Breakfast buns officially approved in Beijing

Twenty government-assigned breakfast stands Thursday began selling food in the Jianwai area of Chaoyang district in Beijing. Area administrators cleared out privately-operated food trolleys three months ago and replaced them with the new food service for the 500,000 people working in the Central Business District.Some 35 types of food and drink, both in Chinese and Western style, are available from 5:30 am to 9:30 am at the oval-shaped mobile stands in 20 locations, including Wanda Plaza, SOHO New Town and Jinghui Jie. The food, pre-prepared and dispatched to each stand every morning, includes porridge, baozi (steam stuffed buns), milk, sandwiches and hamburgers and costs 0.5 to 4 yuan ($0.06-0.63). The menu is written in both Chinese and English. "Sandwiches and meat rolls sell the best," said Chen Jinqiong, an employee working at a stand near Wanda Plaza. The food was sold out by 9 am, she told the Global Times. The stands offered free breakfast Wednesday morning to officially launch the service. The service is a cooperation between Jianwai Sub-district administration and Beijing Jinsanyuan Sunshine Catering Company. The stands will receive regular inspections of their food quality and sanitation, and those offering a less-satisfying service will be replaced with better ones, according to Zhu Wenfu, marketing director with the company. "The area's breakfast service used to be disordered with many individual or illegal vendors occupying the roadsides, gathering customers who got in the way of the traffic," said Yang Xiaosheng, the administration's deputy director. The administration drove away more than 40 individual or illegal vendors from the Jianwai area in August."The quality of their food was uncertain, so we had to find a way to offer a trustworthy service and safe food for people working and living in the area," he said. Although the food seems popular, some customers did not think it was as tasty as the administration had claimed. "It's cheap, but tastes just OK. And I still don't believe the food offered by the government can be 100 percent safe," said a customer surnamed Li, who works at Dawang Lu, as he grabbed an egg and a cake from a stand Thursday morning at Wanda Plaza. "I kind of miss the private food vendors; I love their pancakes, which these stands don't offer," he said. More breakfast stands will be available in Chaoyang's Taiyanggong area in mid-November, Zhu said.