Before the 2023 Mid-Autumn Festival, customers in Hanoi began queuing from midnight for traditional mooncakes. VnExpress documented people securing places hours before sales and lines continuing into the day. Mooncakes are not demanded evenly through the year: purchases concentrate around a festival of family gatherings and gift exchange. Established shops also face a daily production limit, while customers converge on the final days before the celebration. Price alone cannot allocate boxes that must be obtained by a cultural deadline. The midnight queue bought something beyond flavour or freshness—the certainty that a gift would exist in time for that year’s festival.