Chapter 285 Chinese Food Queen
Li Xinrong's boss was a regular customer of Baohualou. When Boss Jiang built a new hotel in Macau, he found Yue Baohua and wanted to hire him with a large sum of money. Yue Baohua couldn't let go of Baohualou, so he recommended his eldest apprentice to be the executive chef.
Ever since Yue Ning came to Hong Kong, Baohualou has transformed from an old-fashioned Cantonese restaurant known for its delicious food in Mong Kok to the most popular restaurant in Hong Kong.
Thanks to Li Xinrong's relationship, the chefs of their hotel got the opportunity to study at Ningyan and Baohualou.
This time, Boss Jiang brought Li Xinrong to visit the grandparents and grandchildren, and mentioned that the hotel planned to undergo a medium-scale renovation and hoped to introduce the Ningyan brand.
Hong Kong and Macau are adjacent to each other. Baohualou does have plans to enter Macau, but only plans to open Baohualou and Ning Xiaochu branches. Yue Ning has no plans to open Ningyan in Macau. First, Macau has a small permanent population. Second, the Chinese restaurant in the hotel where Li Xinrong works has imitated Ningyan's style to 70% or 80%. In a city of this size, there is no need for two restaurants with almost the same positioning and dishes to exist at the same time.
"I also know that Ningning treats Yongjin Chinese Restaurant as Ningyan for the sake of Uncle Hua and Xinrong," Boss Jiang said with a smile, "but this favor is too strong and makes me feel uneasy. I want to simply put this restaurant under the management of Ningyan and put up the Ningyan sign. To be honest, there are still differences between Yongjin Chinese Restaurant and Ningyan. Everyone sells the Ningyan brand more. Ningyan's entry can add more value to Yongjin. You decide the decoration plan, and I will bear the expenses. The joint venture will take 10 points of our sales."
For a store with such a huge investment, the commission is only 10%, which is a very generous condition.
Yongjin Palace is a hotel, and Boss Jiang’s other business is the casino, a characteristic industry of Macau City.
After arriving in Hong Kong, Yue Ning had naturally heard about some of the situations in the Macau Casino: ordinary people go to Macau to play, and the casino only takes three or five yuan for every 100 yuan of chips; the core of the Macau Casino is VIP management, and the real money is made in the VIP lounge. Each VIP lounge is contracted by a junket operator, who is responsible for introducing gamblers to the casino and collecting agency fees. It is said that the commission rate is as high as 20%-50%, and the income of the VIP lounge accounts for 70% of the total revenue of the casino. Therefore, casino owners rack their brains to serve these high-rollers well.
In the previous life, there were only three Michelin three-star restaurants in the vast area of the mainland, and there were also three in the small city of Australia, and all of them were hotel restaurants run by casino owners.
Baohualou signed a cooperation agreement with Yongjin Entertainment, and its Ningyan brand will be stationed in Yongjin Palace Hotel. Although the style of Yongjin Chinese Restaurant is similar to Ningyan, it is only similar in appearance. Taking advantage of the restaurant's renovation, all the chefs and service staff of Yongjin went to Gangcheng for training.
Li Xinrong brought a group of apprentices to Hong Kong City. The renovation would take at least half a year, so Baohua Building was now more fully staffed. Yue Ning asked the administrative department to arrange for employees to travel to Japan and conduct business exchanges before the peak season at the end of the year.
Lu Peide found Yue Ning and said that he did not want to go to Japan and wanted to take Sophie and Shou Bo back to Beijing. It turned out that after Lu Yude and Lu Yongding had a falling out, although Chef Lu said that everything was fine, he was still worried; plus his relationship with Sophie was stable, he wanted to take Sophie back to see her mother.
Yue Ning suggested that he go to Japan. After all, he was the head chef of Ningyan Lu Mansion, and Yanxi and Miyamoto were looking forward to communicating with him. He could arrange to return to Beijing during Christmas and New Year's Day. Although it would be busy then, Yue Ning had already had winter vacation and could cover for him.
