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On the day all three stores opened, Nanjing was bathed in sunshine and the weather was clear.

Suning stood at the entrance of the Gulou store, watching the staff bustling in and out, feeling an indescribable sense of peace.

Yang Maixiang kept an eye on things at the Qinhuai store, while Su Ning personally took charge of the Gulou and Xuanwu stores, running back and forth between the two.

When the business opened, there was naturally a great commotion with gongs, drums, and firecrackers.

A large red paper was also posted at the entrance, which read "Da Ming Imperial Kitchen opens today, 20% off".

Suning never intended to keep a low profile, but the current situation makes it unnecessary to do so.

After all, Nanjing is only so big, and the news of three stores opening at the same time spread faster than the wind.

Before noon, a long queue had already formed in front of the Gulou store, a dense crowd that blocked the entire street.

Passersby initially thought it was a state-run store clearing out its stockpiled goods, but upon squeezing in, they were surprised to find it was actually a restaurant.

Then, driven by curiosity, I joined the queue.

Yang Maixiang was so busy at the Qinhuai store that she was constantly running back and forth between the front and back of the house, and her voice became hoarse from shouting.

Having worked as a ticket seller for several years, he had developed a booming voice, which he put to good use at the moment. He provided a one-stop service for taking orders, serving food, settling accounts, and seeing guests off, making him far more efficient than the waiters in state-run restaurants.

The guests were seated, tea was served first, then tissues were handed over, and the menu was passed to them. The dishes were served in less than ten minutes after they ordered.

The first-time customer was taken aback, thinking he had entered some high-end restaurant. "How come your food is served so quickly? Was it prepared in advance?"

The waiter explained with a smile, "They're all made in a central kitchen, definitely not leftovers."

The guest took a bite with some skepticism, then fell silent and ate in silence.

Good taste, good service, and fast service—it's hard for a restaurant not to be popular if you combine these three elements.

The Gulou branch had two rounds of table turnover at noon and three rounds in the evening. By 8 o'clock, the dishes were sold out, but there were still customers queuing at the door.

Yang Maixiang could only apologize to them one by one, saying sorry and please come early tomorrow.

The same was true for the Qinhuai branch and the Xuanwu branch; all three branches were packed on the first day. The pre-made dishes, which were enough for three days, were sold out in just one day.

Suning rushed into the space world overnight, started the production line, and rushed out another batch. They didn't finish until 2 a.m., and after dozing off for a while in the kitchen chair, they got up again as soon as it was light.

In fact, word of mouth spreads faster than advertising, no matter where you are.

The first group of customers who ate there went back and told their colleagues and neighbors that a new restaurant called Daming Imperial Kitchen had opened in Gulou, and that the food was incredibly delicious, the service was excellent, and the food was served quickly—a hundred times better than those state-run restaurants.

Some people don't believe it, saying that a shop run by a private individual can't be that good. They say that state-run restaurants are all the same old thing, so how can a private individual make a difference?
His colleague immediately took him there, and after they finished eating, he didn't say a word. The next day, he brought his family along.

The news spread like wildfire, and within a week, the Imperial Kitchen of the Ming Dynasty had become the hottest topic in Nanjing.

When ordinary people chat during their leisure time, they feel embarrassed to greet others if they haven't eaten there.

All three stores are packed every day, with queues stretching from the entrance to the street, then from the street to the other side, and sometimes even around a corner.

The local residents are used to it, and they don't find it strange to see the long queue at mealtimes.

Some people travel from the north of the city to the south just to eat this, taking a bus for more than an hour, just for a bite of braised pork.

Suning then told the customer, "You live in the north of the city, and there will soon be a branch there, which will be convenient for you."

"Once the branch in the north of the city opens, I will definitely go there every day."

"Great! You're welcome anytime."

"To be honest, your braised pork is really delicious."

Thank you for your recognition.

Every night after closing the shop, Yang Maixiang would do the accounting with Suning.

The combined revenue of the three stores was so large that she couldn't believe it. She counted it over and over again, afraid that she had miscounted.

Su Ning watched her serious expression from the side, wanting to laugh but not daring to.

I knew it would become popular, but I never expected it to become this popular.

Pre-made meals combined with readily available ingredients are incredibly cheap and taste ridiculously good.

In addition, those state-run restaurants brought disaster upon themselves, with poor service, bad food, and high prices.

The people have been holding back their anger for a long time, and now that a store with good quality, low prices, and excellent service has suddenly appeared, it's no wonder it's so popular.

……

Soon, the state-run restaurants in Nanjing could no longer sit still.

