Food: Selling Boxed Meals at a Construction Site

Chapter 75: Chapter 75: My Twice-cooked Pork

Ye Ning had gotten a rush job yesterday. The deadline was tight, but the pay was excellent. As soon as he received the down payment, he dove straight into work.

He finally managed to complete the project. A glance at the clock showed it was already eleven in the morning; he had been working for over twenty-four hours straight.

His delivery from Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant was due in about half an hour. Ye Ning planned to take a quick shower, then eat before finally getting some sleep.

At 11:20 AM, footsteps sounded outside his door, but they quickly faded away.

At 11:30 AM, it was silent outside his door.

At 11:40 AM, there was still no sound from the hallway. ’Are they running late because they have too many orders today?’

...

As he waited, an overwhelming wave of drowsiness washed over Ye Ning, and he slumped over his desk, fast asleep.

The next time Ye Ning opened his eyes, it was already 2:30 in the afternoon.

’It’s over! My lunch!’

He grabbed his phone. No missed calls. In his messenger app, the chat window for Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant showed no new messages either.

He walked to the front door and peered through the peephole. Seeing no one, Ye Ning quickly opened it, stuck his head out, and scanned the hallway. There was no lunchbox in sight.

At that moment, a dreadful thought surfaced in Ye Ning’s mind. ’Did... Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant forget my order?’

To confirm his suspicion, Ye Ning opened up his chat with Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant.

’Hey, it’s 2:30. Why hasn’t my lunch been delivered yet?’

Xu An was in the middle of logging the next day’s orders when a new message popped up. He clicked on it, and his brain instantly short-circuited.

’That’s impossible, all of today’s orders have been delivered!’

He flipped his notebook to today’s page and scanned the orders, from the first to the very last. Sure enough, Ye Ning’s order was nowhere to be found.

He scrolled up in their chat history and confirmed that Ye Ning had, in fact, placed an order the day before.

Now it was Xu An’s turn to be dumbfounded. He really had missed Ye Ning’s order.

’My apologies, we missed logging your order. Can I add a free drink to your next one as compensation?’

’...’

After confirming that his order had been forgotten, Ye Ning collapsed to the floor, looked up at the ceiling, and roared.

AHHH!

’Looks like it’s instant noodles for me today. I think I still have a couple of braised beef flavor cups left?’

After rummaging through his cabinets and finding two cups of instant noodles, he started them steeping and opened his "1024" chat group to see what everyone was up to.

He scrolled up and was immediately confronted by a picture of a lunchbox. The dish taking up most of the frame was twice-cooked pork.

Thick, even slices of marbled pork glistened with a reddish-brown, perfectly caramelized sheen. Specks of green pepper, red pepper, and garlic leaves were scattered throughout, adding a hint of extra flavor. Just looking at the photo was enough to imagine the satisfying taste.

If Ye Ning were an anime character, two streams of hot tears would be rolling down his face right now.

But he was a real person, so he could only weep internally. ’My twice-cooked pork!’

At Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant.

Xu An stared at the six-dot ellipsis Ye Ning had sent and felt a headache coming on.

The daily order volume was getting quite large. Not only was it time-consuming to log each one manually, but it also made it easy for mistakes like this to happen.

This was the first time it had happened, but there was no guarantee it would be the last.

Xu An’s first thought was the "Let’s Eat" app. If it had already launched in Hai City, he could just join the platform. Customers could then order directly through the app, and there would be no more missed orders.

But as soon as the idea appeared, Xu An dismissed it.

His current strategy was to take advantage of the fact that "Let’s Eat" hadn’t expanded to Hai City yet, allowing him to capture the market and grow his business first.

If "Let’s Eat" were already in Hai City, office workers would have far more options and might not necessarily choose his lunchboxes.

’So what other options are there?’

Xu An’s mind raced, flipping through the memories of his past life, searching for something that could help his current situation.

Suddenly, a news report surfaced in his memory.

