Chapter 1348 - 1350
"Buy."
Walking into the supermarket, Zhao Guangran was in an excellent mood. "Today I’m paying. Whatever you like, just buy it."
He’d already taken a big hit at the restaurant, so he didn’t care about bleeding a bit more in this supermarket; besides, how much could you even spend in a place like this.
Zhao Xuran had never been to this big supermarket before; he’d only gone to Chinese Street before this, because there were more ingredients for Chinese food over there.
He was a bit moved by it all, but honestly not that much—yet the moment he stepped into this big supermarket today, he didn’t even know where to look first.
"So huge." The size of this supermarket really wasn’t ordinary; compared with the supermarkets in Chinese Street they’d gone to before, who knew how many times bigger this was.
How many people would it take to staff such a huge supermarket—that was what Zhao Xuran cared about.
But at a glance, aside from there being more people at the checkout, it looked like there were hardly any employees elsewhere.
"Yeah, it’s really big, but they don’t use that many people." Zhao Guangran signaled for Gong Jiaming to help push a cart; as for himself, he of course also pushed one.
As for the others, Zhao Guangran didn’t have the face to call out to them.
Dai Limin, very perceptive, also pushed a cart. Today the big boss, Zhao Guangran, had clearly said "buy buy buy," so there was no need to save money for him.
"Not many people?" That point immediately caught Zhao Xuran’s attention.
Zhao Guangran grunted in acknowledgment. "Not counting finance and purchasing, including cashiers, after-sales service, customer service, plus stockers, maybe fifty or sixty people."
"I don’t know the specifics." Zhao Guangran came to supermarkets to shop a lot, but he obviously never dug into that kind of detail.
"Oh right, are things here expensive?" After entering, Zhao Xuran casually picked up a few items to check the price.
But embarrassingly, he really had no idea whether these prices were cheap or not.
Zhao Guangran shrugged. "I don’t know, but they should be cheaper than the average store."
"After all, it’s a large chain supermarket; they buy in bulk, so of course their selling price is cheaper."
"Plus, they only take cash." Zhao Guangran compared the prices here to the prices at the school canteen back when he was a student.
Cash only—just that alone made Zhao Xuran’s heart stir.
"Ah, how did I never think of doing this." Previously, Gong Ruwen had been constantly thinking about which line of business to get into.
Even though in many people’s eyes, as the eldest son of the Gong Family, he could completely inherit the family business and had no need to strike out on his own.
But for someone like Gong Ruwen, who had been hustling to make money since he was young, he knew he’d eventually take over the Gong Family’s business, yet he hoped people wouldn’t just assume he got there because he was Gong Tao’s son.
The ideas weren’t bad—there were plenty of possible businesses. But none of them managed to really speak to him.
Or rather, in these times when accounts receivable were everywhere, he absolutely didn’t want to step into any business where your investment just turned into receivables.
"You mean open a supermarket?" When he saw that thoughtful look on Zhao Xuran’s face, Dai Limin kept an eye on him the whole time.
He had a strong feeling that Zhao Xuran wouldn’t just stand there zoning out in the supermarket; he had to be cooking up something.
See? He really did catch it. And opening a supermarket—apart from requiring more capital up front—really did look pretty good.
More importantly, with such a large investment scale, even if others got tempted and wanted to jump in, they’d have to think it over for a long time.
Because if you slipped up, you’d fail, and never mind how much you’d lose if you did.
Dai Limin didn’t know how other people would evaluate it; in any case, from his perspective, if Zhao Xuran and the others invested, he definitely wouldn’t mind putting in some money too.
A promising kid, and he’d already learned to follow their train of thought—Zhao Guangran swept a smiling glance over at Dai Limin.
"Bro, we don’t have the manpower." A good business is one thing, but overthinking doesn’t help; you have to actually consider the staffing issue.
"If we don’t have people, we can hire." In the past, Zhao Xuran hadn’t felt secure either; he always worried that if he wasn’t watching personally, would things go wrong easily.
"These days we’ve been in the United States, and when we got back we found that the company was exactly the same as when we left. It didn’t fall apart just because we came to the United States."
"We also have to give some people the chance to be trained." On the plane back, Zhao Xuran had talked a lot with Gong Ruwen.
"Rui Wen will stay in China; he can mentor those people."
"If there really are outstanding employees, we can pay to bring them to the United States to study a bit." Zhao Xuran said this would both win some gratitude from the staff below and broaden their horizons.
Bringing people to the United States to learn a bit—Dai Limin sucked in a cold breath. It sounded easy the way he said it, but was it really that easy?
"That’ll cost quite a bit." Zhao Guangran pointed it out calmly.
"And bro, aren’t you worried that once they come to the United States and really open their eyes, they might not go back? Or that even if they do, they’ll just jump ship right away?"
All of that was very possible. In short, spending money wasn’t the issue; the more the employees knew, the more they could boost business in the store.
The worry was that once they’d learned everything, they’d just go latch onto someone higher up.
Even though he couldn’t see Zhao Xuran’s expression, Dai Limin perked up his ears; he really wanted to hear how Zhao Xuran would respond.
Worried about this and that? Zhao Xuran casually grabbed some chips. He wasn’t interested in them himself, but he remembered that Renee liked them.
"If I worry about this and worry about that, I might as well just do everything personally from top to bottom. But is that realistic?" Zhao Xuran said, "We can’t stop training people just because we’re afraid of this or that."
"I believe that in these times there are plenty of people with a conscience, who’ll choose to stay and work hard with us."
In the past, when the factory went out recruiting, lots of people turned their noses up because it wasn’t a state-owned enterprise.
They worried about pensions, and worried about what they’d do if the boss ran off.
Are they still worried now? Not at all. And so what if they overthink—those so-called SOEs where the workers were ’masters of the house’ couldn’t adapt to the market, many had no business at all, and the workers just stayed home.
Sure, life was comfortable enough, but the money was little. If you were in a factory with a solid foundation, at least they could give a living allowance.
If the factory’s base wasn’t solid, there wasn’t even a living allowance.
"Our factory’s performance is rock solid; every time we recruit, we don’t even know how many people come flooding in." Zhao Xuran felt incredibly pleased.
Before, when they recruited, they had to listen to people whining about this and that; now it’s straight up the other way around—those people are all worried there won’t be a spot for them.
"If even workers are like that, you think I need to worry about the management level?"
"If I can send a few people to the United States to study and train, I can send more people out in the future."
"Tell me, even the most awesome state-owned enterprise—can they offer them this kind of opportunity?" Zhao Xuran looked smug.
As for opportunities to go abroad for training, of course big state-owned enterprises had them—they were big and rich.
"But even if they do, those chances go to people with connections; ordinary folks absolutely don’t get them."
On this point, Dai Limin fully agreed. It was only because he was embarrassed to take up a slot that he hadn’t gone; otherwise, going abroad to study really wouldn’t have been difficult for him.