Chapter 61 Chapter 61 (Revised) There is no other way to become famous...
On the sixth day of April, a large number of people gathered in front of the Zhen Family Restaurant early in the morning. Since they had obtained approval for the space at the entrance from the government office, they put two long tables together at the entrance, and the slot machines would be served only when the competition started.
As the time was approaching, more and more people came. People came to the competition not for money. Ordinary fried dumplings were about the same price, so they might as well give it a try. Even if they were among the first ten, they could get two pounds of pork.
Normally, one can only eat one or two bowls of this kind of fried dumplings at most. Even if the money is not earned back after eating them, the restaurant still does not lose money. Therefore, many people sign up. After all, the food is for this food competition, and they are afraid of waste. Today's dumplings have more vegetables and less meat. For Zhen's Restaurant, the registration fee of twenty cents per person is quite profitable.
Also, because the dim sum is fried, people will feel a little greasy if they eat too much. Apart from those who can endure it, few people are willing to force themselves to eat it despite the greasy taste.
Baozhu was not stingy and asked Mrs. Liu to watch over the bucket of hawthorn drink. If anyone felt sick of it, they could drink a cup of hawthorn drink to relieve the greasiness. However, after drinking the drink, their stomach would become even more bloated and it would be difficult to continue eating.
There were a lot of people participating in the competition, and fortunately Baozhu had first obtained approval for this venue from the government office. Because it was so lively today, in order to avoid any accidents, the Street Office also sent yamen runners to patrol.
Looking at the Zhenwei Restaurant across the street, a group of people were waiting to eat noodles. Since the noodles were free and they could get money if they won, there were several times more people there than at the Zhenjia Restaurant.
After all, Baozhu has to pay here, but they let people eat there freely. If you don’t take advantage of such a good deal, you’d be a fool.
The coins were fried and taken out of the pan. The onlookers who had never eaten fried coins before smelled the aroma and regretted not signing up.
Baozhu didn't care what was happening on the other side of the street. She chose the right time and as soon as the gong sounded, a group of people shouted and started eating.
As soon as the bowl was empty, someone handed it a new bowl. There were twenty dimes in the bowl. In ordinary stores, the largest bowl of dimes did not even have twenty dimes.
There are twenty of them in a pile. After eating half of a bowl, people can't resist and want hawthorn drink.
Today, the dumplings were fried with thick oil. Although they tasted delicious, you could eat too much and still feel greasy. But after drinking the drink, I didn't have room in my stomach for a second bowl. Anyway, I felt that this bowl had paid off. If I really couldn't finish it, I wouldn't force myself. Due to time constraints, drinking the drink now would have wasted a lot of time. Anyway, I couldn't catch up with others, so I just concentrated on watching the fun.
At this time, half of the people were still eating their second bowl, and after they finished the second bowl, half of the people at the table left.
Some of the more cunning ones started a business with no capital, secretly setting up a stall in the corner and betting on who would be the last to eat.
Due to time constraints, many people ate quickly and voraciously. Food was precious in those days, so no one would waste anything, no matter how urgent the situation. Even dumplings that accidentally fell on the table were picked up and eaten. If the contestants wasted food, even the spectators would be disgusted and would scold them.
After a quarter of an hour, there were only seven people left on the field, and the one who ate the most had already eaten four bowls.
The slot-eating competition lasted for a whole incense stick. When most of the incense was burned, only three people were still strong enough to continue eating. One person was almost exhausted. After finishing all the slots in the bowl, he could not hold on any longer and had to hold his stomach to defeat.
The other two were evenly matched for a while, so they had to speed up desperately, determined to defeat the other party in terms of quantity.
The crowd of onlookers gathered in three layers inside and outside, and those who had gone to the food restaurant across the street to watch the fun had returned at some point.
Baozhu was unaware of this situation. As the situation reached its final stage, she hired someone to shout slogans among the crowd. The shouts, echoing through the streets, made the restaurant across the street look like a clown.
There was already a colorful cloth hanging up and a note saying "Food Contest". Then the cheers resounded through the sky. Even people who had never eaten at Zhen's Restaurant were excited by the excitement. It was obviously just a slot machine competition, but it had a lot of momentum.
