Before a toast shop in Guanmiao, Tainan, opened on 3 October 2025, a line already stretched for several metres. Customers wanted egg-butter toast for the barbecues that have become part of Taiwan’s Mid-Autumn Festival. TVBS reported arrivals from about 7:40 a.m. and a limit of five loaves per person. Some parents brought children to increase the household allowance, but the shop specified that children under two did not count. When sales began at 9 a.m., every numbered ticket was gone within four minutes. The immediate prize in this queue was therefore not bread but a place in a later purchase sequence. A rule about how to count a family shows how seasonal demand, batch production and festival shopping can turn even a loaf allowance into a carefully administered order.