Chapter 510 - Fish-Catching Take-Out’s Shop Number One

Liang Qingfan was stunned. A moment later, he said, “Boss Pei, this is a bit sudden. I need to consider it properly…”

Pei Qian smiled and nodded. “Of course.”

He turned to look at his driver, Little Sun. “Make some time to bring Mr. Liang around Jingzhou to play over the next few days. Allow him to have a good appreciation of Jingzhou’s culture and people. Over the weekend, bring Mr. Liang to Ming Yun Private Kitchen for a meal. Host him well for me.”

Little Sun quickly answered, “Alright, Boss Pei.”

Pei Qian turned to Liang Qingfan. “Mr. Liang, please get some rest. Travel around Jingzhou and collect some inspiration. All of your expenses during this period will be borne by Tengda.

“I want to open more Sloth Apartments at the end of the money. Then, I would have to trouble you once more.”

Liang Qingfan looked overwhelmed by Boss Pei’s favor. “No problem, Boss Pei!”

Being appreciated like that made Liang Qingfan feel like he had met someone who could truly treasure his talents.

As a young designer, what did he need most?

A stage! Opportunities! Gaoling Construction and Design Co., Ltd was a first-tier design company in the country which was being led by a giant in the industry, Zhou Nanling. He would have many chances to take part in large-scale projects.

However, as a young designer under thirty years old, he had very slim chances of being put in charge of large-scale projects himself.

To designers, good projects were opportunities, chances at fame, and a stage to prove oneself. Without good projects, what use would all of one’s talent be? How would talent be developed? Who would know about them?

It was just as well that there were opportunities where Boss Pei was. There were many, many opportunities!

What’s more, Liang Qingfan could sense that Boss Pei’s mindset was quite similar to his own on a certain level.

For example, Boss Pei was one who chased being elite.

As an architect, Liang Qingfan was familiar with a lot of styles. He was adept at creating custom-made designs that suited each property owner’s requirements. However, the problem was that, as he absorbed everybody’s requests, Liang Qingfan thought deeply about the artistic aspect as well. Yet, not many people could understand that artistic aspect.

The fact that Boss Pei was so happy with his designs—so much so that he had even tried poaching Liang Qingfan-proved that Boss Pei had a similar view and understanding of art as he did.

Both of us want to chase being elite!

It was for that exact reason that Liang Qingfan almost spat out ‘I will!’ However, it would look unrestrained of him to agree on the spot, and he might have come across as being rash. Thus, Liang Qingfan decided to symbolically ponder about it for a few days. At the same time, he would deal with a few matters in his current company before officially transferring to Tengda. Pei Qian walked around the room, feeling very happy with every corner. He wanted to recruit Liang Qingfan because of his ability to understand him. In fact, Liang Qingfan could understand Boss Pei much better than most of Tengda’s employees.

One of Pei Qian’s most important considerations in selecting his employees was the extent of their imagination.

For instance, Lu Mingliang did not have much of an imagination. He was a good employee who did whatever Boss Pei asked of him. Men like him were becoming few and far between!

Yet, Pei Qian had found a shadow of Lu Mingliang in this designer, Liang Qingfan. To achieve extreme minimalism, Liang Qingfan had willingly given up storage space which most would find absolutely necessary.

To spend every cent of the budget, Liang Qingfan had spent over two hundred thousand yuan on a limited edition television set.

All of those things showed that he had tried his best to fulfill Boss Pei’s requests without using too much of his own imagination.

At the same time, he was not so famous as to attract people’s attention, and he had a certain level of skill that would guarantee whatever Boss Pei wanted would be done well.

All in all, he was a perfect candidate!

Three hours later, Pei Qian was done moving houses.

He got rid of his original house, packed his clothes and shoes, and then moved them to the new house. The other things that he did not need were left in the rented apartment that he had at first.

Simply put, he moved in with minimal baggage.

Little Sun went back and forth, helping Pei Qian to move his few pieces of luggage to the new house. Soon, the packing was complete. Pei Qian had no plans to clutter the house with all sorts of random items. He would only do three things in this house:

Sleep, game, and snack.

Each day, he would wake up naturally, have a meal at Fish-Catching Internet Cafe’s Handong University branch, walk around at the office, and then go home to snack, drink, and play games. He would be living the dream.

Of course, the building also needed a butler and two cleaners.

The butler would be in charge of the manpower and random errands that Boss Pei would need to run. The cleaners would provide similar services as in hotels-cleaning, laundry, rubbish collection, and refilling of snacks and drinks in the refrigerator.

Lastly, Pei Qian had to take care of the publicity problem.

Normally, various real estate agents would frantically start making calls once rental apartments were advertised online. They would resort to all sorts of ways and means to bluff people into renting an apartment.

On the surface, they would use all sorts of flowery language, claiming to want to help their customers.

However, in reality, they would only be interested in monopolizing the market, preventing customers from renting an apartment directly or contacting the landlord, and thus earning the agent fees. Pei Qian had no plans to do any advertising for Sloth Apartments. Houses like that would be rented out to those who were fated to stay there. If one could not find it, they could blame it on their own fate. How could Pei Qian rent the apartments to such people? Of course, not advertising the apartments did not mean that Pei Qian would be completely safe.

In the beginning, Pei Qian had avoided publicizing his own games as well. Still, people had found them in the end.