A stick of incense burns out.
The person who ate the most and the fastest stopped eating with lifeless eyes when he heard the gong. The other person also stared blankly at the front.
——I’m really full.
Seeing that the two men were unable to move, Baozhu immediately asked someone to feed each of them a digestive pill, and then asked Jiang Shi to count how many dimes were left in their bowls. The two of them had eaten seven bowls in total, and one of them had six dimes left in his bowl, while the other had only one left in his bowl.
Baozhu was watching from the side, and with a crowd of spectators witnessing, the scene was extremely lively. Baozhu read out the rankings of today's competition.
Once the rankings were announced, monetary rewards were distributed on the spot. The top ten participants were each given two pounds of pork. The remaining participants were verified and distributed by the shop assistants, and everyone who participated received a half-price coupon. Even the onlookers received a bonus: waiters were sent to distribute coupons among the crowd. While not as much as half-price, it still gave them some extra cash when they ate.
"Thank you all for your support today. Our Zhen's Restaurant is the only one in Bianjing. We will continue to hold this food competition at this time next year. We've grown tired of the slot machines this year, so we'll try new dishes next year. Please continue to come."
In addition to holding a competition to gain fame, there is something more important today - to distance ourselves from that fake food restaurant.
The hired man called out to the crowd, "Boss, the shop across the street is also holding a competition today. I wonder what the relationship is between the two?"
"It doesn't matter at all. It's up to you, our guests, to decide what's real and what's fake. Our restaurant has always been honest and trustworthy, and we prioritize taste. Even the slots we use for competitions are filled with the freshest vegetables and meat."
As soon as she said this, the spectators who were running back and forth on both sides to watch the excitement immediately laughed, "I see that the restaurant across the street is called Zhenwei Restaurant. I think it should be called Jiawei Restaurant."
A group of people burst into laughter, and more and more people talked about this matter. The competition was finally concluded at this point. Everyone sneered when the restaurant opposite was mentioned. Now that they had restored their own reputation and spread the restaurant's fame, if that fake restaurant had not always been trying to scam people and making people feel as disgusted as if they had swallowed a fly, Baozhu would not bother to take such an opponent seriously.
Running a restaurant is not about making money overnight. Making a lot of money at once does not guarantee that you will continue to make money in the future. In short, you just have to wait and see.
Baozhu was only concerned about her own side and didn't even spare a glance at the restaurant across the street. When the crowd dispersed, she heard that although the food at the restaurant across the street was free to eat in today's competition, there would also be rewards for winners.
But the shopkeeper was not like Baozhu, who went to the yamen in advance to enclose a piece of land.
He saw Baozhu setting up the table outside and wanted to follow suit, but before he could finish setting up the stall, the government officials came and told him to put away the table and stools. He pointed to Baozhu's place outside and tried to defend his own family, but he didn't realize that Baozhu had asked the government for approval to hold the competition in advance.
They couldn't set up the stalls outside, and the scene inside the shop instantly became smaller. Many people who signed up had already crowded the shop tightly, and the onlookers who just stared at the door felt unhappy. Not long after it started, one or two of them shook their heads and left.
Since they held the competition to save face and didn't charge registration fees, they cut corners on the noodles, making the soup watery and no one knows what was put in it. Maybe they didn't want people to eat too much to avoid being extravagant.
Many people vomited after finishing a bowl of noodles, with noodles hanging from their mouths and noses. There were not many diners left watching, and the scene was disgusting. The restaurant was even more messy, with a group of people crowding the restaurant into a dirty mess. There were not many diners left, and they dispersed in an instant.
After the game, many people who ate noodles left cursing. Not only was the food unpalatable, but they even vomited out what they had eaten last night out of disgust.
Baozhu thought that it was no wonder that there were not so many people coming to watch the fun at her restaurant at the beginning. It was only when they were halfway through the race that more people came. It turned out that the restaurant across the street had overturned.
This not only made Zhen's restaurant famous, but also made the restaurant across the street less and less popular.
