Sharing Fridge campaign turns into "zombie-like" food riot

One lesson that always stay true - culture matters in marketing, and it matters even more when you come from West to East. "Sharing Fridge", a charitable scheme started by an Australian woman, learn that lesson the hard way in Shanghai.The scheme encourages members of its community to contribute food items and place them in a communal refrigerator for the underprivileged. After spreading through the Dubai communities, the initiative has arrived at Shanghai and has been launched in at least three locations.With an overwhelming response, all the food donations in the community fridges were gone in less than 10 minutes. You may consider the scheme a big success in China based on that number. Only one point to note: the recipients looked very much different from the target beneficiary, news website eastday.com reports.Many people were found to have taken more than one portion of the available food, while others brought the entire family to grab the freebies. An army of security guards were hired to restore order after customers stormed the place for the free meals.In Putuo District, volunteers were assigned to guard the community fridge to ensure only the needy can get the free food.Pictures circulating on the internet show some customers standing in front of the food station and eating the meals at the same time, and others taking four to five plates of food with two hands.The chaos has quickly become a hot topic on China's social media. "They acted like zombies," some netizens commented, "The sight was so embarrassing." Some even said the organisers were lucky that the refrigerators were not taken away.Others suggested that such ideas or initiatives work well in the West may not necessarily work in China.Since the "food riot", a new policy has been introduced, in which recipients had to fill out a form before getting any food.