For extra security, Pei Qian planned to observe the situation for a month. If the apartments remained hidden for the next month, it would mean that Pei Qian was using the right strategy. Then, he could be bold. He could buy more buildings, turn them into Sloth Apartments, and let his employees occupy a portion of the empty apartments!

May 6th, Friday…

Fish-Catching Take-Out’s first independent shop, which was also Fish-Catching Take-Out’s Gourmet Laboratory, was officially open.

Rui Yuchen stood at the entrance, watching the crowd go by and feeling only one thing:

‘I’m finally going to spread my wings!’ A month ago, Boss Pei personally instructed him not to let Fish-Catching Take-Out rely on Fish-Catching Internet Cafe anymore. Instead, he was to allow the business to be independent and expand it to various big cities.

At the same time, he had been told to set up a Gourmet Laboratory and come up with an extensive menu.

Rui Yuchen had immediately started preparations and planned to open twenty branches.

Among those twenty branches, five would be in Jingzhou—including Fish-Catching Take-Out’s Shop Number One—which was the Gourmet Laboratory. Another five would be in other cities in Handong Province, such as Lincheng and Luzhou. The remaining ten would be in first-tier cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen.

It would be very problematic to set up branches in foreign cities because it was beyond their influence. If the branches were not being manned by anyone they trusted, there would be no point in setting them up.

However, the good thing was that Fish-Catching Take-Out had gathered a group of loyal employees after being in operations for almost a year. Rui Yuchen had picked several new branch managers from the group of employees and offered additional benefits for the business trip. At once, many people jumped at the opportunity.

After selecting the branch managers, Rui Yuchen got to work on the series of tasks involved in opening new branches. That included looking for spaces, designing the spaces, soft renovations, applying or licenses, hiring local employees, and the like.

Every one of those steps was complicated. Since Fish-Catching Take-Out’s Shop Number One was located in Jingzhou, every step felt familiar to Rui Yuchen. Thus, it only took him a month to complete.

The progress in the other cities was obviously slower, but they should be completed in another month or so as well.

A total investment of three million yuan or so had been poured into all twenty branches. The rent and manpower expenses would add up to another six or seven hundred thousand yuan per month.

Rui Yuchen had already carefully considered the locations, renovations, entrance design, furniture, and equipment. To avoid embarrassing Tengda, he had stuck to the best quality for each of those items.

Still, even then, the initial investment did not look like much. That was mainly because all the shops were relatively small.

Boss Pei had emphasized before that, at the end of the day, Fish-Catching Take-Out was meant for take-out. Thus, the shops did not have to be huge. Five or six seats for diners to dine-in would be sufficient.

Those twenty branches were only meant to test the waters at the beginning. Rui Yuchen had bigger hopes for the future.

In any case, Boss Pei had already said that he could spend as much money as he wanted. What was there to fear?

He could open new branches to his heart’s content!

Rui Yuchen had analyzed this before. Fish-Catching Take-Out had never generated profits, but Boss Pei had never once complained about it. Obviously, Boss Rui was not concerned about whether the business could generate profits or not; he had other intentions for the business.

Yet, what were they?

Everyone’s ultimate aim was to earn money, but some people looked further than others. Boss Pei must be intending to dominate the market for delivery. He would burn money now but earn money later!

Why did he want to separate Fish-Catching Take-Out and Fish-Catching Internet Cafe this time? It was precisely because Fish-Catching Internet Cafe was severely impeding Fish-Catching Take-Out’s expansion.

Thus, Rui Yuchen thought that twenty branches were not enough. He had to open even more.

Those twenty branches were meant as a test to see how popular Fish-Catching Take-Out would be in other cities. From there, Rui Yuchen would decide how much he would invest and where he should focus on the next time.

Of course, the observation period might be quite long. Rui Yuchen could not afford to rush things.

At the same time, he kept in mind Boss Pei’s requests for the Gourmet Laboratory.

Boss Pei had not given clear instructions on what the ‘Gourmet Laboratory’ was meant to do yet. However, he had said that it would be used to research new flavors and new dishes. It would also provide custom-made fitness meals for Deposit Fitness.

One could tell from its name that the laboratory would be isolated from the rest of the world.

Yet, after some consideration, Rui Yuchen felt that would be inappropriate. Ordinary laboratories had to be cut off from the rest of the world because they researched dangerous items or secret projects.

However, the Gourmet Laboratory would be researching food items. If it was cut off from the rest of the world and located far away from customers, how would they test the food after conducting research?

Thus, Rui Yuchen decided to turn Fish-Catching Take-Out’s Shop Number One into the Gourmet Laboratory.

They could forget about generating profits with this branch. It would purely be used to test the latest delicacies and collect feedback from customers. Of course, there was a nutritionist and chef designated here. Each time a new dish was created, the number of calories and nutritional content would be scientifically-tested.

Things could be done in reverse as well. The number of calories and nutritional content could be set first before the dishes were designed

Now, a new dish had just been placed in front of Rui Yuchen.

This was the first product by the Gourmet Laboratory, and it was made exclusively for Deposit Fitness as the second version of fitness meals.

Before this, Deposit Fitness’ fitness meals had been prepared by Fish-Catching Take-Out as well. However, those fitness meals were not much different from the fitness meals on the market.

They were made up of ingredients like greens, brown rice, and chicken breast. They were nutritious and healthy, but not delicious.

Thus, the Gourmet Laboratory’s research into the fitness meals 2.0 was aimed at solving that biggest problem: the fact that they were not delicious.