The Game of Life

Chapter 787: Chapter 786: Choosing a Store

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Chapter 787 -786: Choosing a Store

October 21, clear with a south wind at level four, temperature 22°C~28°C, humidity 64%, a good day for a comeback.

Jiang Feng saw the former information on his phone’s weather app; the latter was what he thought.

After eating the “last stand” roast whole lamb, Jiang Feng was quite inflated with confidence, feeling certain of his victory today, and that Taifeng Building was sure to succeed—although the remaining lamb had ended up in the trash bin.

It was simply too disgusting to eat.

The crew had set assembly time for before ten in the morning. To make ample preparations, Jiang Feng and his three companions set out just after seven and arrived at the snack street before eight.

The snack street was very quiet in the morning.

This was normal, after all, it wasn’t even eight yet. Even on a Sunday rest day, the office workers would still be at home sleeping in. Mid-October’s lingering heat hadn’t faded, and it was still hot outside; even if one wanted to stroll around and relax with a meal, it would be an afternoon or evening affair.

Jiang Feng and his companions were indeed early; they were so early that even their filming crew hadn’t arrived, but some staff members were already there and recognized the four of them, coming forward to greet them.

“Hello, you four must be the contestants from Taifeng Building. You’re quite early today; the other restaurants and their funds haven’t arrived yet, so let’s not stand here. Let’s go over there to rest for a bit,” said a young, beautiful lady with a sweet voice, very enthusiastic and familiar.

“At first I thought Zhang Guanghang would compete, may I ask why he isn’t?” the lady asked.

Jiang Feng was surprised; this lady wasn’t just familiar, she was practically family.

Observing the staff lady more closely, Jiang Feng realized that she indeed looked familiar, as if he had seen her somewhere before.

“Are you the staff member from the Good Taste cooking competition?” Wu Minqi was the first to speak up.

“Yes, that’s right,” the lady smiled, “You might not remember me, but I was in charge of reception during the semi-finals. I led each contestant in.”

Sun Jikai silently bowed his head, as he hadn’t made it to the semi-finals.

The young lady, completely unaware of the presence of someone who had failed to advance to the semi-finals, excitedly said to Wu Minqi: “You have no idea, during the semi-finals when your man… when Jiang Feng confessed to you on stage, we staff members almost jumped up and screamed. That scene… I’ll never forget it for the rest of my life! It was so romantic! I’ve never seen anything so romantic in my life!”

The young lady was as thrilled as if she were at a fan meeting with an idol.

Jiang Feng immediately changed the subject, “Where are we heading now, and what exactly are the rules for today’s test? Surely you’re not going to make us wait here until ten before announcing them.”

Realizing her own excited outburst, the lady regained her composure to that of an impartial staff member.

“Of course not, I am leading you there now. Once we arrive, I will explain the specific rules of today’s test.”

The four followed the staff lady and after walking approximately eight hundred meters, stopped in front of a very bourgeois-looking coffee shop and went inside.

Inside the coffee shop, most of the chairs and tables had already been cleared out, replaced by video recording equipment similar to that of a film studio. There were many staff members, both local and foreign, easy to pick out, as well as the film studio’s distinctive short stools and plastic chairs.

As soon as the lady walked in, she cried out loudly, “The contestants from Taifeng Building have arrived.”

After saying this, she repeated it in English.

The crowd immediately became agitated. Jiang Feng clearly saw a foreigner, who obviously wasn’t a local, jump up from his chair like he’d seen a ghost after listening to the lady’s words; he even spilled half a cup of coffee on his shirt.

The four: ?

Of course, the four were unaware that more than half of the staff present had endured a hellish time frame of proposing plans, sending them back for revisions, sending them back again, revising again, and so on, in a continuous loop without sleep and working overtime.

Although self-inflicted, there were some who were innocent, like the foreigner who had just spilled half a cup of coffee on his own shirt.

The general manager approached Jiang Feng and the others, face pale, dark circles under the eyes, inscribing a façade of false enthusiasm, painful yet joyful, helpless yet rueful and a smile that screamed “one more day without sleep and I’ll drop dead.”

The Taifeng Building delegation sent Sun Jikai and the general manager to converse.

After a brief exchange in accented English, Jiang Feng and his companions finally understood the specifics of this test.

