Chapter 243 - 208: Hiring Needs

Chapter 243: Chapter 208: Hiring Needs

Liu Tong walked out of Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant, staring blankly at the two documents in his hands.

One was the proposal he had prepared to persuade Xu An to partner with him; the other was a half-finished proposal Xu An had given him. The content of both was very similar. If someone who didn’t know better saw them, they’d surely think the two documents were a rough draft and a revised version...

But that wasn’t the point. When he thought about the commission Xu An had promised, Liu Tong tossed these minor details to the back of his mind. ’Why waste time thinking about this random stuff when I could be making more money!’

Xu An watched Liu Tong’s departing figure and nodded with great satisfaction.

’Liu Tong and Liu Zhaowen are quite the pair. One gave me the idea to branch out all over Hai City, and the other is helping me put that plan into action. They’re really something else!’

BEEP BEEP—

The horn of a small truck blared from outside the shop. Two workers got out and carried a drink cooler into Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant’s first location, placing it side-by-side with the one already there. Then they went back to the truck, moved cases of drinks into the shop, waited for Xu An’s signature and stamp, and then said their goodbyes and left.

Xu An’s partnership with Haiquan Beverage Company had officially ended yesterday afternoon. Since they weren’t offering any promotional discounts, Xu An naturally wouldn’t be restocking their apple cider vinegar drink, which sold for a high price of 3.5 yuan. Instead, he had thrown himself into the arms of a Hai City fast-moving consumer goods company, signing a beverage sales contract with them and leasing two drink coolers.

One was placed in Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant, and the other was put in Xu’s Braised Shop.

It was called a lease, but if the partnership lasted for more than twelve months, the drink coolers would belong to Xu An.

This wasn’t special treatment for Xu An; it was a discount that all partners could enjoy. During the first twelve months of the lease period, as long as the business operated normally and beverage sales reached the minimum requirement in the contract, there was no rental fee.

At eleven in the morning, the busiest period for Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant arrived. Everyone was so busy inside and outside the shop that they were run off their feet. Even Granny Xu’s abacus was clacking away furiously. Only Xu An was casually looking over the latest business summary report for Xu’s Fast Food.

The report clearly showed that Jisu Delivery had a definite impact on Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant. The areas hit hardest were Silver Star Office Building and Red Brick Creative Park, which had high concentrations of office workers. Order volumes there had dropped by one hundred and two hundred, respectively. The other few locations were holding steady, neither increasing nor decreasing, remaining very stable.

’Not bad. Overall, the impact isn’t as big as I imagined. It’s within an acceptable range.’

Next, he looked at Wang Fulong’s August work summary. They were currently following up with seventeen companies interested in a partnership, three of which had already entered the internal review process. Eleven bids were submitted in August, and seven had made it to the bidding stage. One of those was awaiting results, while four of the remaining six had bidding meetings scheduled for next week...

’Hmm, the progress is very encouraging. If we can close deals with even half of these companies, I wouldn’t be afraid even if Chifan La entered the market right now.’

He then signed five purchase orders in a row and read through Tang Wen’s detailed proposal for the upcoming lottery event. Before he knew it, it was three in the afternoon. The alarm he’d set that morning went off right on time, reminding Xu An that it was time to buy groceries and pick up Xu Kang and Xu Le from school.

After locking the documents in a cabinet under the cash register, Xu An got on his small tricycle and set off.

He thought he had arrived quite early, but after chatting with a few other parents while he waited, he discovered that many of them had been waiting here all day...

It was, well, pretty shocking.

Just as the dismissal bell rang, teachers led neat lines of children from the playground.

At first, the lines managed to maintain some basic order. But as soon as some of the children spotted their moms, dads, grandpas, and grandmas, the formations fell into chaos. They broke from their lines, shouting and screaming as they ran toward the kindergarten gate. As they ran, they wailed incoherently, big fat tears streaming down their faces...

The air filled with the sounds of crying children, teachers struggling to keep the lines in order, and the pained voices of concerned parents.

