Chapter 83: Quiet Opening
Ye Xinyan found a mediator, and with the help of Shopkeeper He, she managed to rent a small, unremarkable shop adjacent to Great Crane House.
At that time, business wasn’t like the modern era, where you could open a small tobacco and liquor supermarket beneath a big restaurant and expect it to do well. Back then, if a small shop was next to a restaurant, it really couldn’t benefit much from the proximity and would be overshadowed to the point of being inconspicuous.
It was a languishing grocery store, whose owner was hesitating whether to continue running it. Hearing that someone was inquiring about renting a shop nearby, he quickly started calculating.
Rather than strenuously running a grocery with little profit, it made more sense for him to rent out the space and earn a comfortable income from the silver.
The mediator Ye Xinyan had entrusted was specifically targeting this poorly-performing grocery store. As soon as they inquired, the grocery store owner showed interest. After several more questions and a back-and-forth negotiation, they settled on renting the space for five taels of silver a month.
Ye Xinyan planned her budget and signed a year-long lease, paying the rent quarterly. To reassure the owner, she also put down a deposit of five taels of silver.
After renting the shop, the decoration was all up to Ye Xinyan, and the five taels of silver spent on this little shop were not at all a waste. Not only did the shop have a storefront and a small compartment for storage, but it also came with a backyard equipped with a kitchen, which matched Ye Xinyan’s requirements for a snack shop perfectly.
Ye Xinyan spent a total of twenty taels of silver to meticulously decorate the storefront.