Chapter 206: Not Making a Profit, Running a Charity?
Chapter 206: Chapter 206: Not Making a Profit, Running a Charity?
Wang Daguo admired Shen Lu from the bottom of his heart.
To this day, he had never seen Shen Lu truly stumped by a problem. She could always find a solution with ease.
After lunch, the staff got to work—some cleaning, others prepping ingredients. By five-thirty in the afternoon, the four trial employees and Wang Daguo had clocked out one after another.
Meanwhile, Master Luo had been hauled by Boss Jin’s men to a small Western-style house. He trembled as he showed Boss Jin the message from his apprentice.
Apprentice: A government logistics truck came and delivered a ton of ingredients. I have no idea what kind of connections they used.
Boss Jin’s face darkened, and an even more furious Jin San knocked over the ashtray.
"Damn it! How the hell could a little broad like her know government officials?!"
Boss Jin said, "Old Luo, tell your apprentice to investigate, and fast. The sooner you get us the information we want, the better it will be for you."
Master Luo nodded profusely. "I know. I’ll pressure him every day."
"Alright, you can go now."
After Master Luo left, Boss Jin resumed smoking his cigar, his expression growing even more menacing.
It had been the Commerce Association’s decision to have the Lower City District’s food suppliers deliberately cut off Shen Lu’s stock.
The Lower City District had its own Commerce Association. Without it, everyone would be at each other’s throats, using dirty tricks to steal customers, which would only drive business into the ground for everyone.
So, the more affluent bosses had sat down and established the Commerce Association, primarily to ensure that all the shops in the Lower City District could make money peacefully and steadily.
However, not just anyone could join the Commerce Association. There were standards, and someone like Boss Cao, for example, didn’t qualify.
Shen Lu had started with a street stall, then bought an unfinished building on Gold Street. It looked like a venture doomed to fail, so the Commerce Association hadn’t bothered sending anyone. ’Why send an invitation to a shop that’s bound to go under anyway?’ they thought.
Then Little Deer Cuisine opened, and its crawfish competition created a huge buzz, but the Commerce Association still didn’t bat an eye.
It was just a standard marketing ploy. ’What new business doesn’t run a promotion to attract customers?’
Besides, it was perfectly normal to be busy in the first few days. A shop’s long-term survival isn’t determined by its grand opening but by whether it can maintain its footing after the initial hype dies down.
Then the great storm hit, forcing all shops to close, and the members of the Commerce Association dismissed Little Deer Cuisine completely.
’Needless to say, that little shop was finished for sure.’
Who could have predicted that after the storm, Little Deer Cuisine wouldn’t just survive, but would thrive, its business getting better and better?
At the same time, many of the restaurants owned by the Commerce Association’s members started to feel the impact.
Before, they might go a whole year without hearing more than a few customer complaints. Lately, the number had risen significantly.
The complaints were all along the same lines: their prices were too high, and the food wasn’t as good as the dishes at Little Deer Cuisine.
After hearing this enough times, someone inevitably went to investigate, only to discover just how low Little Deer Cuisine had set its prices.
They were all in the restaurant business; they knew the profit margins by heart. At the prices Little Deer Cuisine was charging, once you factored in the costs of labor, utilities, rent, and ingredients, there was basically nothing left over.
’Who on earth does business like that?’
’If you’re not making a profit, are you running a charity?’
’Inviting such a bleeding-heart business owner into the Commerce Association would be a joke, wouldn’t it?!’
Besides, if she kept running her business this way, she was bound to fail. A restaurant needs normal income and expenditures to stay afloat.
Little Deer Cuisine was obviously operating at a deficit. Shen Lu was essentially paying out of her own pocket to keep the place running.
Everyone in the Commerce Association was waiting for Little Deer Cuisine to run itself into the ground. But contrary to their expectations, the small restaurant’s business improved daily, while the complaints at their own establishments piled up.
Then, at the weekly meeting yesterday, Boss Jin proposed that they had to deal with Little Deer Cuisine. It was as if a floodgate had opened; everyone found an outlet and began to vent their frustrations.
Seizing the moment, Boss Jin proposed restricting her access to ingredients, a suggestion that met with unanimous approval.
It was the simplest way to crush a restaurant.
No ingredients, no food. What could she possibly sell to her customers?
And Shen Lu could forget about bypassing the Lower City District’s suppliers to deal with those in the Upper City District. There were rules for everything.
The suppliers in the Lower City District had paid good money to secure their distribution rights, and the people in the Upper City District couldn’t be bothered with the messes down below. The two sides maintained a tacit understanding to stick to their own territories.
Now, with her ingredients cut off, everyone was waiting to laugh at Little Deer Cuisine’s downfall. Instead, she had somehow pulled strings and gotten a whole truckload of supplies, averting the crisis for the day.
Boss Jin posted what he knew in the Commerce Association’s leadership chat group. It didn’t take long for people to start responding.
President Zhang: What? A government logistics truck? She knows people in the government?
Mr. Sun: No way. My cousin drives one of those government logistics trucks. He’s been at my place playing cards since his morning haul. He’s still here.
General Manager Chen: I can vouch for Mr. Sun. The three of us are playing together right now.
Boss Jin: It was an Upper City District truck, not one from our Lower City District.
The license plates are different for the Upper City District and the Lower City District; anyone could tell at a glance.
President Zhang: The Upper City District? That can’t be right. I heard the owner of Little Deer Cuisine is just a girl of seventeen or eighteen. How could she possibly know government officials from the Upper City District?
President Pan: You never know. Wasn’t she the young miss of the Shen Family? Even if the Shen Family is only a second-rate power, she might still have relatives in high places.
Mr. Sun: So what do we do now?
General Manager Chen: Didn’t this just backfire on us? Forget it, just forget it. This is pointless.
Boss Jin: What’s the rush? This is only the beginning.
Boss Jin: She’s just some lower-class kid who was switched at birth. Even if she knows people in the Upper City District government, they’re not going to help her forever.
The group chat fell silent for a few minutes. Then Mr. Sun, who always followed Boss Jin’s lead, finally spoke up.
Mr. Sun: So, Boss Jin, you mean we should keep blocking her supplies?
Boss Jin: Of course. I refuse to believe she can keep getting around us and sourcing ingredients from the Upper City District forever.
President Pan: Why don’t we just drop it? We’ve only blocked her once. If we keep quiet, she probably won’t notice anything. We could just invite her into the Commerce Association, teach her the rules, and wouldn’t that be a happy ending for everyone?
General Manager Chen: Easy for you to say, Old Pan. You’re not the one in the restaurant business.
President Pan: Hey, I was just making a suggestion. If you don’t agree, that’s fine.
Boss Jin: Enough. We’re moving forward with this. The younger generation these days has no sense of propriety. It’s up to us, their elders, to teach them a thing or two.
Boss Jin held considerable sway among the Commerce Association’s leadership. When he spoke, it was essentially a final decision. The others sent various "thumbs up" stickers in agreement, and the conversation ended.
"Bro, can’t you just use a more direct method?" Jin San couldn’t stand his brother’s approach. "That little broad goes out every day. I could just grab her. Wouldn’t it be simpler to just force the answers out of her?"
’Why do we have to mess with all this complicated stuff? What a waste of time!’
Boss Jin gave his brother a look of utter exasperation. "No wonder you never became the leader of the Gale Mercenary Corps. Do you ever use that brain of yours?"