In the past, they only had exclusive businesses, and ordinary people had no choice but to endure the food no matter how bad it was.

Now that the Imperial Kitchen of the Ming Dynasty has opened, all the customers have left. Their main hall is empty, with more waiters than customers. Some are eating melon seeds, others are knitting sweaters, and there are hardly any people at the entrance.

Some people started making sarcastic remarks, saying that pre-made food is not a proper craft, that individual business owners are just speculators, and that such shops won't last long.

Su Ning heard this, smiled, and ignored it.

His energy was entirely focused on running the shop, so he really didn't have time to argue with these people.

After the three stores stabilized, Suning began looking for new locations.

We already have Gulou, Qinhuai, and Xuanwu, but not Jianye, Baixia, and Xiaguan.

So he got on his motorcycle and started another round of travel, looking at the map one district at a time and going from street to street.

His first choice was poorly managed state-owned restaurants, which were in good locations, had large storefronts, and could be used immediately after renovation.

If there's really no suitable place, then go find a place to rent on the street.

Nanjing is such a big city, there's plenty of space to open shops, so they just keep opening one after another.

Yang Maixiang sometimes felt like she was dreaming.

A few months ago, she was a ticket seller on a bus, earning a little over thirty yuan a month. She would stand on the bus and shout until her throat was hoarse. In winter, her hands and feet would get sores from the cold, and in summer, she would get heat rash all over her body.

Now she is the owner of the Imperial Kitchen of the Ming Dynasty, managing four stores and more than a dozen employees. Her daily revenue is more than her salary in the past five years.

Sometimes, sitting behind the counter, looking at the shop full of customers, listening to the clinking of bowls and chopsticks and the laughter of customers, I would suddenly feel a sense of disbelief, as if it were all unreal, like watching a movie.

Suning understands Yang Maixiang's feelings, having witnessed too many such legends himself.

And he knew in his heart that none of this was a dream, but something he had achieved step by step.

Choosing a store location, securing a loan, negotiating a contract, carrying out renovations, training employees, and developing new dishes—every step is difficult and fraught with potential pitfalls, which is why Suning proceeds with extreme caution.

After all, no path is wasted; every step is experience.

The signboard of the Imperial Kitchen of the Ming Dynasty is appearing more and more frequently in Nanjing. When ordinary people think of eating out, this is the first restaurant that comes to mind. It's not some fancy delicacy, just home-style dishes, but they're delicious, inexpensive, and have great service.

Ordinary people aren't stupid; they know in their hearts who treats them well.

It's too late for those state-run restaurants to change now.

The hearts of the common people have already been captured by the Ming Dynasty's Imperial Kitchen; it will be difficult to win them back.

Moreover, pre-cooked meals are Suning's exclusive recipe, and it's not easy to imitate them even if you want to.

……

As the business of the Imperial Kitchen of the Ming Dynasty grew, Suning gradually shifted its focus from opening stores to the supply chain.

With three stores, Space World's production capacity was enough to handle it, but what about six, eight, or ten stores?

No matter how much production capacity the space world's production line can generate, it can't keep up with the ever-increasing number of stores.

More importantly, one cannot rely on the spatial world forever.

What will he use to deal with inspections from various departments if someone comes to check the source of the pre-cooked food someday?
When dozens of stores stop supplying him, his brand will be ruined, his reputation destroyed, and he won't even have time to cry.

Therefore, Suning began to consider building a central kitchen.

A central kitchen is a place where all the pre-prepared dishes needed by all the stores are produced, with unified procurement, processing, and distribution to ensure that the dishes in each store have the same taste and consistent quality.

This is an inevitable path for chain restaurants; they cannot avoid it.

He had seen too many examples like this in other dungeons: starting with small workshops, expanding as business improved, only to find that production capacity couldn't keep up, quality couldn't be controlled, and reputation crumbled little by little.

However, Suning does not want to repeat the mistakes of those people.

It took more than two months to find a venue.

Suning rode his bicycle all over the suburbs of Nanjing, looking at no less than twenty places. Some were too small, some too remote, some too expensive, and some had structures that couldn't be modified.

Finally, Suning found a bankrupt factory in the north of the city, not far from the city center, with convenient transportation. The factory area covered more than ten acres, with tall and spacious factory buildings and complete water and electricity supply. It could be put into use after a little renovation.

The factory used to be a machining factory, but it closed down two years ago. All the machines have been moved out, leaving only an empty shell. The yard is overgrown with grass, and most of the window glass is broken. It looks very desolate.

Suning approached the relevant authorities to discuss the acquisition.