At the end of November, the verdict of Li Wanqiu's case was finally announced. Unlike the death penalty in most cases of this kind in China, the father and his two sons were sentenced to 18 years, 10 years, and 7 years in prison respectively.
Li Wanqiu is smart and patient, so she was transferred to work at Ningyan Lu Mansion; Zhou Guohua is down-to-earth and has a strong learning ability. He has been responsible for purchasing and inspecting goods in Ningyan. Yue Ning is reluctant to let them go back to the mainland at this time, and plans to find an opportunity later. It happened that the new company founded by Yue Ning and his classmates recruited an employee with good English, but the candidate for mainland liaison had not yet been determined, so Zhou Guohua was transferred over to liaise with the mainland.
Although the new company had just been established, thanks to Yue Ning's connections in the mainland, it soon had cooperation intentions. Surprisingly, the first order came from Uncle Chang, who was doing foreign trade clothing sales next to Baohua Building. He told Yue Ning that a batch of goods from the clothing factory to a Japanese department store was delayed in delivery and the Japanese side refused to accept them, and asked if he could help deal with it. Uncle Chang originally wanted to sell the goods to Hong'an Hypermarket for special promotions.
Yue Ning took Zhou Mingxuan and the others to see that the Japanese clothing of the Showa era was not as simple and plain as imagined, but very fashionable, but the material was mostly chemical fiber. Nowadays, the degree of industrialization is high outside, and the price of chemical fiber fabrics is low, so they are naturally not sold at a high price, and can only be promoted as special products in the store. However, in the mainland, chemical fiber fabrics that are scratch-resistant and wrinkle-proof are still exported to Japan, and they are really in short supply.
Yue Ning negotiated a total package price with the factory, contacted the mainland supply and marketing cooperative staff through Cui Huiyi, and Zhou Mingxuan and others made the connection. The mainland partner had sales channels but insufficient funds, so Yue Ning helped transport the clothing to Pengcheng and allowed them to pick up the goods in batches. The first time, the other party only took a few hundred yuan of goods, and the second time they asked to pick up the goods all at once.
The purchase price for this business was 70,000 yuan, and the final sales amounted to 110,000 yuan. Zhou Mingxuan couldn't believe it. He followed up the customs declaration and tax declaration himself and learned that the tariff on chemical fiber materials in the mainland was as high as 54%. He didn't understand why it was still profitable.
"This is the information gap. In the eyes of mainlanders, these are high-end Japanese clothing. Hong Kong has been engaged in clothing processing in recent years. In addition to branded clothing, those sold overseas are very cheap. Mainland clothing is also cheap, but there are very few styles. With the reform and opening up of the mainland, Japanese TV dramas were first introduced to the mainland, which set off a trend of chasing Japanese dramas." Yue Ning taught the team a lesson with actual cases.
With this income, everyone is more confident. Although most of the subsequent orders are small businesses that earn two to three thousand or even a few hundred yuan, they are continuous and the team is busy.
As exam week approached, Zhou Mingxuan and others saw a notice on the bulletin board saying that the Ning Xiaochu team was going to Taiwan and Singapore for an inspection during the winter break, so they ran to ask Yue Ning: "Ningning, Ning Xiaochu is going to Taiwan and Singapore, where are we going during the winter break?"
"Go to the mainland! Otherwise, why would I ask you to apply for a return permit?" Yue Ning said, "The money you make these days is small, but the big money is coming later. Business is built up bit by bit."
She asked Pang Qiang to post the news on the bulletin board that the team was going to the mainland for an inspection during the winter vacation. Two notices were posted side by side: Yang Zhijie's team was going to Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore, while Yue Ning's team was going to the mainland.
The two teams had no objections, but people on campus started to criticize it. They all said that it was better to follow Yang Zhijie than Yue Ning.
