Volume 1: Reborn in the 1980s, selling lunch boxes with my mother Chapter 123: Fuqiang fans sell for the price of hairtail
Tong Zhiyuan was a businessman himself, and he quickly figured out why Hu Qiongfang wanted to sell this kind of small pot in the store.
Clay pots have good heat preservation effects. Eating hot food in winter is definitely better than boxed lunches.
Moreover, the casserole is not easy to take away, unless you bring a small pot to the store and ask someone to pour the vegetables in the casserole into it, otherwise you can only eat it in the store.
Rice is free, but the drinks, drinks, and other hot dishes in the restaurant all cost money.
Does hotpot make money from the soup base?
Of course not! Hotpot restaurants make money from the ingredients!
When Tong Zhiyuan was checking out just now, he saw two rows of hot dishes written under the price list. Vegetarian dishes were 20 cents each, while meat dishes ranged from 50 cents to one dollar.
Those boxed lunch restaurants that followed suit wanted to compete with Hu Qiongfang for the business of out-of-town tourists. I'm afraid they didn't expect that Hu Qiongfang would actually turn the tables and snatch the local diners they had lost.
Those who do business along the provincial road are not short of money. In the past, in winter, everyone would find a small restaurant they often go to, order a hot pot, a couple of stir-fried dishes, and ask the store to pour a few bowls of sorghum wine, and have a hot meal.
Ever since those restaurants switched to making boxed lunches, there will probably be fewer restaurants selling hot pot along the provincial roads this winter.
I didn’t expect Hu Qiongfang to notice this phenomenon!
She did not choose to engage in a price war with those companies that switched to selling boxed lunches. Instead, she took a step back and picked up the customers that those companies had lost.
How come this woman is so good at business?
Because the lunch box he brought was too small to hold so many dishes, Hu Qiongfang simply lent him a tin bucket, then washed the casserole lids, turned them upside down, and stacked the three casseroles in the bucket one by one.
A straw was stuffed next to it so that the casserole inside would not shake and the soup would not spill out.
In other words, he has this "special treatment".
Boss Tong thought happily.
Didn’t you see that everyone else was eating in the store? Those who really wanted to take it home also ran back to get the pot.
As expected, Sister Qiongfang treats me differently...
Tong Zhiyuan happily carried the tin bucket back to the gas station. After eating, he asked two employees to look after the store while he went to the town to find a matchmaker.
He was not sure that Hu Qiongfang would agree to marry him. He had prepared this matchmaker for his ex-wife.
Tong Zhiyuan never thought that Xu Hongli would have the nerve to beg him to give her another chance?
What chance? Give her a chance to cheat on him again?
Boss Tong is not so generous.
Didn't Xu Hongli say that she couldn't live in her parents' home anymore? Then she should find someone else to marry.
Anyway, there are always men who covet her beauty and don't mind being a living cuckold. Tong Zhiyuan has long passed the age of "marrying a wife only based on her face" and he really has no interest in women like Xu Hongli.
However, it was really not a good look to have Xu Hongli come to his shop to cause trouble all the time.
The most important thing is that Grandma Hu is still selling rice balls at the gas station. She sees his ex-wife coming to see him every day. Will she agree to let him marry Hu Qiongfang in the future?
As it concerns the impression of his future mother-in-law, Boss Tong said to the matchmaker with great wealth:
As long as she can find a new partner for Xu Hongli before the Chinese New Year, Tong Zhiyuan will give her a hundred yuan as a matchmaking fee!
One hundred bucks?!
The matchmaker's heart started beating faster at that moment.
You can't make that much money as a matchmaker these days. You can usually just get some sweets and snacks to eat. When the marriage is successful, the man's family will send a fish or two pounds of pork, which is considered a very decent thank you gift.
Give money? Unless it is a family with special circumstances, such as a boy with a disability or a girl with a bad reputation before marriage, in order to find a partner, they have to give extra money to the matchmaker.
But it’s not much, ten dollars is the maximum.
It's rare to meet a sucker like Tong Zhiyuan, who is willing to pay a hundred yuan as a matchmaker's reward in order to get rid of his ex-wife's entanglement!
After seeing off the wealthy boss Tong, the matchmaker rolled up her sleeves. She had to make this deal, as it was worth a hundred dollars.
If no one is willing to marry her, she would rather divorce her old man and let him marry Xu Hongli!
Anyway, no one can stop her from earning this hundred dollars!
…
While the matchmaker was running around for a hundred dollars, Hu Qiongfang had already started frying hairtail in a big pot in her yard.
In the afternoon, the truck driver who had promised to bring them the goods finally brought her the first batch of frozen hairtail.
The frozen hairtail that is as wide as three fingers stretched side by side costs less than 20 cents per pound when bought from a truck driver. The same size of frozen hairtail is sold at 38 cents per pound at the town supply and marketing cooperative, and people have to line up before dawn to get it.
The situation has been a little better in the past two years. Frozen hairtail can be bought at the fish stalls in town. However, the price is a bit higher than that at the supply and marketing cooperatives. A hairtail this big costs 4.2 cents per pound.
There was nothing we could do about it. Sometimes when we had guests at home and the supply and marketing cooperatives couldn’t buy them, we had to buy them at the market at a high price.
Jiang Tian had no intention of competing with the fishmongers for food.
She persuaded Hu Qiongfang to sell fried hairtail directly in the store.
When the weather gets cold , frying hairtail is not as hard as in the summer, especially in the days when there was no air conditioning and heating. Frying hairtail by the stove was not only not hard, but also a very popular job.
It’s warm next to the stove, and you can eat fried or minced hairtail.
The freshly fried hairtail is crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. It tastes amazing just by sprinkling some salt and chili powder on it.
When Hu Qiongfang was frying hairtail, Jiang Tian and Jiang Cheng liked to sit under the stove and help light the fire. They were like two greedy little cats and would always receive food from Hu Qiongfang.
The fried hairtail fish was piled up on an open bamboo plate, and a whole piece of large hairtail fish cost 50 cents per pound.
There was also a bamboo plate next to it, filled with small pieces or fried cutlassfish slices, at 2.5 yuan per pound.
Within two days, the Fangjie Restaurant, which had been somewhat deserted, was once again filled with long queues.
According to people who have eaten it, Hu Qiongfang’s hairtail fish, they don’t know what they use to marinate it before frying it, but it tastes better than the ones they fry at home!
And the price is not expensive.
If they don't go to the supply and marketing cooperative to queue up, and buy it at the market themselves, the unprocessed frozen hairtail will cost 30 or 40 cents per pound, and the size of the fish is not even as big as Hu Qiongfang's.
Now people fry them and sell them for only fifty cents a pound. Isn't it about the same price as if they buy them and fry them themselves?
If you can't bear to buy the big piece, you can buy the small one next to it, which is only 25 cents per pound. Buy it back, cut a plate of snow vegetables and cook it, and it's enough for the whole family to have a meal.
The neighbors all praised Hu Qiongfang for her honest business practices, and praised her so much that her face turned red.
Well, the neighbors may have forgotten that there is a layer of batter outside the fried hairtail.
How can the buyer be as smart as the seller?
The cost price of frozen hairtail is 20 cents per pound, but the cost price of batter is only a few cents.
Fifty cents worth of flour, plus two packets of starch, add water to make a batter, which is enough for their store to use for a day.
The Fuqiang flour was sold at the price of hairtail...
No wonder Tiantian said that selling fried hairtail makes more money than selling frozen hairtail.