’EatUp founder... campus restaurant... food ordering and delivery service... photo-based menu... website registration... customers and restaurants self-service online ordering...’

’Yes, that’s it!’

Xu An slapped his thigh hard. The force of the blow made him grimace in pain and left a bright red handprint, but thankfully, it didn’t break his train of thought.

’A website!’

’I’ll make a website for Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant!’

Shortly after "Let’s Eat" was founded, they launched a simple website for taking orders.

No registration or account linking was required. All you had to do was make a few clicks, then fill in your address and phone number.

The difference was, "Let’s Eat" had to handle data from dozens, even hundreds of restaurants. It had high requirements for servers, user interaction, and more, which demanded highly professional technicians to manage.

But the website he envisioned only needed three basic functions: uploading the menu, allowing users to make selections and fill in their phone number and address, and a back-end export feature.

Compared to "Let’s Eat," the requirements were simpler by a long shot.

But that brought another problem. The year was 2012, a time when the internet was just starting to take off.

Programmers back then were incredibly valuable and scarce. Even if he had the money, finding a professional to handle this wouldn’t be easy.

Not to mention, Xu An had neither the money nor the connections. And in his past life, he hadn’t known any future tech gurus back when they were still unknown.

After thinking it over and over, he decided on a long shot, posting a status update on his social media page.

’Seeking a programmer to design a restaurant ordering page. Compensation negotiable. If interested, contact me on QQ at xxx, or call xxx.’

He could also ask Sister Lili and Old Han if their university had a computer science program, or if they knew any computer science students.

With a two-pronged approach, both online and in the real world, he might just get lucky and find someone.

After making the post, Xu An returned to his chat interface and continued logging the orders for the next day.

Only this time, after he finished, Xu An carefully double-checked the entire list from top to bottom, breathing a sigh of relief only when he was certain no orders had been missed.

Ding Jian was an employee at Kelly Home Customization Company and an avid socializer. He had used his messenger app’s "People Nearby" feature to add lots of local friends and had even started a group chat for them.

They would all chat about which local shops were fun or which restaurants had good food. On their days off, they’d even arrange to go shopping, see the ocean, or go hiking together.

He’d been busy ever since starting work, but now that he had mostly cleared his tasks, Ding Jian opened the group chat, ready to shoot the breeze with his friends to kill some time.

He opened the group chat and saw that everyone was talking about the same thing. Scrolling up, he saw that the topic seemed to be a restaurant called "Xu’s Fast Food"?

After scrolling up for what felt like a dozen pages, he finally found the post that had sparked the discussion.

The culprit was a single picture: a flyer for Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant!

Ding Jian tapped on the image, which took two seconds to load.

’What’s for Lunch? — Xu’s Fast Food. Deliciousness, Delivered to Your Door.’

’Huh? This looks a lot like a food delivery model, doesn’t it?’

A few people in the group had been to other cities, and from their daily chats, he’d learned about an app called "Let’s Eat." You just had to open the app to order food, and someone would deliver it to your door in about half an hour.

The flyer called it "home delivery," but the model seemed similar, just not as immediate as "Let’s Eat." This one required you to order in advance.

He glanced at the menu—the dishes looked good. He glanced at the prices—they were a total bargain.

Ding Jian, always eager to try new things, wanted to give this novel ordering method a try.

He opened the "Add Friend" page, typed in the QQ number from the flyer, and the request was accepted a moment later.

’Tianhai Road Runze Office Building Room 501. Two lunchboxes, delivered at 12:20. Thanks.’

After a short wait, a message came back from Xu’s Fast Food.

’Sorry, you’re outside our delivery range, so we can’t deliver there for now~’

Only then did Ding Jian notice that the restaurant’s delivery range was a 1.6-kilometer radius centered on the Hai City Library.

His company was a full two kilometers from the Hai City Library—not just a little bit outside the range.

His fingers tapped on the screen a few times as he sent a message back to the Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant QQ account.

’Hey boss, would you dare to expand your delivery range a bit? How about a two-kilometer radius from the Hai City Library?’

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