Free Web NovelChapter 26: Chapter 20: Can It Really Sell at This Price?
"Sister-in-law." Zhou Yan braked to a stop and called out. The woman standing at the entrance was his sister-in-law, Zhao Hong. Thirty-two years old and about 1.6 meters tall, she had a sturdy build. She was dressed in a dark blue cotton jacket and canvas shoes, her short hair held back behind her ears with a barrette. Her round, smiling face was friendly and approachable.
"I can come early to help. Fanwa can get to school on his own; I just have to leave some food for him in the pot," Zhao Hong replied with a smile, reaching out to help Zhao Tieying take off the back-basket she was carrying.
She lifted a corner of the blanket to peek at Zhou Momo, who was still fast asleep, and whispered, "Momo’s sleeping so soundly."
"She’s a regular little sleepyhead. She could sleep all day," Zhao Tieying said with a laugh.
Zhou Yan opened the door, went inside, and first carried Zhou Momo upstairs to sleep.
Then he went over the job details and working hours with Zhao Hong.
"Sister-in-law, what do you think? Does that sound alright?" Zhou Yan asked, looking at Zhao Hong.
"This is all work I do at home every day, so it shouldn’t be a problem." Zhao Hong nodded, then looked at Zhou Yan hesitantly. "But... isn’t the pay a little too high?"
Yesterday, when Mrs. Zhao had come to tell her about this, she had been so happy she couldn’t sleep all night.
Zhou Fei worked with his father butchering cattle, and his income was decent. But they had two sons. Setting aside school expenses, they would need to get married in the future, so the couple was under an immense amount of pressure.
She did some farm work and chores at home, raising a couple of pigs, but she barely earned any money all year. If she went out to find work, she wouldn’t be able to look after her home and two children.
But working at Zhou Yan’s restaurant for twenty yuan a month meant she could take care of both her home and her children. If it weren’t for her own brother-in-law, an opportunity this good would never have come her way.
"The restaurant gets pretty busy. As long as you can do the tasks I give you well and make sure the customers have a pleasant meal, I don’t think this salary is high at all," Zhou Yan said with a smile. Zhao Hong’s personality was a good fit for what he was looking for.
Zhao Tieying chimed in, "If he’s offering it, you take it. As long as we do our work well, we deserve the pay."
Looking at the two of them, Zhao Hong felt a warmth in her heart and nodded. "Alright. Zhou Yan, I’ll do whatever you say. I’m just not very good with words. I’m worried I might offend the customers."
"You don’t have to be overly enthusiastic. Just having a smile on your face is enough," Zhou Yan reassured her. "Sister-in-law, don’t be so nervous. Our little restaurant doesn’t have that many rules."
"Exactly. I can teach you all this. I’ve remembered everything Zhou Yan told me these past two days. Let me show you around the restaurant first..." Zhao Tieying said, pulling Zhao Hong toward the kitchen and switching into teaching mode.
Glad to be freed up, Zhou Yan carried the ingredients into the kitchen and got busy.
Business at the noodle shop had clearly picked up this morning. He sold forty-eight bowls. Without that shit-stirrer Wang the Fifth around, word-of-mouth was spreading, and he was already starting to build a base of regular customers.
Of course, at sixty cents a bowl, not even the textile factory managers could afford to eat here every day. They would come every now and then to satisfy a craving.
Zhao Hong didn’t talk much, but she was a quick and efficient worker. As if personally trained by Mrs. Zhao, she always had a smile on her face and handled serving, clearing tables, and washing dishes quickly and well.
"Zhou Yan’s noodles must be delicious. All the customers praise them after eating, and they drink every last drop of the broth." While washing dishes, Zhao Hong said happily, "Those people in the village were just talking nonsense! Zhou Yan’s restaurant is doing great! Auntie, you’re so fortunate."
Zhao Tieying’s face lit up, the corners of her mouth turning up in a broad smile. "Business only started picking up these past two days after we switched to selling noodles," she said, beaming.
The masons arrived right on time. A tractor from the brickyard delivered three hundred bricks and unloaded them at the restaurant’s entrance, and other materials arrived one after another.
Zhou Yan pulled the master mason over, gesturing to show him the desired location for the stove. In his hand, he held a rough sketch he had stayed up late last night to draw, complete with all the dimensions noted.
He planned to have the stove built at the front of the restaurant, just inside the entrance, on the side closer to the textile factory’s main gate. This way, it would be conspicuous without obstructing customers coming in and out.
