When the two returned with their food, the hot pot base had just been served, but the dishes hadn't yet arrived. Fu Shen sat down next to Ye Mingzhe, placed the food on the table, and said, "Come and try it! I'm so craving it! The aroma kept filling my nose while I was waiting for the food."
As he spoke, he picked up a piece of fish tofu with chopsticks and started eating. After finishing it, he picked up some other things and said to Xia Jin, "It's really delicious, spicy and numbing. No wonder there are so many people in there."
Ye Mingzhe and Liang Dechen also tasted it, and then Ye Mingzhe said, "It tastes good. If the price is not too expensive, it has great potential."
Fu Shen also said, "Yes, sister-in-law, I was just about to ask you, are you interested in cooperating with me and opening a store somewhere else?"
Xia Jin said: "I don't have time to manage so many stores at the moment."
Fu Shen said, "I'll help you. Anyway, our businesses are all on the right track now, so I'm not so busy anymore. I have a feeling this thing will be popular in the market, and no matter how many competitors there are in the future, it will be profitable."
"Don't look at me as if I'm being lazy. I was able to estimate your daily profit in just a short while. Do you think I was right?"
He stretched out his hand and gestured. He had guessed accurately, between seven hundred and one thousand. Xia Jin nodded and said, "About that."
Fu Shen continued, "Sister-in-law, this is just a small county town like yours. You can make such a profit. What about driving to a city, Beijing, or even the economically developed south? Have you ever calculated how much profit there is?"
"Besides, there is no such thing outside right now. If we seize the market first, we will definitely make a lot of money."
Xia Jin looked at Gu Jingmo, and Gu Jingmo said, "Just do it if you want to. Fu Shen is right. Although he is unreliable, Ah Jin can still trust him when it comes to business."
Xia Jin thought for a moment and said, "Then let's discuss it after dinner when we get home."
Fu Shen said happily, "Okay, sister-in-law, don't worry, just wait and count the money at home."
Since many of the things in the hot pot restaurant were new to them, Xia Jin demonstrated them to them bit by bit, telling them not to boil them for too long or too short, otherwise they would not be cooked through and would be hard to bite.
After finishing their meal, they returned to Xia Jin's house to discuss the branch opening. As soon as they sat down inside, Fu Shen began to speak: "Come and sit down, let's discuss this."
Xia Jin sat across from him and asked, "How do you plan to form a partnership?"
Fu Shen said, "Sister-in-law, you can invest with your technology. You don't have to worry about anything else. Just wait until the end of the year for the dividends. The three of you who want to invest can invest money, and you will get the share based on how much you invest."
Gu Jingmo asked, "Do you want to open one store at a time, filling Beijing and then expanding to other places, or do you want to open stores all at once, opening stores in economically prosperous cities, and then slowly expand to other places?"
Fu Shen said, "We'll open it in places with good economies first and then develop the rest. I want to take provinces as units, and open it in the provincial capital first."
Gu Jingmo said, "How do we manage it then? What if the people below us become greedy? And what if someone steals the secret recipe?"
Fu Shen said, "Open it first and then manage it slowly."
Xia Jin said, "I have an idea. I wonder if it's feasible. We give each store manager a share of the profits. The better the business, the more money he gets."
"Or we could open a store in the provincial capital first. Once we've gained some fame, we'll tell everyone they can join us with money. They can pay a certain amount every year and then use our brand to open a store. But the catch is that all the stores will use our soup base. We'll open a factory specifically for making the soup base to prevent others from knowing the secret recipe and starting their own business."
"But there is a downside to this. If the shops below are shortchanging us, it will affect us. After all, in the eyes of the public, we are all one family."
Fu Shen said, "Sister-in-law, how did you come up with this?"
Xia Jin thought, isn’t this what I thought of? Many stores in later generations did this, and I just learned from the experience of later generations.
Gu Jingmo said: "Combining these methods, the latter one must not be used, otherwise it will be bad for the brand image in the future."
Fu Shen said, "Then how about this? The general manager of each province will find someone they trust to do the job, and then the store manager of each store will give her a 1% commission. And their soup base will all be delivered to them from us. Is that okay?"
Ye Mingzhe said: "Let's do this for now."
Fu Shen said, "Sister-in-law, how about we cooperate on a hot pot restaurant? Since we're already building a factory, why not make it bigger and make the hot pot base? I've seen that your spicy hot pot bases have tomato, pickled cabbage, bone broth, spicy, and other flavors, and your hot pot also has them, so they should be similar."
Xia Jin said, "The method is similar, but the hot pot base is different from theirs. Do you have enough money?"
Ye Mingzhe said meaningfully, "Xia Jin, don't underestimate your boyfriend. Just spend as much as you can. He has plenty of money, so don't worry."
Xia Jin said, "Okay, I'll write down the recipe for you later. I'll go take a look at the factory when the location is chosen. The base made this way might not be as delicious as the one in my store, but it's almost there."
Xia Jin couldn't add spiritual spring water to each of the soup bases in such a large-scale shop, so the taste was definitely not as amazing as in the shop, but it was still delicious. After all, the soup base secret recipe had been tested many times by Xia Jin, and it was the most delicious one. Moreover, in this era of scarcity of supplies, people were not so picky.
Fu Shen said, "It's okay, it's okay. It's not a big deal if it's a little worse than the store. It's still delicious."
Xia Jin thought for a moment and said, "We can also sell the hot pot base."
Fu Shen said, "They can already buy all the ingredients, so they won't come to the restaurant to eat."
Xia Jin shook his head and said, "No, there are so many people in the country who think that restaurants are expensive, so there must be more people who go out to eat. Those whose families are not well-off are the target customers of the base material. For them, eating out in restaurants is too expensive, so cooking at home is the same."
"And the two are separated. The ones sold in the store are put into buckets with the store name printed on them, and the base sold separately is given a new name and packaged. This way, few people can connect them together."
"And there's another point. You'll know once you buy it and cook it at home. For customers from wealthy families who want to eat that much meat, cooking it yourself may not save them money compared to the store. Moreover, they can't even get many of the things in the store if they make them themselves."
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com