Although Baozhu spent some money on the competition, she gave out a lot of discount coupons in the end, so more people came to consume. They also saw that the store not only had pork and cabbage, but also many fried dumplings with fresh flavors. They wanted to try everything, so Baozhu simply offered an assorted coin, so diners no longer had to hesitate about what to eat, as all kinds of flavors were available.
Zhen's Restaurant was packed with diners, while the restaurant across the street was empty.
Now everyone knows which of the two restaurants is real and which is fake, and the news that the restaurant across the street held a competition and made diners vomit has spread everywhere in the streets and alleys.
This joke was even more popular than the slot machine competition at Zhen's Restaurant.
Now that business was booming again, Baozhu had no time to bother with him anymore. She was only focused on adding a few new dishes to the menu. Okay, keep the customers.
Originally, the restaurant was only famous in the east and south of the city, but now that the competition has been held, people in the west and north of the city also know that there is a Zhen's restaurant on Caomen Street that is affordable and delicious.
Even if they have to take a detour, they are still here to see the excitement. Diners who go to Wa Zi to watch a play would rather order two dishes at Zhen's Restaurant after the show and ask the waiter to get a pot of wine to go with it.
As for the fact that Zhenwei Restaurant has been bankrupt again and again, even if it tries to learn how to operate from Zhenjia Restaurant, no one will think that the two restaurants are the same.
The shopkeeper was a scoundrel who had risen through the streets. He was very good at bullying those below him and cheating those above him. A wealthy man had been cheated by him before. I heard from my mother that he had rented a shop from him to sell cloth.
When the lease expired and the business was booming, he asked the other party to raise the rent. When the other party no longer wanted to rent the shop, he started the same business in the shop himself.
It just so happened that the place where he originally bought the cloth had moved, and although the store name was exactly the same, he fooled the customers into thinking that the two were the same. No matter how they came to him to persuade him, it was useless. He just spread the word that the other party was threatening him, and if anything happened to him, it would be the rich family taking advantage of their power to bully them.
It is inevitable to make enemies when doing business. The rivals exaggerated the situation and made it seem as if they were really persecuting the scoundrel. In the end, the rich man was afraid of involving other businesses, so he simply closed the cloth shop. Anyway, he looked like a scoundrel and made people hate him.
The Zhen family was not a long-standing and prestigious family, and that scoundrel was planning just that. He thought the Zhen family would not dare to attack him privately, so he just took this opportunity to make some quick money. If the Zhen family came to him to negotiate, he might even be able to get some money back.
In just over a month, the restaurant across the street closed down and a sign for rent was hung at the door again. Jiang Shi would spit at it every time he passed by. If anyone wanted to rent the shop, he would tell them about what the scoundrel had done. As a result, the shop remained idle because people were afraid that if it was rented out and the business was good, someone else would take it over.
There has been a lot of rain this year, so even though my second brother is on vacation, he doesn't dare to relax and keeps checking every day.
Since the beginning of the year, my second brother has been interacting more with the Kong family. The young lady of the Kong family often comes to Baozhu's shop to find her. She is one year older than Baozhu, and they have similar personalities. What they like most is food, and they often share which restaurant in Bianjing has good food.
"You are truly a very capable person. This year, my mother started asking me to manage the accounts. I feel dizzy just looking at the income and expenditure."
Miss Kong was wearing casual clothes and looked at Baozhu fiddling with the abacus with admiration.
In summer, all restaurants come up with new and unique ideas, and Zhen's Restaurant also wants to use lotus flowers and lotus leaves in its dishes.
The restaurant is going to serve new dishes soon. Baozhu counted the bill and asked Miss Kong to help try the new dishes prepared by the restaurant - lotus leaf glutinous rice chicken and lotus leaf steamed pork.
"Sister Yuzhen, try it for me first. You've always been picky about food. If you think it's good, I'll feel confident."
Seeing Baozhu's teasing, Madam Kong glared at her and said, "I always praise every dish in your restaurant when I go out. Even if I have a picky taste, I will still be impressed by the food in your restaurant."
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