Chapter 468 - 214: Pre-Holiday Rush

Chapter 468: Chapter 214: Pre-Holiday Rush

"Not bad, right, General Manager Lin?" Old Chen picked up another oyster.

"You’re quick on the draw." Boss Lin quickly grabbed the last oyster, squeezed on some lemon juice, dabbed it with a bit of wasabi paste, and popped it into his mouth. It was a completely different flavor.

After a moment, Boss Lin hurriedly asked, "Excuse me, can you deliver these oysters to Peng City?"

Xiaofang smiled and replied, "Yes, sir. We can deliver to Peng City. You can pre-order on our company’s app and then designate a specialty store in Peng City for pickup."

"I know." Boss Lin had previously purchased live eels and White Truffles from a Hailufeng Specialty Store. He knew the Hailufeng Company had stores in Peng City, and one of them was less than two kilometers from his Japanese restaurant.

As for the price of 100 yuan per kilogram, it wasn’t actually expensive. Especially for top-tier oysters that could be eaten raw, imports generally cost over two hundred yuan per kilogram. Even when buying in bulk from a wholesaler, the price was at least 150 yuan per kilogram.

Besides, he only ran one Japanese restaurant, not a seafood shop. He couldn’t buy that much at once, and with such a low volume, wholesalers wouldn’t offer much of a discount.

After the two had sampled the oysters, Boss Lin looked at the roe crabs Old Chen had packed up. "Old Chen, are you planning on marinating these?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Save a few for me when they’re ready."

"In your dreams. I need to give some to my father-in-law, and a few to my aunt’s family. How would I have any left for you?" Old Chen refused outright.

"Come on! We’ve been brothers for decades, and this is how you treat me?"

Old Chen didn’t fall for his sob story. "Heh, if you want some, buy your own. Stop trying to get things out of me all the time."

"But I can’t buy any!" Boss Lin had just tried to purchase roe crabs himself, but the staff told him they were all already reserved. He could only place a pre-order now, and the waitlist already extended to March.

Boss Lin, who absolutely loved raw marinated roe crab, turned to his good friend, Old Chen.

Faced with his friend’s relentless pestering, Old Chen finally relented with a sigh. "You’re impossible. Fine, two. But when you marinate your own later, you have to give me back four."

"Deal."

Boss Lin turned and picked up his phone, ready to place an order on the app. Suddenly, he stopped and looked at Old Chen with pleading eyes.

Old Chen grew uncomfortable under his gaze and asked, exasperated, "Spit it out already. Stop dawdling."

"Heh heh... Old Chen, you know my marinating skills have never been good. How about this? I’ll give you the money to buy the roe crabs, and you can have your wife help me marinate a dozen pounds or so."

"You old rascal, you really know how to order people around."

"Old Chen, don’t forget your share is coming from my crabs. If I marinate them myself and something goes wrong, don’t come crying to me," Boss Lin reminded him with a sly grin.

Old Chen instantly realized he’d been tricked by the old rascal. But thinking about his friend’s marinating skills, he really couldn’t trust him. He’d been "poisoned" by the man’s raw marinated roe crabs several times before. He could only reluctantly agree.

"Fine, fine! I’ll help you, alright?"

Just then, other customers who had come for their pickups began to arrive one after another.

Before long, a line had formed in the aquatic products section of the Erma Road specialty store.

The roe crabs, oysters, Luo’s Shrimp, and whiteleg shrimp were all sold out in less than two hours. A good number of Egyptian Catfish, eels, and other products were sold along with them.

The Egyptian Catfish may have been unpopular before, but the high-quality version was a different story—especially the new "small Egyptian Catfish" recently introduced by the Hailufeng Company. These smaller fish, weighing between 0.25 and 0.3 kilograms each, tasted nearly identical to the native Lingnan catfish. Many people bought them as a substitute, since the flavor and size were so similar.

At around 20 yuan per kilogram, and given the price and supply of the native catfish, these small Egyptian Catfish quickly began to replace them in the market.

「Noon.」

Store Manager Luo Weimin’s lips curled into a smile as he ate his lunch and looked over the backend sales data.

His branch had sold a total of 200 kilograms of oysters today. Including the whiteleg shrimp, roe crabs, and Luo’s Shrimp, total sales for the aquatic products category had exceeded 90,000 yuan.

This meant that from aquatic products alone, his branch had earned over nine hundred yuan in performance bonuses for the day. Although it had to be split among four employees, each person would still get more than two hundred yuan.

Of course, this surge in seafood sales typically only happened in the twenty-odd days leading up to the New Year. It would last for about a week after the holiday, making for a peak season of roughly one month in total.

At other times, only during events like the Mid-Autumn Festival or for large wedding banquets was it possible to reach a daily turnover of over one hundred thousand yuan.

However, this was just Luo Weimin’s own estimation. He hadn’t factored in that the Hailufeng Company would later be launching a variety of other products, such as salmon, salmon roe, Arctic Sweet Shrimp, King Crab, large conches, square-spotted babylon snails, ornate spiny lobsters, mantis shrimp, and hairy crabs.

With a wider variety of products, the overall revenue would naturally increase, even during the off-season.

To cultivate the market, the brick-and-mortar division squeezed out nearly a tenth of its production capacity to send products to the Pearl River Delta Region.

Due to the very limited supply, the specialty stores in the Pearl River Delta Region didn’t receive any stock. Customers with pre-orders had to go to warehouse supermarkets in the suburbs to pick up their items.

But the reputation of Salt Town Oysters had been established.

At the very least, oyster enthusiasts in the Pearl River Delta Region who tried them once generally agreed that the quality of Salt Town Oysters was excellent. Many high-end restaurants also caught wind of this and quickly placed large pre-orders with the Hailufeng Company.

After all, the custom feeding plan Jiang Miao had designed for the Salt Town Oysters was intended to make them better suited to the palates of domestic consumers, rather than giving them a strong, metallic taste like Belon oysters—a flavor profile that many people found hard to stomach.