Food: Selling Boxed Meals at a Construction Site

In the blink of an eye, it was time for the weekly outing he had promised Xu Kang and Xu Le.

Xu An left his phone with Heping, who was tasked with logging tomorrow’s pre-orders and planning the delivery routes. He then hopped on his electric tricycle with Xu Kang and Lele and headed for the beach.

It was four in the afternoon. The sun was no longer as scorching as it was at noon, and a pleasant sea breeze would be blowing, making it the perfect time for a trip to the beach.

Qianhai Town was named as such because it bordered the sea—on three sides, in fact.

From the center of Qianhai Town, any stretch of coast was just a thirty-minute ride away.

However, not every part of the coast was the sandy beach typical of tourist spots. Some areas were thick with mud, deep enough to sink you to your thighs. Others had shores blanketed in smooth, wave-polished shells, and still others were lined with endless mangrove forests.

Since Xu An was out with two young children, he naturally wasn’t going to attempt anything difficult. They were headed to a regular, sandy beach.

The two little ones had woken up bright and early, asking Xu An where they were going to play. After finding out they were going to the beach, they had spent the entire day clutching plastic pails in their left hands and little shovels in their right, full of anticipation for the trip ahead.

The moment they arrived, before the tricycle had even come to a complete stop, the two little ones were already squirming to get off.

But the tailgate at the back of the tricycle was high and their legs were short. They managed to get one leg over, only to get stuck in an awkward limbo, unable to get up or down. The sight made Xu An burst out laughing.

Finally, just as they were about to burst into tears of frustration, Xu An’s conscience kicked in, and he went over to lift them down.

The second their feet touched the ground, they eagerly bolted toward the water, with Xu An watching from a safe distance behind them.

When he was little, his parents would come home every New Year and take him to the beach to play.

Thinking back now, that was ten or twenty years ago. The memories were already hazy.

He only remembered that he had been truly happy, truly joyful back then...

Shit!

Xu An’s sentimental moment was cut short when he saw those two little rascals, Kangkang and Lele, actually running into the seawater.

A terrified Xu An sprinted over, snatched them both back, and gave each a swat on the bottom. Only then did the two little ones settle down and start digging for small crabs by the shore.

"Anzi?"

Xu An heard someone call his name from behind. He turned and saw it was Aunt Hong.

"Aunt Hong, what brings you to the beach today?"

"I’m sick of staring at vegetables and fruits in the fields all day. Came to the beach to clear my head." Aunt Hong walked over to Xu An, found a large rock, and sat down. "Bringing Kangkang and Lele out to play?"

"Yeah, it’s not good for them to be cooped up in the shop all day. Kids need to get out, run around, and get some sun."

Aunt Hong nodded at his words but didn’t say anything else. Together, they quietly watched Xu Kang and Lele play on the sand.

Apparently tired of digging for crabs, the two of them began waving their little shovels and started digging sand to build a castle.

But the waves were a bit big today. The castle had barely taken shape before a wave came and washed it away.

Unwilling to move, they started building a new castle right on top of the ruins of the last one.

After four or five consecutive castles were destroyed by the waves, they finally gave up on building and began to battle the surf instead.

They meticulously built low walls of sand, and after a wave toppled them, they would build new ones, waiting for the next surge to arrive.

It was a pointless game, but Xu An watched with great interest.

’It’s great being a kid,’ he thought. ’They can have so much fun playing such a silly game.’

"Anzi, did you take the afternoon off and close the shop to bring the boys out to play?" Aunt Hong suddenly asked.

"It’s open. I left Heping to watch the shop," Xu An explained.

"Heping is a good kid," Aunt Hong remarked, then added, "A little mischievous, and a bit too playful, though."

Silence fell between them again. Maybe it was the comfortable sea breeze, or maybe the ocean has a way of making people let their guard down, or maybe Aunt Hong was simply looking for someone to confide in. Facing the sea, she began to speak, as if to herself, yet also to Xu An.

"These past few days, a manager from a supermarket came to us, hoping to cooperate. The terms they offered were quite sincere—a purchase price thirty to fifty cents higher than what the produce vendors pay."

"That sounds pretty good," Xu An chimed in casually.

"Yes, it sounds good," Aunt Hong said with a sigh. "But the supermarket is requiring everyone to plant the same crop. There are over twenty greenhouses over there! One greenhouse yields fifteen hundred jin, so twenty greenhouses would be a total of thirty thousand jin. If the supermarket backs out of the deal, the produce vendors will definitely drive the price into the ground for that much of a single crop. The price they’d offer would be barely better than letting it all rot in the fields."

’Same crop? Supermarket acquisition? Breaking a contract?’ The words sounded so familiar.

A distant memory suddenly surfaced in Xu An’s mind. It was something his grandmother had told him in his past life while they were chatting—something about Aunt Hong. At this point in time, it was an event that wasn’t supposed to happen until next year.

Aunt Hong’s greenhouse partner had broken their contract, leaving nearly five thousand jin of cauliflower from her three greenhouses unsold.