The game hadn’t lied; this test was indeed Taifeng Building’s last chance for a turnaround.

This snack street was newly built over the past two years and had become a mildly famous online sensation after continuous remodeling and promotion. It often drew uninformed out-of-town tourists and locals with nothing better to do who loitered around, shopped, and generated a boost to the national GDP per capita.

The content of the test was simple: on this snack street, Xu Cheng and Han Guishan owned a total of twenty-two shops. The businesses varied—some were booming, others dismal, some spacious, others tight, with prime locations and some in less desirable corners. There were milk tea shops, rice noodle roll stalls, small stir-fry eateries, snack stores, pastry shops, dessert parlors—all kinds.

Contestants were required to choose seven shops to manage, decided by their current point ranking starting from the top. Menus could be adjusted but must fit the shop’s theme.

For instance, a milk tea shop could sell desserts, but not buns. A rice noodle roll shop could sell porridge, but not mapo tofu. A dessert shop could sell milk tea, but not stir-fried potato threads.

Testing would last from ten in the morning to ten at night, a total of twelve hours. All dishes sold would count towards points, including takeout. All products were triple points—each dish could earn three points. Good review points were dropped, but a single bad review would result in a ten-point deduction.

It was clear that in this test, the shop was crucial.

This was definitely a test of volume.

After the general manager finished explaining the test rules, the lady who had led Jiang Feng and his companions here then took them to see the twenty-two shops available for selection.

A shop’s location, environment, and size were all crucial factors determining points. Only after on-site inspection could they make better decisions.

Jiang Feng and his team had done well to arrive so early. If they had come later, they may not have had time to inspect all twenty-two shops before having to choose and start management.

Jiang Feng and the others followed the young lady from one store to the next. Among the twenty-two stores they visited, four had locations and existing business that were quite impressive. The most successful among them was a Western-style dessert shop.

The location was good, with six tables inside. The decoration was very nice, and the air conditioning was strong. They sold puddings, cakes, coffee, fruit juices, and milk tea. There were many customers dining in, eating on the go, or taking their orders to go. It was as if this shop was tailor-made for the top-floor restaurant.

The other three stores were more or less on par with each other, being a milk tea shop, a bakery, and a pastry shop. From the perspective of sales volume, all three were quite competitive. Jiang Feng and his group all agreed that there was little chance to get any of these four stores; as long as six out of the remaining stores had people with online IQs, rational thinking, and sense, they would choose these four.

Since they were last in the selection process, they first had to rule out these six, then make a choice from the remaining sixteen.

After visiting the twenty-two stores, it was already past nine o’clock. The stores were spread out across the entire snack street, with each person in Jiang Feng’s group having their own preferable choice, leading to endless debates along the way, as all believed they had a good eye for potential.

Sun Maochai was interested in a rice noodle roll shop. He thought that in addition to selling rice noodle rolls, they could sell fried noodles and dim sum. Two of the four people in their group were Cantonese cuisine chefs, which perfectly matched their style. Jiang Feng and Wu Minqi could also make fried noodles and rice dishes.

The downside of the rice noodle roll shop was its poor location, and the storefront was very small; it was just a typical snack shop. According to the staff, the shop’s original performance was very ordinary, and it was almost impossible to turn the business around using such a small shop.

Wu Minqi tended to favor a stir-fry restaurant. She thought that since all four were Red Chef chefs, they could each cook their own dishes, just like they used to run the Healthy Stir-fry Restaurant.

The drawbacks of the stir-fry restaurant were similar to the rice noodle roll shop: a poor location and a storefront that, though larger than the rice noodle roll shop, also performed averagely.

Sun Jikai had a rather unique perspective. He took an interest in a fried skewer shop that also sold stinky tofu, iron plate tofu, and cold noodles—a very pure snack conglomerate.

The business of this shop was always booming because, with so many choices, there was bound to be something to catch the tourists’ fancy. The shop was very small and could not accommodate dine-in customers. It was the kind of shop that, in theory, could sell thousands of items a day as long as there were enough customers and the preparation was fast enough—a snack shop ideal for racking up sales.

Frying skewers too quickly could leave them undercooked, and none of the four had experience in making fried skewers. It was estimated that the skewers they would make might not even be as good as those from a regular street vendor.

