Food: Selling Boxed Meals at a Construction Site

Chapter 68: Chapter 68: Life is Looking Up

Today, Delicious Restaurant launched three main dishes. Some of the workers who came to pick up their tea eggs hesitated between the two restaurants for a moment before ultimately choosing Delicious Restaurant.

’They have more main dishes here. If three of us share, we can try three different things!’

However, loyal customers like Qiao Xingguo didn’t hesitate at all. They grabbed their tea eggs and headed straight back to Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant.

A satisfied smile appeared on Jin Dayong’s face as he looked at the packed dining area and the endless stream of workers coming to collect their tea eggs.

’Xu’s Fast Food, I’ve seen right through you two little brats’ tricks again. Let’s see what else you’ve got.’

Starting from eleven, when the workers got off their shifts, Xu An clearly noticed that the customer traffic wasn’t as heavy as yesterday.

Yesterday, the restaurant had been packed, with a considerable line of people outside waiting to get their food.

Today, the dining area was just barely full, and only a few scattered workers were waiting outside for food.

Without even having to think about it, Xu An knew that Delicious Restaurant must have cooked up some new gimmick to lure customers away.

Before yesterday, this might have worried Xu An.

But now, with the support of a huge number of orders from office workers, Xu An didn’t need to fight with Delicious Restaurant over this particular customer base.

Xu An planned to focus all his efforts on tapping into the potential of the office worker market and drumming up more of their orders.

The past two days had proven that offering a choice between two main dishes was a very effective way to attract customers.

Such an effective strategy, of course, had to be applied to the office workers too.

To install the security cameras, Xu An had set up a computer at the cashier’s counter and run an internet cable. Now, if he wanted to redesign the flyers, he didn’t need to go to an internet cafe; he could do it right in the restaurant.

After the lunch rush was over, Xu An sat down behind the counter and began designing new flyers.

The content of the flyer didn’t change much. He just added a photo of the second main dish along with a description, leaving everything else the same.

It was worth noting that after the first photoshoot, once Wei learned that Xu An would need him to photograph dishes for at least another twenty-one days, he didn’t brag about it when he returned to his company.

Instead, he put on a show of being exhausted, complaining that the client was unreasonable and the food was awful, which earned him sympathy and snacks from his colleagues.

Just as Wei had expected, all of Xu An’s subsequent photography orders were assigned to him without question.

He got to stuff himself with greasy, delicious food at Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant after every shoot, and then go back to the office to be plied with snacks. Life was absolutely blissful.

These new flyers Xu An had made would be packed into every boxed lunch the next day, with the remainder distributed by the two flyer distributors and riders like Old Han.

They closed up shop at 7:00 PM, and by the time they finished cleaning, it was nearly 8:00.

Xu An went upstairs and saw that at some point, Xu Kang and Xu Le had fallen asleep, slumped over the table.

Instead of waking them, he carefully carried them to the three-wheeled cart, helped Granny Xu aboard, then locked up the restaurant and headed back in the direction of Xu Family Village.

The closer they got to Xu Family Village, the quieter the road became. The only sounds were the rustle of the evening wind through the treetops, the hum of the wheels on the road, and the breathing of the four of them.

For the past several days, the two little ones had been so exhausted by closing time that they were already asleep.

Before, the two little ones would have already had their baths and been sound asleep in bed by eight o’clock.

Now, they were only just starting to head home at eight. They were groggy and half-asleep through their baths, and the moment he put them to bed afterward, they were out like a light.

It pained Xu An to see this, but he couldn’t possibly leave two small children home alone.

There were plenty of creeks and streams around the village. If they were to sneak out and have an accident, it would have been better to just send them to their aunt’s house in the first place. At least there, they would be guaranteed to grow up.

But at the restaurant, they were the only children and had no one to play with. They could only find a quiet corner where they wouldn’t disturb anyone and play with puzzles or building blocks.

’Maybe I should find a nearby kindergarten for them?’

The thought surfaced in Xu An’s mind for the first time.

Before, he had been so focused on surviving, on avoiding college, and on fulfilling his promise to his grandmother that he’d had no time to worry about such things. Now that the business had stabilized and was even thriving, Xu An had the breathing room to consider these problems.

In his previous life, the two little ones had never attended kindergarten or preschool. When they reached school age, they were sent straight to first grade, and of course, they couldn’t keep up.

While their classmates were acing every test, the two of them were still learning their ABCs and what 1+1 equaled. The enormous gap caused them to develop an aversion to studying.

Recalling the traumatic experience of tutoring them in his past life, a pained expression crossed Xu An’s face. He absolutely did not want to go through that again in this life.

’I have to get them enrolled by the time school starts in September!’

"Granny, I’m planning to enroll Kangkang and Lele in kindergarten this September."

Granny Xu, who had been dozing against the side of the cart, perked up the moment she heard Xu An speak.

She thought about how bored Xu Kang and Lele had been at the restaurant lately and agreed that sending them to kindergarten was a good idea.

But then she thought of the tuition fees and couldn’t help but worry. The kindergarten near their village was six hundred a month. For two children, that would come to over ten thousand a year.

"That tuition isn’t cheap," Granny Xu suggested. "I’ve seen the other kids in the village just go to a transitional preschool class for a year before elementary school. Why don’t we wait another year and have them do that?"

"Granny, the restaurant is already bringing in over ten thousand a month. They’ll only be in kindergarten for two years. Once they start elementary school, we won’t have to spend much."

Granny Xu thought about the shop’s earnings over the past few days and realized he was right. Since they could afford it, there was no reason to make the children miss out. She nodded in agreement.

Once the topic was settled, a silence fell between them again.

"Anzi," Granny Xu said suddenly with a smile, "that promise we made about the twenty thousand yuan... let’s just consider it fulfilled. From now on, you can decide your own path."

Xu An whipped his head around to look at Granny Xu, his eyes wide with surprise and disbelief.

’Has Granny finally come around?’

"Watch the road!" Granny Xu yelped, startled by his sudden turn. "You’re still driving! I was just worried that when I get old and go see your parents, they’ll blame me for not letting you go to college, for not taking good care of you."

"Granny, what are you talking about?" Xu An cut in. "This was all my own decision. If Mom and Dad were going to blame anyone, they’d blame me."

He thought back to his previous life, when he had abandoned Xu Kang and Lele to go to college. He hadn’t struck it rich or become wildly successful; in the end, he’d just found a 996 job and was barely scraping by.

’Running the restaurant now was a little more tiring than his 996 job,’ Xu An thought, ’but he was earning far more than he had in his previous life, and he got to be with his family. What could be better?’

Hearing this, Granny Xu couldn’t help but scold Xu An for a moment, but a brilliant smile nevertheless lit up her face.

’Things were actually pretty great right now. The days ahead looked brighter and brighter.’

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