The mason was an experienced old master. He and his apprentice were the ones who had built the stove in the kitchen of the Zhou Yan Restaurant. Their craftsmanship was renowned throughout the area.
After listening to Zhou Yan’s requirements, he told him to put the drawing down and got straight to work.
...
In the factory canteen office, the door was shut tight.
Wang Defa sat behind his desk with a gloomy expression. He looked at the heavy-set, permed-hair woman beside him and asked in a low voice, "Are the accounts all clear?"
"No problem. I spent all last night checking and correcting them. I guarantee no one will find a thing," Sun Meili said, patting some white dust off Wang Defa’s shoulder. She smiled breezily. "Old Wang, why are you so nervous? Wang Qi wouldn’t dare rat you out, not even if he had ten times the nerve."
"You never know. We have to prepare for the worst," Wang Defa said, shaking his head. He then asked, "What did Director Zheng say about Wang the Fifth and his wife?"
"They’ll be detained for a few days, and a fine is unavoidable. That Gao Tianlei is a stubborn one, so Director Zheng can’t interfere too much.
Luckily, there weren’t any major incidents. But since they were caught using meat from diseased pigs, they definitely won’t be able to set up their stall at the factory gate anymore. Who would dare to eat their noodles now?" Sun Meili shook her head with a smile. "This just hands an advantage to that kid with the restaurant at the gate. When I came to work this morning, I saw his business was booming. There were a lot of bicycles parked out front."
"Even Xiao Lei couldn’t beat me. What can a kid with a small noodle shop do? I’ll deal with him later." Wang Defa waved his hand dismissively, lit a cigarette, and added, "For now, tell the cooperative to keep sending the meat. We’ll talk again after this blows over."
"Alright." Sun Meili nodded. Swaying her ample behind, she sat down on Wang Defa’s lap and wrapped her arms around his neck. "My husband’s away on business, Old Wang. Tonight..."
...
The stove was built in a single day. The surface was leveled with cement, making it smooth and beautiful... at least by the aesthetic standards of the time.
A stove for a one-meter-diameter pot, standing at the entrance, was certainly eye-catching.
The stove was built on a raised platform, so the rim of the pot was one meter off the ground. This made the stove look taller and more imposing, and it was also more convenient for customers to stand and cook their beef and offal.
However, the stove couldn’t be used the day it was built. It needed to dry for three days before it was ready.
Over the next three days, Zhou Yan spent his free time teaching his mother how to make Kneeling Beef.
He was in charge of simmering the bone broth. Once the cooking times for the different types of offal were timed correctly, the Kneeling Beef was more or less ready. There really wasn’t much technical skill involved.
The secret recipe was all in the pot of broth.
Comrade Zhao Tieying was an old hand when it came to soup pots anyway. Just dipping beef and tripe, scooping out beef intestines and tendons on time, and controlling the portions—she mastered it all extremely quickly.
In three days, she could already handle it all on her own, more than capable of managing the stove at the entrance.
During this time, Zhou Yan also made a trip to the Jiazhou City District. He had planned to order a custom neon sign, but after getting a quote, he made a sharp right turn into the cooperative next door and bought a bucket of paint and a brush instead.
That evening, Zhou Yan soaked the dried bamboo shoots as usual, then took the paint and brush out of the storage room.
He had already painted the outward-facing side of the stove with a coat of white lime. He used a pencil to mark out the dimensions, then picked up a brush, dipped it in red paint, and wrote out three large words: "Zhou’s Kneeling Beef."
The lettering was square and neat, yet the brushwork carried a powerful flair.
Next, Zhou Yan switched to a fine-tipped brush and, using black ink, wrote a few short sentences underneath about the origin and benefits of Kneeling Beef.
He highlighted the story of an old traditional Chinese doctor surnamed Luo who hung a pot to brew medicine. The doctor added Chinese herbs to a pot of beef offal soup and discovered that not only was the soup delicious, but it also had preventative and curative properties. Customers came in an endless stream, and with no seats available, they developed a habit of propping one leg up on the crossbeam under the table while they ate, thus giving the dish its name: Kneeling Beef.
That’s right. This was Zhou Yan’s simple, handmade sign, and it was also an advertisement.
Whether he could overturn the perception of soup pots as a low-end meal and get the textile factory workers to accept Kneeling Beef all depended on whether this story could capture their hearts.