The produce vendors who came to buy saw the huge quantity and pushed the price down to twenty cents a jin.

Aunt Hong was so furious she couldn’t stand it. She harvested all the cauliflower and gave it away, sack by sack.

During that time, every household in the village received two large sacks of cauliflower. People got truly sick of eating it.

After that incident, Aunt Hong transferred ownership of her three greenhouses and got out of the business.

But later, whenever she spoke of it, she couldn’t help but sigh, full of regret. If she hadn’t been foolishly tempted by the promise of a stable contract with the supermarket, she said, her greenhouses might still be doing well.

"Which supermarket is it?" Xu An asked, feigning curiosity. He also wanted to know what kind of supermarket would sign a contract only to break it without compensation, leaving all its partners in a miserable state.

"Victory Supermarket. It’s under the Qiansheng Group. They have nearly ten stores now, so they’re pretty big." Aunt Hong had clearly looked into the supermarket, and her answer was swift.

’Victory Supermarket? Qiansheng Group?’ Xu An’s brow furrowed.

The mention of Victory Supermarket made him think of the food safety scandal from next year, which then led him to think of the Anxin Food Processing Company, and finally, the scene he had witnessed back in Beitun Town of Anxin’s boss meeting with people from the Qiansheng Group.

If the supermarket partnering with Aunt Hong was Victory Supermarket, then it all made sense. This was a huge trap.

"Didn’t Victory Supermarket start out by relying on the Qiansheng Group’s own planting and breeding bases? Why would they need to partner with outside independent growers?" Xu An asked, gently trying to dissuade her.

Hearing this question, a proud look suddenly appeared on Aunt Hong’s face. "They can’t replicate the taste of our Qianhai Town cauliflower. Once you leave Qianhai Town, the flavor is just so much worse, no matter how you plant and cultivate it."

Cauliflower! It all fit.

But how could he persuade Aunt Hong not to work with Victory Supermarket?

He couldn’t just come out and say, ’I’m a transmigrator, and I know from the future that this partnership will not only fail but also cause you to give up greenhouse farming.’

Xu An was afraid that if he said that, he’d be sent to a mental hospital for treatment the very next day.

"Right now, we all work with the produce vendors. Whatever price they name is the price we get; there’s no room for negotiation. It’s not that we haven’t thought about working with restaurants or supermarkets, but for a typical restaurant, our yield is too high, and for a supermarket, our variety is too limited. In the end, we can only sell to the vendors..." As Xu An was racking his brain for a way to dissuade Aunt Hong from the Victory Supermarket deal, she started to speak again.

"Aunt Hong, is there a big price difference between selling to produce vendors and selling to restaurants or supermarkets?" Xu An asked, a sudden inspiration striking him.

"Of course there is! A big one." At this, Aunt Hong grew agitated. "Take tomatoes, for example. They sell for 2.5 a jin on the market, but the vendors only pay us fifty to eighty cents a jin for them. If a supermarket or restaurant buys from us, they can offer a whole yuan per jin."

Xu An couldn’t help but think of his own restaurant’s procurement costs at the wholesale market: 1.6 yuan a jin for tomatoes. If he could source them directly from Aunt Hong, he could cut his costs in half!

"Aunt Hong, what’s the yield of your greenhouses?"

Aunt Hong found his question a bit strange—why was he suddenly asking about this? But then she figured it wasn’t anything that needed to be kept secret, so she told him directly.

"The total yield from the three greenhouses is around five or six thousand jin. On a slow day, the daily yield is over a hundred jin; on a good day, it can be three to four hundred jin."

Xu An quickly did the math in his head. The shop was currently purchasing a total of eighty to ninety-odd jin of vegetables per day. If orders were to increase a little more, it wouldn’t be impossible for him to take on Aunt Hong’s daily yield of over a hundred jin.

After carefully choosing his words, Xu An turned to Aunt Hong and said seriously, "Aunt Hong, how about you consider partnering with my little shop? I can’t promise a huge amount, but I can definitely take a hundred or so jin a day."

At first, Aunt Hong thought Xu An was joking and was about to tease him, but the look on his face told her he wasn’t.

’Could Anzi really want to partner with me?’

"Aunt Hong, Victory Supermarket must have given you some time to consider, right? Why don’t you try working with me in the meantime and see how it goes? If it works out, we can discuss the details. I’ll buy your produce at the vendors’ purchase price plus fifty cents per jin. What do you think?" Seeing the interested look on Aunt Hong’s face, Xu An quickly pressed his advantage.

Hearing this, the interested look on Aunt Hong’s face became even more pronounced, but at the same time, she was torn.

Victory Supermarket was backed by the Qiansheng Group—a big company offered security. But they demanded that, after signing the contract, all existing produce in the greenhouses be cleared out immediately to plant only cauliflower.

Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant was run by Anzi. He was a local boy and trustworthy, and his business seemed to be doing well. But it was a small shop, not as stable as a giant like Victory Supermarket.

Victory Supermarket and Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant—both options had their pros and cons. Which one was better?