For a moment, the scene was utter chaos.

Just as Xu An was worrying if his two little ones were also full of separation anxiety like the other children, he caught sight of them. The two tots, one in a blue tracksuit and the other in red, were running toward him hand in hand. Unlike the other kids, their faces were covered in brilliant smiles.

Seeing this, Xu An breathed a sigh of relief and opened his arms, waiting for them to jump into his embrace. But to his surprise, when they reached him, they deftly dodged his arms with a quick turn and ran straight for the familiar little tricycle.

The tiny figures clung to the tall cargo bed, straining on their tiptoes to peek inside. They counted on their little fingers, "Chicken wings, meat, shrimp, squid..."

Only after confirming that all the ingredients for the dishes Xu An had promised to make this morning were there did the two of them finally leap into his arms and sweetly call out, "Brother!"

Xu An felt very hurt. Deeply hurt. ’To think that a big living person like me is less important than a pile of ingredients...’

He thoroughly ruffled their hair, messing up their smooth locks until they looked like birds’ nests. Only then, satisfied, did he lift them onto the tricycle, twist the throttle, and head for home.

The two little ones had clearly adapted very well to kindergarten life. They chattered away, one after the other, telling Xu An all about their day: what games they played, what books they read, what tasty things they ate. They even gave him a detailed report on how many times they’d pooped...

As they were talking, Xu Le suddenly leaned on the railing behind Xu An, poked his back, and asked with a curious tone, "Brother, isn’t a peach a fruit? How come a kid said you can buy things inside a peach? Is that true?"

’Buy things inside a peach?’ His brain processed it for a moment before it clicked. ’The kid must have meant TaoBao!’

"There’s an app called TaoBao, and we can use it to buy things from all over the country..."

As Xu An was carefully answering their questions, they came up with new ones.

"Can we buy things with this ’peach’ too?"

"Yes, everyone can."

"What kind of stuff does it have? Is it like a supermarket?"

"It has everything. You can even buy things from places that are very, very, very far away!"

"Brother, we want to buy something on the ’peach’!"

"What do you want to buy?"

"Umm... we want... we want to buy a big drumstick! A super, super big drumstick! A drumstick as big as your arm, Brother!"

...

Back home, Xu An took out his phone, planning to satisfy their ’little’ wish.

He typed the word "drumstick" into the search bar. The first result was a salt-baked drumstick from a shop called "Pi". The two little ones were completely captivated by the picture of the plump, juicy drumstick and clamored that they wanted that one.

After confirming with them three times, Xu An stopped trying to persuade them and placed the order without hesitation. He planned on letting them learn a harsh lesson about the world and understand the meaning of "pictures are for reference only."

After the order was complete, a row of "You might be interested in" items appeared on the order confirmation page. As his eyes fell on one of the products, the finger that was about to hit the back button froze.

"Zhou Baiya Flagship Store, Braised Duck Collarbones..."

He clicked on the product to enter the store, selected the "Products" tab, and the shop’s items jumped out at him.

Duck wings, duck collarbones, duck necks, duck hearts... all these items had one thing in common: they were all vacuum-packed braised goods!

SLAP—

Xu An slapped his thigh hard, the pain making him grimace. ’How could I have forgotten about TaoBao! I clearly used it to buy plenty of workbooks for Xu Kang and Xu Le in my past life...’

’I have the braised products, the sales permit is being processed, the vacuum-sealing machine is at the shop, and the packaging bags are ready! I even have the customers—my ’Big Eyes’ account has a full forty thousand followers!’

With a flick of his finger, the screen on his phone switched from the TaoBao product page to a browser. He typed in a few words, and it quickly jumped to a new page.

"...a personal TaoBao Store can later be upgraded to an enterprise store by submitting supplementary materials... registration capital for a food sales store is 1,000 yuan..."

’There’s room for another desk where Tang Wen is, so we can hire one more person...’

The page switched again, this time to a job recruitment app. On the account he had registered long ago, Xu An added a new job posting.

"One TaoBao Store Operator..."