Therefore, Sun Jikai’s proposal was unanimously rejected by everyone.

Jiang Feng, however, chose the largest of the twenty-two stores, a two-story porridge shop that could no longer be characterized as a snack shop but rather as a large restaurant.

In terms of area, this porridge shop was slightly bigger than the Healthy Snack Shop that Jiang Jiankang once opened in the backstreet of Alan City.

Jiang Feng’s reason for selecting the porridge shop was simple: as the reigning Porridge King, of course, he would choose a porridge shop. Furthermore, his reasons for choosing the porridge shop were somewhat similar to Sun Maochai’s. It was a Cantonese-style porridge shop where they could sell anything: stir-fries, dim sum, cold dishes, essentially indistinguishable from a regular restaurant.

But this porridge shop had a deadly flaw: it wasn’t part of the snack street.

Originally, this two-story store was a calligraphy and painting shop, but then it was bought by Han Guishan. No one knew what Mr. Han was thinking when he insisted on converting it into a porridge shop.

The original calligraphy and painting shop was already doing poorly, and the business of the porridge shop that replaced it was even worse.

In Jiang Feng’s view, there was nothing intrinsically wrong with the porridge shop. Whether it was the decor, the dishes, or the air conditioning, everything was very OK. Yet, it seemed to be at odds with the snack street, with poor in-house business and average take-out service. However, it was said that the take-out business was much better than dining in, and there were some residents nearby who really liked the porridge from this shop.

This group of residents probably didn’t exceed twenty people, which gives an idea of how bad the porridge shop’s daily business was.

Everyone working at the restaurant knew very well why the porridge stall was not doing well. This is a food street, and not just any food street—it’s one with internet-famous snacks. It’s all about grabbing a bite here and there, taking a card punch, snapping some photos, and having some fun with the little eats. Who comes to a snack street just to drink porridge or eat fried noodles? Doing so is no different than snatching Jiang Feng’s dish at Taifeng Building and ordering nothing but a plate of plain stir-fried potato shreds.

Moreover, the location of this porridge stall was very problematic. Positioned in the middle of the snack street, this street spanned a considerable four kilometers in length. Any normal person’s stomach, if planning to eat something on snack street, would be about sixty to seventy percent full after walking two kilometers from either end to the doorstep of the porridge stall.

Generally, no one would arrive at the door of the porridge stall, already six or seven tenths full, with bubble tea in one hand and fried skewers in the other, and turn to their companion to say, “Hey, there’s a porridge place here; let’s have a bowl of porridge before we go.”

Overall, it was a good shop, just opened in the wrong place.

All four of them thought the other’s suggestions wouldn’t work.

Even if Sun Jikai’s suggestion had been unanimously rejected the moment it was voiced, he still thought the other three were no good.

No one could persuade the others.

“How about this,” Wu Minqi decided to take a step back as they nearly reached the café door, “we don’t know yet if others will choose the shop we’re interested in. Actually, I think the shops that Fengfeng and Master Sun have chosen are quite similar in type, so we’ll place these two shops as our first consideration, then my shop as our second, and Sun Jikai’s as our third.”

“When the time comes, we’ll see how they choose. If no one picks these four shops we’ve got our eye on, we’ll make a decision between Fengfeng’s and Master Sun’s shops, and if they are chosen, then we’ll see what to do next.”

The three agreed, as that was all they could do.

If there were better choices, who would choose among these four shops with obvious flaws at first glance?

Everyone wanted to choose the dessert shop, acting as if it was something no one could do.

Seeing the sudden dip in the atmosphere, the staff member encouraged them with a smile, “Go for it, I believe you can do it, and to help increase your sales, I’ll come eat at your restaurant for lunch today.”

Jiang Feng: ?

So that’s an option.

Wu Minqi was also surprised, “Is that… wouldn’t that be considered cheating?”

“Of course not, we were already planning to eat lunch today anyway. Besides, how much can one person eat, three portions at most. Mr. Han said yesterday that he plans to eat at all seven of the competing restaurants today, and it looks like Mrs. Han and his son will also come.”

Jiang Feng: …

Mr. Han… seems to be increasing his appetite lately.

He sure knows how, turning a food competition into a canteen.