Chapter 113: Beautiful

Chapter 113: Chapter 113: Beautiful

Xu An was wandering around the restaurant when he suddenly stopped beside Zhang Dezhen, staring intently as Zhang Dezhen prepared the braised dishes.

’These braised dishes taste good, but it feels like something’s missing. What could it be?’

Resting his chin on his right hand, Xu An pondered the question seriously.

Suddenly, Liang Dani came over from Restaurant Number Two. Seeing Xu An, she said, "Boss, we’re almost out of dried chili peppers. We need to restock."

’Dried chili peppers? Chili peppers? That’s it! It’s chili peppers!’

The current braised dishes were tasty, but the flavor profile was too one-dimensional!

The braised dishes he remembered from the future had all sorts of flavor options: mild-spicy, numbing-spicy, sweet-and-spicy, savory-soy, five-spice, and more!

Zhang Dezhen was getting antsy from Xu An’s staring. He wanted to ask Xu An to leave but didn’t know how to say it.

Suddenly, he saw Xu An’s eyes light up. His hand trembled, and the ladle of pork he had just scooped up fell back into the pot, sending a splash of hot marinade flying, nearly hitting him.

Xu An was startled by the scene and couldn’t help but take a step back. "Uncle Zhang, be careful! That was scary!"

"Boss, you were staring at me while I worked. It made my hands a little shaky," Zhang Dezhen muttered in his defense.

...

’Alright, this one’s on me.’

Xu An coughed twice to ease the awkwardness and asked, "Back in your hometown, are all the braised dishes this flavor, or are there other kinds?"

"Other kinds?" Zhang Dezhen was clearly stumped by Xu An’s question. It took him a moment to respond. "Some families who prefer stronger flavors might add things like chili peppers and Sichuan peppercorns."

’So there are other flavors, they’re just less common.’

"After you finish cooking today’s batch of braised dishes, you can research other flavors, like numbing-spicy, fragrant-spicy, sweet-and-spicy, five-spice, and so on. Feel free to experiment. Don’t be afraid to fail. Success would be great, but if not, just keep exploring."

’So basically, I have to figure this out no matter what, huh?’ Zhang Dezhen grumbled internally before replying, "Okay, Boss. No problem."

With that matter settled, Xu An finally left to get busy at Restaurant Number Two. Zhang Dezhen breathed a sigh of relief, his movements becoming much quicker.

At eight o’clock, the order deadline arrived.

Xu An returned to Restaurant Number One. As he printed out the online orders to check them, he noticed many new orders for the "Silver Star Office Building" address.

He counted thirteen of them. Each order included braised dishes and apple cider vinegar in addition to the box lunches.

It was a good start, even if the location was a bit far.

But things would be better once the construction site started issuing meal subsidies. He could expand his team of delivery drivers then.

They were busy until well after one in the afternoon, when the last of the box lunches were finally delivered and they returned to the restaurant.

After a short break, Xu An went to a print shop to get enlargements of the photos he had taken the day before. He then returned to his computer and began looking up the companies in the pictures one by one.

’Gaoshan Cultural Technology Co., Ltd., 20-99 employees, contact: xxx-xxxxxxx’

’Hai City Evergreen Tree Art Co., Ltd., 100-499 employees, contact: xxx-xxxxxxx’

’Zhonghang Electronics Technology Co., Ltd....’

Xu An was a conscientious person. One o’clock was right in the middle of office workers’ lunch breaks. How could he possibly call and disturb their rest!

Therefore, Xu An recorded all the phone numbers, company names, and employee counts in a notebook, planning to call them one by one after the lunch break ended.

「Two-thirty in the afternoon.」

BEEP-BEEP—BEEP-BEEP—

His phone alarm went off. Xu An silenced it, quickly returned to the cash register, picked up his notebook, and started dialing the number for the first company.

"Hello, this is Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant. We offer box lunch delivery service. It’s eight yuan for three dishes and a soup, with a minimum order of just two meals!"

"Sorry, we’re not interested."

The line went dead. Undiscouraged, Xu An continued dialing the next company’s number.

