Food: Selling Boxed Meals at a Construction Site

Chapter 55: Chapter 55: Ah Wei’s Guarantee

’Construction workers leave when a job site is done. Students ditch me for their winter and summer breaks. Only the office workers! They are my true companions!’

’From Monday to Sunday, people are working every single day, without exception! They never stop! It’s absolutely fantastic!’

The students at Hai City Nautical College were about to go on vacation, which posed a significant crisis for Xu An’s fledgling box lunch business.

But this crisis wasn’t without a solution. Xu An pinned his hopes of overcoming it on the office workers.

’I already have a storefront, which should give people a basic level of trust.’

’The second step is to increase the visibility of Xu’s Fast Food among the office workers. The cheapest, simplest, and most effective way to do that is, of course—handing out flyers!’

Realizing that flyers with nothing but dry text wouldn’t be very appealing, Xu An decided to find a photography or advertising agency to handle the professional photos and design.

But after inquiring at a few ad agencies, he was stunned. The price to design a single flyer ranged from 500 to 2,000.

The price wasn’t unreasonable, but with his empty wallet, Xu An had no choice but to walk away.

In his previous life, Xu An had been an ordinary office administrator. While he may not have mastered any particular skill, he had a solid, basic understanding of many.

In an office, an administrator is never just an administrator. Sometimes, they’re the receptionist, the secretary, the HR rep, the janitor, the graphic designer...

He had to be whatever the company needed him to be, with skill points dotted in every conceivable area.

It was unlikely that Xu An could design a *perfect* flyer, but drawing on his memory of other flyers to create a decent one? That, he could do.

He could muddle through the flyer’s layout with his meager design skills, but the photography had to be done by a professional.

Xu An shelled out two hundred yuan to hire a food photographer from an agency for a total of seven retouched photos.

At times like this, Xu An missed the smartphones from a later era. Rear cameras with tens of millions of pixels were common, and high-end ones even reached a hundred million. If he had one, he could have just snapped a few pictures himself—more than enough for a flyer.

As for the phone cameras now...

’Oh, never mind. I don’t even have a phone, not even an old brick. Hiring a photographer was the right choice.’

Xu An placed his order with the photography agency, which then assigned a photographer to the shoot.

When they heard the job was a food shoot, several photographers eagerly raised their hands to take the assignment.

But when they inquired further and learned it wasn’t for a major hotel or restaurant, but just a tiny, ordinary fast food joint, the raised hands all went down.

In the end, the task was forced upon the newest hire—a rookie named Wei.

Wei, for his part, didn’t mind the assignment. As a rookie fresh to the industry, his biggest fear was being given a task he couldn’t handle.

’A food shoot for a tiny fast food place? That should be a piece of cake. I might even be able to snag a free meal and save some money.’

"Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant, 63 South Zijing Road, Hai City."

Wei followed the registered address to Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant. It was the only shop on the street without a sign, which made it very easy to spot.

The dining area was sparse, with only three rows of empty tables. Voices drifted out from the kitchen intermittently, carrying the faint, fragrant aroma of chili peppers.

"Is the owner in? I’m Wei, the photographer. Are the dishes ready for the shoot?"

Xu An and Zhou Qi were in the kitchen prepping ingredients. Hearing Wei’s voice, Xu An quickly washed his hands and started walking out, drying them as he went.

A single glance at the photographer, Wei, was enough to make Xu An feel like his eyes were being assaulted by the fashion sense of the era.

The year 2012 was a long way from the "scene" phase, so it wasn’t quite as much of an eyesore. However, the trend that year was all about vibrant colors—dazzling shades of red, yellow, orange, and the like.

At that moment, Wei was wearing red casual shorts, a stylish bright yellow t-shirt, and deep blue canvas shoes. He looked like a walking plate of scrambled eggs with tomatoes.

’Ah, fashion!’

Suppressing his own profound ignorance of modern fashion, Xu An politely invited Wei to sit and have some tea, then turned and headed back to the kitchen to start cooking.

The concept for the flyer was simple: list a full seven-day menu, which would be updated weekly.

Based on a four-week month, that meant four different menus, for a total of twenty-eight different meal sets.

Today, they were shooting the menu for the first week. After closing up shop yesterday, Xu An had spent the afternoon and evening mulling it over, then finalized it after a discussion with Zhou Qi this morning.

Day one menu: Fish with Pickled Mustard Greens, Steamed Egg with Minced Pork, Fish-Fragrant Eggplant, and Seaweed Egg Drop Soup;

Day two menu: Braised Pork Belly, Sour Beans with Minced Pork, Stir-fried Cabbage with Vermicelli, and Mung Bean Sweet Soup;

Day three menu: Twice-cooked Pork with Celtuce, Braised Tofu, Wolf-Tooth Potatoes, and Lotus Root and Pork Bone Soup;

Day four menu: Braised Lion’s Head Meatballs...

...

Zhou Qi was completely stunned when he saw the menu. Back when he worked at Jiajia Fast Food Restaurant, he’d heard the construction workers mention that the food at Xu An’s box lunch stall was excellent.

He could tell from yesterday’s box lunches that the dishes were good, but he never imagined they would be *this* good every single day!

He was even starting to worry that his boss would go out of business because he wasn’t making a profit. He’d seen such generous owners before, but they rarely managed to stay afloat.

The ingredients were already prepped, so all that was left was to cook them. One after another, dishes emerged from the kitchen as if on an assembly line and were carried out to the tables.

One dish, two dishes, three dishes...

Surrounded by the fragrant aroma of the food, Wei’s mouth began to water faster and faster. He was worried he might accidentally drool on the dishes during the photoshoot.

Once the dishes for the day one menu were cooked, Xu An came out of the kitchen and started arranging them on the plates.

The plates he was using were secondhand dishes that Xu An had scored at a flea market the day before. They were simple white plates and bowls, with no patterns or embellishments, giving them a very plain and simple look.

After plating the food, he had Wei take a few shots from various angles. Xu An leaned in to look at the resulting photos and couldn’t help but frown.

’The photos look good, but something feels off.’

Xu An stared at the exquisitely garnished dishes on the plates, wondering what was wrong.

Then he saw the disposable containers on the tricycle outside, and it hit him. ’It’s not authentic!’

’My whole brand is about being authentic! The photos have to look exactly like the actual box lunches. Posing them on fancy plates just won’t do.’

Xu An brought in the disposable containers and neatly transferred the food from the plates into them. He nodded in satisfaction. ’Now *this* is more like it!’

Wei was a little baffled by this whole sequence of events, but he was just a humble photographer. The client calls the shots. He picked up his camera and started snapping away at the box lunch.

After the shoot, Xu An reviewed the photos on the camera again. This time, he was finally satisfied. ’This is what I wanted. An authentic photo—what you see is what you get.’

The photoshoot went very smoothly. Wei also had a very enjoyable meal—in fact, he was a little stuffed.

Completely won over by the food, Wei patted his chest before he left, promising Xu An he would have all the photos retouched and delivered by that very night.

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