Cai Zhiyuan had been inviting Yue Ning to watch the competition, but Yue Ning was too busy to watch. Finally, the exam was over. Chef Zhou from Beijing Yufenglou led the team to compete against a team from the United States called "Fuyuan Garden Restaurant".
The brief introductions of the participating teams were written in a very exaggerated way, but judging from the previous competitions, most of the teams were better at bragging than cooking. So far, the only exciting competitions were from Shanghai Jinhua, Fuyunlou, Dongfenglou and Ningyan, and the audience response to the rest of the competitions was not even as good as last year.
Even so, Yue Ning did not dare to relax and asked the Yufenglou team to come to Hong Kong City in advance, with Lu Peide providing on-the-spot guidance to Chef Zhou.
The day before the competition, Cai Zhiyuan called Yue Ning: "Ningning, come with me to the airport to pick up Ms. Zhu Liling."
Yue Ning's mind flashed to an old lady in cheongsam. In her previous life, Chef Jiang Sunyun was known as the "Queen of Chinese Cuisine in America". She conquered the New York food world with her authentic Chinese cuisine and even had a New York Times food critic write a long article praising her. The Ms. Zhu Liling that Cai Zhiyuan mentioned at this moment was clearly the "Jiang Sunyun" of this world.
Yue Ning asked excitedly: "Why did Ms. Zhu come to Hong Kong City?"
"I came to see her granddaughter's competition," Cai Zhiyuan said. "Her granddaughter is Sun Yuke from the Fuyuan team."
"I'm going to go back and change my clothes. You can pick me up at my house later."
Yue Ning went home to change into a light blue brocade top with a slit skirt of the same color and put on makeup. Cai Zhiyuan was very surprised to see her dressed like this, as Yue Ning usually never attended formal occasions in such a grand manner.
When meeting senior colleagues, Yue Ning naturally had to be cautious.
The two arrived at the airport and waited at the arrival gate. Both of them are celebrities in Hong Kong, and their meeting at the airport immediately attracted everyone's attention: What kind of big shot could make two people come to pick him up in person?
From a distance, Yue Ning saw a young girl in a sweater and jeans, walking with an old lady with neatly combed silver hair. The old lady was wearing a moon-white brocade cheongsam with an emerald magnolia brooch on her collar, and her posture was as elegant as a socialite in an old-school movie.
Cai Zhiyuan took two quick steps and extended his hand to greet them: "Ms. Zhu, Ms. Sun, welcome to Hong Kong City."
After the two shook hands with Cai Zhiyuan, the old lady's eyes fell on Yue Ning, and a gentle smile appeared on the corners of her lips: "Is this Miss Yue from Ning Yan?"
Yue Ning shook hands respectfully: "Yes, I have heard of you for a long time."
"No way! I also heard about Ning Yan's legend when I was in New York." Her Mandarin was spoken with a hint of the softness of Wu dialect.
"It's a great honor." Yue Ning shook hands with Sun Yuke again, "Ms. Sun, welcome to Hong Kong City."
"Hello! My grandma and I have watched the video of you cooking. Grandma said that you are more like her granddaughter." Miss Sun has a straightforward personality, but Yue Ning didn't know how to respond for a moment when she spoke so bluntly on their first meeting.
Zhu Liling smiled gently: "Coco grew up in the United States, and her cooking is influenced by American culture. I told her that when cooking Chinese food, you can use Western methods to serve Chinese purposes, but you can't lose the soul of Chinese food just to please Westerners. But it's hard to explain this feeling to her. I always pay attention to the ancient cooking methods, and the improvements are also Chinese ones. I rarely use purely Western ingredients. I saw the dishes you made in France. Even if you use foie gras and French ham, the essence of Chinese cuisine is still there. So this time, I came not only to watch her competition, but also wanted her to ask you for advice in this area."
"We want to communicate with each other, and I also hope to get your guidance." Yue Ning said.
"Let's get in the car and go to Ningyan Lu Mansion." Cai Zhiyuan extended his hand to invite them to leave the airport.
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