"Hello, this is Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant..."

In just half an hour, Xu An had called twenty-seven companies. His phone was starting to feel hot.

Some companies were like the first one, hanging up immediately after realizing it was a sales call. Others listened with some interest and gave him their QQ numbers to add them for more details. A few even aggressively questioned where Xu An had gotten their company’s information.

Still, out of the twenty-seven companies, four showed interest in buying.

After he added them on QQ and they chatted, and especially after they saw the menu on the Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant webpage, three of them placed orders immediately.

Xu An saw the names of the three companies in his back-end data. They had ordered two, four, and three meals, respectively.

The total quantity wasn’t high, but when added to the order from Huapu Media Company, it was over twenty meals. Not bad.

Regarding the matter of the construction sites under Xuguang Real Estate planning to adopt a meal subsidy model, although nothing was confirmed yet, quite a few people on the inside had heard the news.

As the saying goes, a secret is only a secret if you don’t tell a second person. Otherwise, the whole world will know.

And that’s exactly what was happening now. The secret was spreading through Hai City at lightning speed. Any restaurant of medium size or larger, or those with connections and channels, had heard the news.

This included Ren Peng, the owner of Yipin Xiang Fast Food Restaurant, which had twelve chain stores in Hai City. He had also gotten wind of the news.

He immediately rubbed his hands together, eager to jump on the opportunity.

’This is a fantastic policy! Landing just one construction site would be like opening a whole new branch, and a pure-profit one at that!’

’Perfect!’

Then he thought about the orders from Aisha Clothing Company, just a paltry twenty-some meals trickling in each day, and he instantly felt annoyed.

’This pittance doesn’t even cover the gas money for the delivery trip.’

’Once the news from the construction site is confirmed, I’m done doing business with your company!’

Hmph!

「Qianhai Town, Trendy Frontline Internet Cafe.」

Li Xindong had looked up the admission cutoff score for Hai City Normal University. After confirming his own score met the requirements for his desired major, he began to wait peacefully for his acceptance letter to arrive.

For the past few days, he had been doing chores at home in the morning, delivering food for Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant at noon, catching Jumping Fish at the beach in the afternoon, and selling the fish to a dealer in the evening before heading home.

Although his days were hectic, he was earning quite a bit of money—much more than he had made working at the factory before.

But day after day passed, and there was still no sign of the acceptance letter.

Li Xindong’s first suspicion was that his parents had hidden his acceptance letter. After all, before the college entrance exams, they had laid down the law—if he got into any school other than Hai City University of Finance and Economics, they wouldn’t let him go.

He didn’t quite understand why his parents had such a strange requirement, but he had just treated it as a form of encouragement and hadn’t taken it to heart.

However, among his classmates, both those who had scored better than him and those who had scored worse had already started receiving their acceptance letters.

Only his letter was late, and it was starting to make him panic.

Today, he finally couldn’t take it anymore. After selling his Jumping Fish to the fish dealer, he rode his bicycle to the Trendy Frontline Internet Cafe in Qianhai Town and bought an hour of internet time.

He opened the browser, found the application submission system, entered his personal information, and checked his submitted choices.

’Hai City University of Finance and Economics—English Major.’

’Hai City University of Finance and Economics—Chinese Language Major.’

’Hai City University of Finance and Economics...’

’...’

From top to bottom, all six of his application choices were filled with majors from Hai City University of Finance and Economics!

He suddenly remembered that not long after his exam scores came out, his parents had asked him about his application plans. They had even asked for his account username and password.

At the time, completely unsuspecting, he had told them everything...

Because his chosen university wasn’t the one his parents wanted, they had made it clear they wouldn’t pay his tuition or living expenses. He had been so busy working and earning money that he never checked if his application choices had been changed...

Li Xindong’s hands were trembling slightly as he typed "Hai City University of Finance and Economics 2012 admission score" into the search bar. The page loaded quickly.

’Hai City University of Finance and Economics, minimum admission score—562.’

Those three digits seared his eyes. Two streams of clear tears suddenly welled up and flowed down his face, unstoppable...