Food: Selling Boxed Meals at a Construction Site

Although he was a bit surprised, Uncle Han was quick to accept that Xu An owned a fast-food restaurant. After all, he’d traveled all over the country for years and had watched it develop at a breakneck pace. Rich people were popping up everywhere, so it wasn’t uncommon for a family to give their kid a hundred or two hundred thousand yuan to go out and make a name for themselves.

He thought about the boxed meal he’d just eaten: three dishes and a soup for only eight yuan. ’A price like that, for those portions and that kind of food... Only the young master of a wealthy family could afford to run a business like that.’ Regardless, the young man was now his client. Uncle Han quickly adjusted his attitude and began discussing the configurations for the three machines with Xu An.

Once all the details had been ironed out, the two signed a series of contracts. Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant agreed to purchase three pieces of equipment from Xinyang Commercial Kitchen Technology Company: one flat-head model and one multi-head model of the ’Multi-functional Commercial Vegetable Cutter,’ and one ’Commercial Washing and Peeling Machine.’ In return, Xinyang Commercial Kitchen Technology Company guaranteed the equipment would be delivered, installed, and calibrated at Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant by 8:00 PM the following evening.

After confirming there were no issues with the contracts, Xu An signed his name on the line for Party A and stamped it with the official seal of Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant. Once Uncle Han had signed and added his thumbprint, the deal was done.

His goal for the trip was accomplished, but Xu An wasn’t in a hurry to leave. Since he’d managed to get into the convention before it officially opened, he decided to take advantage of the sparse crowds and check out all the different kinds of machinery.

He hadn’t gotten far from Uncle Han’s booth when a novel display caught his eye. It was a booth for a company called Qingye Agricultural Technology Company. Unlike the other displays, which were full of various pieces of equipment, this company had actually built a greenhouse in their space!

Yes, that’s right—a scaled-down greenhouse. A door in the center of the greenhouse was wide enough for two people to walk through. Inside, real plants grew on either side, each in its own pot, looking like a collection of lush potted plants.

Inside the greenhouse were all sorts of strange-looking devices. For example, above the vegetables on the left, two rails were mounted on the steel-frame ceiling. They were connected by two crossbars, and below those, a round pipe was welded in place. This pipe hung fifty centimeters above the vegetables, and at regular intervals along its length were black, faucet-like nozzles.

According to a nearby sign, Xu An learned this was a ’Mobile Irrigation System.’ With settings configured on a computer, the system could be precise enough to water each individual plant without wasting a single drop.

The vegetables on the right were arranged on iron racks, packed tightly across five full tiers. Unlike conventional farming, the roots of these vegetables weren’t in soil, but in water. Their white roots were suspended in the clear liquid, and you could see the path of every single root through the glass containers.

This method was called vertical hydroponics. It could save a massive amount of arable land and increase the vegetable yield per acre. Naturally, it was paired with various monitoring systems, temperature control systems, and the like.

As he walked through the greenhouse, which was less than ten meters long, Xu An saw more than ten different types of greenhouse equipment he’d never even heard of before. There were supplementary lighting systems, integrated water and fertilizer systems, pest and disease prevention systems, carbon dioxide enrichment systems...

All of these systems could be linked to a central computer, allowing for fine-tuned operations that provided comprehensive management and monitoring for the vegetables in the greenhouse.

Even though the equipment was currently idle, the functional descriptions on the signs made it clear that none of it would be cheap. ’But this system really is something else. It’s like you could just plant the seeds and then hand all the work over to the equipment. One person could manage several greenhouses all by themselves.’

Perhaps because it was lunchtime, none of the company’s staff were at the booth. Xu An and Liu Daxi spent over half an hour looking around, both inside and out, and no one came over to give them a pitch or tell them to stop.

As they were leaving, he passed the booth’s reception desk and saw a large pile of promotional materials and a box of business cards. Moved by some strange impulse, Xu An picked up a business card and slipped it into his pocket.

’Might come in handy later!’

There was a small incident on the way back. The taxi Xu An hailed was the very same one he’d taken to get there. The driver had apparently been waiting downstairs, lying in wait for an easy fare, and was quite pleased to take Xu An and his companion on the return trip...

「Ivy League University.」

’Ugh! I don’t have much of an appetite today. I’ve been thinking about what to eat for lunch since ten this morning, and I still have no idea. It’s almost noon... maybe I should just skip it and have a nice dinner tonight instead.’

With that thought in mind, Lin Mengjuan remained firmly planted at her desk when the lunch break began, scrolling through various websites on her phone.

DING DONG————

A notification box popped down from the top of her screen. The account she followed, ’Hai City Fast Food Reviews,’ had just published a new post...

’Oh! It’s that time again. Let’s see which fast-food joint they’re recommending this time, and if it’s anywhere near my office. Lately, all the places this account has recommended have been way too far away. I could only feast with my eyes, not my stomach.’