Of course, this wasn’t just some made-up tale; it was a proper ancestral story.
Besides, Comrade Zhou Miao had already certified that drinking a bowl of hot offal soup when you’ve caught a chill really does help drive away the cold.
After putting everything away, Zhou Yan took a cold shower, then got into his warm bed early. He pulled a wooden box out from under the bed and began to count his savings.
Over the past three days, business at the noodle shop had stabilized. In addition to the textile factory workers, people from town also came to try it. He sold out all 100 bowls he prepared each day, making for a very stable income.
After subtracting the 71.2 yuan spent on building the stove, his current savings had reached 173.8 yuan.
The wooden box was filled with stacks of bills held together by rubber bands, mostly one-jiao, two-jiao, and one-yuan notes. There were only two "Great Unity" ten-yuan bills.
Compared to the mere 3.87 yuan he had when he first arrived, he felt much more secure now.
Although he was still up to his ears in debt, he was confident he could pay it all off within three months. freeweɓnovēl.coɱ
He was now a poor devil with a bright future ahead of him!
After recording his accounts, Zhou Yan snuggled back into his blankets and pulled up his panel for a look before sleeping:
[Player: Zhou Yan]
[Profession: Chef]
[Wealth Value: -556.52]
[Professional Skills]:
Knife Skills (Intermediate): 9964/10000 (Sufficient for most dishes)
Fire Control (Intermediate): 2468/10000 (Rookie. Keep practicing.)
Seasoning (Intermediate): 2695/10000 (Easy on the salt, Salt King.)
Oratory Skill (Advanced): 88889/100000 (Gets by entirely on a silver tongue.)
[Mastered Dishes]:
Double Pepper Beef Noodles (Advanced): 99999/100000
Braised Beef Noodles (Advanced): 99999/100000
Braised Pork Rib Noodles (Advanced): 99999/100000
Pickled Cabbage (Advanced): 99999/100000
Kneeling Beef (Advanced): 99999/100000
Steamed Rice (Advanced): 99999/100000
Shredded Cucumber (Intermediate): 1871/10000
...
Special Skills: Food Identification (Grandmaster): 999999/1000000 (Not upgradeable)
[Main Quest: Become a Kitchen God! Become world-famous!]
[Wealth Mall]: Unlocks at 1000 Wealth Value.
’My Knife Skills, Fire Control, and Seasoning have all improved. The Wealth Value is trending towards positive. Everything is flourishing!’
...
At the crack of dawn, Master Zhou was already out shopping for ingredients.
Today, he bought up all the beef intestines and tripe from the cow his father had butchered, along with eleven pounds of beef tendon, and an extra two pounds of ribeye.
He wasn’t sure he could sell it all, but he needed to make a strong impression on the first day. Whatever was left over, he would give to customers in the evening for them to try, just to build up sales and word-of-mouth first.
Now that his wallet was fatter, he could afford some initial investment, and he had more marketing tactics at his disposal.
The offal and beef tendon cost about thirty cents a pound, for a total of roughly thirty-three pounds. His father had sold it to him at cost. Zhou Yan didn’t bother with polite refusals; he’d just give Comrade Zhou some extra pocket money once he started earning.
The cost of the offal, beef, and Chinese herbs was about 15 yuan, with firewood and seasonings calculated separately.
Even if he took a total loss, he could afford it.
But as long as he built up a good reputation, the profit from Kneeling Beef would be much higher than from noodles, and it was fast to serve as well.
A bowl of Kneeling Beef was priced at 0.6 yuan. Each serving used about 150 grams of offal and 10 grams of beef, bringing the meat cost to 0.12 yuan. Adding in the herbs, seasonings, and firewood, the total cost per bowl was no more than 0.2 yuan.
The gross profit margin could reach 60%, a bit higher than the noodles.
But this money wouldn’t be easy to earn.
Comrade Zhou got up at three in the morning to butcher the cow, and at four-thirty, Mrs. Zhao was already at the Qingyi Riverfront, cleaning and processing the offal. After bringing it back to the restaurant, it had to be washed one more time with well water.
"In Suji, other places usually sell their soup pots for twenty or thirty cents. Zhou Jie selling his for forty cents is already considered expensive. You’re charging sixty cents. Can you really sell it at that price?" Zhao Tieying asked with some worry, standing by the stove and watching Zhou Yan place beef bones into the large iron pot.