The other party was a section chief in his forties. When he heard that someone wanted to buy the land, he was stunned for a moment, and then quoted a price.

Suning negotiated the price, and after half a month of back-and-forth bargaining, the deal was finally struck.

The price was much lower than Suning expected. These days, the land of bankrupt factories is worthless, nobody wants it, and it's good enough if it can be sold at all.

When Suning signed the contract, he was secretly delighted, thinking that this piece of land would be worth more than a hundred times in twenty years.

But Suning isn't speculating on land now; it's building a central kitchen. The appreciation of land value is a pleasant surprise, not its ultimate goal.

……

It took three months to renovate the factory.

Suning retrieved the design plan from Space World and designed it according to the standards of a dust-free food factory. The floor was covered with epoxy resin, the walls were tiled, the ceiling was suspended, and all corners were rounded to eliminate any unsanitary corners.

The ventilation system is brand new; the air is filtered before entering the workshop, maintaining positive pressure to prevent outside dust from entering.

The facilities for handwashing and disinfection are complete. To enter the workshop, you must change your shoes twice, wear two layers of work clothes, wear a mask and hat, wash and disinfect your hands, and go through an air shower. It is even stricter than the delivery room in a hospital.

Suning personally led an AI robot construction team to do a major job, steadily installing the pre-made food production equipment that had been secretly moved from the space world into the new workshop.

These devices don't exist outside; they are designed and manufactured by AI robots in the space world. The level of automation is frighteningly high. From raw material processing to finished product packaging, the entire process is done on an assembly line, requiring very few people to operate.

Cleaning, cutting, seasoning, cooking, cooling, and packaging—every step has strict standards. Time, temperature, and quantity are all digitally controlled, with errors kept within a very small range.

The same dish, made today and tomorrow, made in Nanjing and made in Beijing, tastes exactly the same.

During the equipment installation and commissioning period, Suning spent every day in the factory, working with the workers to adjust parameters and optimize processes.

Suning has almost obsessive requirements for quality. The size of the braised pork pieces, the ratio of fat to lean meat, the color, and the thickness of the broth are all subject to strict standards. Any bag that does not meet the requirements cannot leave the factory.

The indigenous workers initially thought he was being too serious; it was just a bag of braised pork.
So what if someone's a little fatter or thinner? Who can tell if their color is a little darker or lighter?

Suning didn't argue with them. They poured all the substandard products together and let the workers taste them. Then they took out a bag of qualified products and let the workers compare them.

After the workers tasted it, they fell silent. The difference was indeed significant, so significant that it was immediately noticeable.

On the day the central kitchen went into operation, Suning stood in the workshop, watching the assembly line run smoothly. Bags of pre-cooked vegetables came out from the end of the production line, were boxed, sealed, labeled, and neatly stacked on trays. He felt an indescribable sense of peace.

From today onwards, the food supply of the Imperial Kitchen of the Ming Dynasty will be guaranteed to be stable, no longer relying on the production capacity of the Space World.

He kept the production line in the space world as a backup, so that the space world could take over if the external equipment malfunctioned.

Walking on two legs is steady.

There is another, more important reason for transferring production capacity to external sources—security.

His secret weapon is the spatial world; he cannot let anyone know about it, much less allow anyone to investigate it.

Now that the Imperial Kitchen of the Ming Dynasty has grown so big, more and more people are watching it—competitors, media, tax authorities, business registration authorities, all sorts of eyes are on it.

You can't leave any evidence against him, and you can't let anyone discover that there are problems with the source of his ingredients or that his production capacity doesn't match the actual scale.

With the central kitchen established, all raw material procurement, processing, and distribution have formal invoices and records, which can withstand scrutiny and questioning.

Anyone who wants to investigate, feel free to do so. The ledgers, receipts, equipment, and personnel are all complete; there's nothing wrong with them.

……

When Yang Maixiang visited the central kitchen, she stood at the workshop entrance, staring blankly at the gleaming equipment and busy workers for a long time.

She didn't understand cleanrooms or automated production lines; all she knew was that the factory was bigger and more impressive than she had imagined.

Turning to look at Su Ning, he asked, "Su Ning, is this really ours?"

“Yes!” Suning nodded.

Yang Maixiang didn't say anything more. She stood there for a long time, her eyes a little red, it was hard to tell whether she was happy or emotional.

Su Ning stood beside her, put his arm around her shoulder, and watched the busy figures in the workshop.

Central kitchens are just the beginning; there are more stores, more cities, and a larger market to come.

Suning, however, was not in a hurry at all. He would take it one step at a time and eventually reach the place he wanted to go.

...(End of this chapter)