Win a Cow for Sharing Milk Tea Receipts? Ele.me Food Delivery Platform Gives a Cow to Girl with 140,000 Receipts

Have you seen the year-end summaries from the big payment apps, e-commerce platforms and food delivery services? When you feel like you have not earned much this year, take a look at the total on your summary bill. The numbers will tell you plainly: you worked hard and earned quite a bit this year, you just spent it all.

Recently, a girl from Guangdong posted her annual transaction total and tags from the Ele.me food delivery app on Weibo, and joined the "Ele.me 2021 Annual Eating King Contest" topic that Ele.me had launched on the platform.

The prizes for the contest were remarkable. First place was a dairy cow; second place was 50 kilograms of hand-ground coffee beans plus a hand grinder; third place was a truckload of fresh Chinese cabbage; fourth place was 5 selected pastry-making classes; fifth place was year-round picking rights at an orchard on a mountainside; sixth place was a van full of rice and wheat; seventh place was a professional organizer to help you organize for free for a year; and eighth place was a year-long personal training course with an eight-pack-abs trainer. Somehow the prizes for first, second and fourth place do not look quite as appealing anymore.

The Unexpected Cow Winner

This girl, on the strength of ordering more than 140,000 yuan worth of takeout through Ele.me in a single year - with bubble tea and beverages the most frequent items - won the contest's grand prize: a cow.

- Photo from the winner's Weibo -

This is probably a case of "order bubble tea while sitting at home and a cow falls from the sky." When the winning news broke, netizens quickly pushed it onto the hot search list with their sharing skills, since everyone was surprised that Ele.me had actually given away a real cow. The official Ele.me Weibo account even posted that the cow really was from them, as if worried people would not believe it.

The Winner's Story

The girl who won the cow explained that her brother runs a company and she works there too, handling afternoon tea for all the employees. When afternoon tea time comes around, everyone wants bubble tea most, so her delivery app is either in the middle of ordering bubble tea or delivering it. She was just as surprised as anyone that she actually won the cow.

After happily receiving the cow, she said she would raise it together with her family's cows so they could keep each other company. Netizens latched onto this detail, joking: "It seems you can't even order bubble tea without a cow pen at home."

"The key point is that she won and can actually raise it. If I won, my home would be turned over to the cow, and I'd be the one sleeping in the cow pen."

Netizens' Future Plans

Now that she has a dairy cow, netizens have started planning her next steps: first create a tea garden, then plant cassava and fruit nearby. That would fulfill the saying that tea is healthy and milk is nutritious.

Image source: Weibo White Deer Video screenshot

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Second prize was 50 kilograms of hand-ground coffee beans and a hand grinder, and that is a reminder that hand grinding is only worth it when the beans deserve the effort. FrontStreet Yirgacheffe Natural Red Cherry is a classic high-sweetness light roast: ripe fruit on the nose, clear fermented and berry notes on the palate, citrus acidity and a creamy body as the cup cools, finishing with the juicy sweetness of ripe grapes.

If you prefer something sweeter and more fragrant still, FrontStreet Mozart comes from Costa Rica and is processed as a raisin honey coffee, so slow drying gives it a Kyoho-grape sweetness along with pineapple and osmanthus aromas, all underlined by raisin, rose and a gentle wine-like ferment.

For an everyday bean that works with any brewer, FrontStreet Queen's Estate Yellow Bourbon is the all-rounder: a natural Brazil coffee with a pronounced sweetness, soft fruit acidity and notes of nut, cream and cane sugar that shine whether you use a pour-over, French press, moka pot or espresso machine. A good hand grinder and beans like these make the ritual worthwhile.