’t want to talk to anymore you can apply to be a glass-washer for the night, and you simply get to enjoy the meditative night hours washing the glasses in the corner, surrounded by many humans
DrinknJump’s beer has a 10-15% price premium compared to the others, and often it’s criticized by the pros for its tastes. However, 2dogs think that drinking is the most unimportant thing at DrinknJump. People paid the premium for the culture and for the community
today this list of open-sourced bartenders has reached 20k+. It’s amazing how it was able to scale without losing much of its decentralized, free, and punk culture (it’s not much compared to many that have scaled to 10k stores). But the main reason I shared this story was because it was just one of the few brands in China that grew thanks to its community and brand
I strongly believe that, good business models share the same merits, and it doesn’t matter what country you’re in

He's not wrong. It's been weak. If you listen to his full response, just like the rest of mainstream media and cabal elite financialists he goes on to say "he doesn't know" if the economy is on it's way to a recession or just simply weakening.
By definition, we have been flirting inside and outside of a recession for years. Unemployment rates, GDP, inflation all contribute in sync to a decrease in economic activity for consecutive calendar quarters. Recession denial is strong because most people don't know the standard definition of one, recession fear is more categorized as something closer to a depression like 2008 by the general population.
But the idea of "flirting inside and outside" of a recession is what I really want to emphasize because that's a serious factor of stagflation. Your basically juicing up for short term benefit and long term disaster. What you're seeing right now with "Trumponomics" is heavily related to "Nixonomics". The tariffs are heading into the same direction as the 1971 Nixon Shock, short term juice, long term disaster.
Everyone is happy about the stock market all time highs (the #1 form of denial and defense used for a good economy), go look at the US stock market before and during economic collapses. The 1971 Nixon Shock led to ATHs for the US stock market, then in 1973 the market fell -50% dating it's largest decline since the great depression.
The population is conditioned to phase out these type of warnings because economists and financial analysts have warned about these type of scenarios for years and it obviously never pans out. "They say it's gonna crash all the time and it just rebounds". That's true, it has always done that and the stock market crash and depression warnings have never played out. That's because they were never valid in the first place. You don't talk about a recession, if you're not in economic downtrends. You don't talk about a depression, if you're not in a recession. But, this time is different. We are in a recession, we are suffering from stagflation.
In 2007 and 2008 there were always warnings by mainstream and specialists about a market crash, a potential recession inbound. But nobody listened because they were tired of the constant invalid psyop warnings that never played out. So instead, a depression played out. They like to warn you before it happens, after conditioning you to be in denial.