The Game of Life

Chapter 730: Chapter 729: Adjusting Mentality

“Feng, six more orders of Eight Treasure Tofu!”

“Feng, two orders of Braised Prawns in Oil.”

“Feng, four orders of Scallion Braised Sea Cucumber!”

“Feng, another order of Scallops with Garlic!”

August 8th, a day that sounds auspicious just by the date, Jiang Feng nearly worked himself to death in the kitchen.

Jiang Feng: ???

“Has the Ordering System glitched out? Didn’t I tell you to add another half an hour to the wait time? It should be over two hours by now, right?” Jiang Feng roared with a face of utter despair as he saw the orders not decreasing but increasing.

He knew that he was once trending on social media, even ranking first, though perhaps not for a particularly long time, but at least he had topped the trend once.

The celebrity effect is normal; diners might follow the trend and join the crowd blindly. He could accept that. Since the 7th, Taifeng Building had been packed, with long lines forming at the entrance. It had become Beiping’s hottest new internet-famous restaurant, and even the busiest times at the top-floor restaurant probably couldn’t compare to this craziness.

Jiang Feng was aware that it was him trending, and lots of new diners specifically came to Taifeng Building to eat because of him. It was normal for them to order his dishes, and he understood that, but he was truly exhausted.

The 7th was tiring enough, but the 8th turned out to be even more so.

Jiang Feng felt that even taking an extra breath was arduous.

“We’ve already added to it, Feng. If customers order your dishes through the front Ordering System now, it should display a wait time of over two and a half hours. But people still want to place orders; there’s nothing we can do,” Sang Ming yelled back helplessly.

“Then shut down my backend. No more orders, I’m backing out, I’m going offline!” It was the first time Jiang Feng had encountered such a situation and lacked experience.

Normally, when the restaurant was busy, everyone was busy together. Now, when the restaurant was busy, he was the only one overwhelmed.

“Take Jiang Feng’s backend offline. Zhang Weiyu, come and help Jiang Feng with the prep work. Dong Shi, you’ve got less on your plate right now, so I’m sorry, but please go help Jiang Feng along with Zhang Weiyu. He can’t handle everything by himself.” Mr. Sun, who hadn’t spoken a word after a busy day, now intervened, “For now, let’s handle it this way for lunch. We’ll discuss Jiang Feng’s menu again in the afternoon and decide which dishes to take off.”

After Mr. Sun assigned two people to assist Jiang Feng, he finally got some relief. He didn’t have to rush around like a spinning top that was constantly whipped to keep moving and could never stop.

So much so that during lunch, Jiang Feng even ate a bit more than usual.

According to normal routines from the past few days, the three Head Chefs would go for tea at the tea house after lunch. However, because Mr. Sun had already mentioned that they needed to discuss changes to the menu with Jiang Feng that afternoon, they didn’t go to the tea house. After eating and sitting on the chairs for a while, chatting and laughing for a few minutes, they asked Jiang Feng to join them upstairs in the private room for a talk.

It all seemed so official; it even made Jiang Feng a little nervous.

Mr. Sun, Jiang Weiming, and Weiguo sat in a row, looking just like a panel of interviewers. They gave Jiang Feng the illusion that he wasn’t attending a meeting but being evaluated by the three Head Chefs to see if he passed his probation.

“You must be swamped with work these last two days,” Mr. Sun said with a smile.

“Not too bad. It’s been busy, but manageable,” Jiang Feng replied, appearing very restrained and showing none of the assertiveness of a boss behind the scenes. He seemed more like a humble worker.

“Not too bad?” Mr. Sun raised his voice, “This noon, I saw you almost overwhelmed, nearly losing your composure. You call that manageable?”

Jiang Feng: ?

I was just being polite for heaven’s sake.

“Enough with the circumlocution. Just say what you want to say,” grumbled Sir, apparently annoyed—whether it was at Mr. Sun for presuming to lecture his grandson, or at Jiang Feng’s response, it was unclear.

“Feng, here’s the thing,” Jiang Weiming began, “We didn’t expect such a sudden surge in orders for your dishes yesterday at noon, but actually, we came up with a solution in the tea house that afternoon. We should have changed the menu yesterday, but your Granduncle Weiming thought it was a good opportunity for you… how should I put it, to experience hardship and learn from it. That’s why we postponed discussing it with you until today.”

“Opportunity?” Jiang Feng didn’t quite understand.

What opportunity? To experience being a 007 corporate slave?

