Wǒ Men Podcast: One Man’s Beijing Business Struggles in the Face of Covid-19

The Wǒ Men Podcast is a discussion of life in China hosted by Yajun Zhang, Jingjing Zhang and Karoline Kan. Previous episodes of the Wǒ Men Podcast can be found here, and you can subscribe to Wǒ Men on iTunes here.

As China continues to deal with novel coronavirus Covid-19, it’s clear that this crisis wasn’t only a test of China’s governance and public health system, but also a test of the resilience of many businesses in the country, particularly small and medium enterprises. What are the biggest challenges they are facing and what kind of measures can be taken to keep them in business?

For this episode, we talked to Benjamin Devos, the owner and CEO of the first French bakery in Beijing, Comptoirs de France Bakery. He shared with us the perilous challenges his business is now facing and some of the tough decisions he has had to make after 15 years of running a business in China.

Listen below on Mixcloud, or find Wǒ Men on iTunes here.

A small community in Beijing has launched a crowdsourcing campaign to support the Comptoirs de France Bakery and the local business it represents. If you want to contribute, please hit that link for more details.