turns out the person I was looking at might've been ahead of my time (and the server time?)

huh? You mean the event was fixed..? can't be that fast I don't really see any changes..?

No, one of my friends already had the Nian Beast Dine and Dash event happening in their restaurant before the server reset/day change thing (that screenshot was taken 4 hours before the reset), and I was freaking out because I thought the event had started already lmao