“I noticed a problem with you at lunch yesterday,” Sun Maochai said.

“A problem?” Jiang Feng began to repeat.

“Your culinary skills are already outstanding. In fact, it can be said that anywhere in the country, even anywhere in the world, you could take a head chef position in any restaurant if you set your mind to it. But you have one problem: you have the culinary skills to be a head chef, but you don’t have the capabilities or the mindset to be one.”

“Yesterday at lunch, when the number of orders clearly exceeded what you could manage, your first reaction wasn’t to stop taking orders in the back; instead, you had Sang Ming extend the waiting time, hoping to deter customers from ordering. When you were so busy you couldn’t catch your breath, when mistakes started to slip in that shouldn’t have happened, your first instinct wasn’t to ask other kitchen helps to assist you, but to try to work even faster yourself.”

After a pause, Sun Maochai continued, “Your reactions weren’t wrong, but they were strange.”

“Strange?” Jiang Feng felt this was the normal response; it had always been like this before.

“Let me ask you, what happens when the customers order too much during Granduncle Weiming or your grandfather’s shifts?” Sun Maochai asked.

“Of course, they stop taking orders,” Jiang Feng replied. The old men couldn’t be overworked; it had always been like that.

“We stop taking orders, so why didn’t you?”

“Because I am not the head chef… I…” Jiang Feng trailed off mid-sentence, suddenly feeling that something was off, yet not quite discerning what it was.

“Do we have any differences? Excluding the fact that we three are head chefs and you’re not, is there any significant difference in our culinary skills?” Sun Maochai pressed on.

“Of course, there is… we…” Jiang Feng pondered and realized, excluding the title of head chef, there indeed wasn’t much difference.

In terms of culinary ratings, his were even a bit higher than Sir’s.

“Your mindset is not right,” Sun Maochai said with a smile. “I thought about why you would react that way after I got home yesterday. I thought all night and finally understood. You’ve improved your culinary skills too quickly, so quickly that you haven’t had the chance to adapt to your progress. You are no longer just an ordinary chef, nor a mere excellent young chef.”

“You are a genius.”

“Everyone goes through a process to become a renowned chef. It might be 5 years, or 10 years, perhaps 10 years, or 20 years. We use this lengthy process to adapt to our identity as renowned chefs and make the necessary changes that come with it. But your process has been too short, so short that you haven’t had time to adapt. Do you know why you’re so tired, even behaving somewhat out of character at lunch today? It’s because you can’t hold yourself to the same standards you would an ordinary furnace chef.”

“You don’t need to have as many dishes on the menu, or even make sure that every dish is on the menu every day. Your culinary skills are already so high that you can choose and set the rules. You’ve got both the culinary skills and the fame now. Trust me, if you keep on cooking as you used to, according to your old habits, you’ll be so exhausted that you’ll want to quit the profession within a week.”

Jiang Feng actually understood, but somehow, he felt that Sun Maochai wasn’t talking about him.

Even though he knew that his culinary skills were better than Sir’s, he didn’t believe that his status in the kitchen was higher, nor did he think that he had surpassed Sir.

He felt he should continue as before, chopping vegetables, mincing fillings, preparing stocks routinely, and following the recipes he remembered.

But Sun Maochai told him, “You don’t have to live like that anymore because your status has changed. You can now decide like a head chef how many dishes you want to cook each day.”

Otherwise, you will be worn out by the immense workload.

“I should now…” Jiang Feng was somewhat incredulous.

“First and foremost, you need to adjust your mindset,” Sun Maochai said.

“I’ve already heard from your grandfather. Recently you’ve been learning new dishes with Master Peng instead of working your regular shifts. Ever since the fine dining restaurant opened, Taifeng Building’s business wasn’t very good, so now that you’re back, you’ve been working at full capacity. I understand that, because you’re worried about the restaurant’s business, you want to make a little more, to sell a little more. It’s a very normal feeling that everyone has. But things are different now, different from before.”

“The feedback from the Grand Summer Banquet alone shows that you are more popular than me.”

“Taifeng Building’s main draw is no longer me, not your grandfather, not Granduncle Weiming, but you.”

“As long as you’re here, the business will be good.”

“You are the main chef.”

“Have you ever seen a head chef of any restaurant who is as busy as you, working from dawn to dusk and exhausted nearly to death, like you? Even Chef Arno wouldn’t do that, right?”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated on N𝘰vgo.co