Travel back to ancient times and open a Sichuan restaurant

Two days later, Shopkeeper Ding arrived. At that time, Zhong Ruyi had just finished selling the day's worth of braised goods.

"Miss Zhong! Your business is still very good. They are sold out so early."

Shopkeeper Ding's voice came from behind.

Zhong Ruyi turned around and saw him and a slightly plump middle-aged man standing at the door of Zhongji, both of them smiling.

"Manager Ding? Come in and talk."

Zhong Ruyi poured tea for them, and they both took it with both hands and thanked him.

Shopkeeper Ding took out the account book and spread it out on the table.

He pointed to a page of paper and said, "Miss Zhong, this is last month's account book. I brought it here specially to check the numbers."

The account book that Manager Ding mentioned looks very new. You can tell at a glance that it is newly made. It is specially used to record the braised goods produced in cooperation with Zhongji.

Zhong Ruyi took it and looked at it carefully. Fortunately, the characters of this era were the same as those of modern times. Traditional Chinese characters were used here, so she could understand them.

It records how much money was spent on buying pig offal over the past month, one note per day.

How much do the braised goods sell for every day and what is the pricing?

The total amount is on the last page.

Zhong Ruyi was stunned when she saw the number in the account book!

She knew that Manxianglou made money, but she didn't expect that they could sell so many braised goods in a month. It seemed that there were still many rich people in the town.

Otherwise, how could the sales volume be so high on this day!

Zhong Ruyi said jokingly, "We can actually sell hundreds of copies a day! Manager Ding, are you still short of staff in your restaurant?"

Shopkeeper Ding was so amused by her words that he burst into laughter.

The slightly plump man next to him also laughed.

He was very excited that his second brother could read and understand the account book.

Although Zhong's mother was illiterate, she knew that the business was good after listening to what her daughter, son, and Manager Ding said.

The account book recorded the price of pig offal bought from the next town, several counties and villages every day. It was collected by the bucket, and one bucket was five cents.

Dozens of buckets can be collected in a day, two buckets in one pot, and one pot can yield twenty scoops.

Manxianglou also serves dishes by the spoonful, but they charge thirty cents per spoonful, which is much more profitable than Zhongji's ten cents per spoonful.

For example, on the last day, we sold more than 200 portions of braised food, each portion costing 30 wen.

Twenty buckets of pig offal were collected, and finally ten pots of braised food were produced.

It is amazing that so many braised goods can be sold out in one day, and Manxianglou can actually buy so much pork offal in one day.

However, my second brother went to the pork shop every day to buy pig offal, and it was twenty cents no matter how many buckets there were. Manxianglou charged five cents for each bucket.

With this calculation, the pig offal collected by Manxianglou is much cheaper than that collected by my second brother, but my second brother does not have the energy to collect it from other places, and twenty cents is not expensive.

Last month, Manxianglou sold braised goods for twenty-one days. The total price of pork offal was two taels and one cent, and the total profit of the braised goods was one hundred and twenty-eight taels of silver!

Oh my god! This number is amazing!

Excluding the cost of buying pig offal and spices, Zhong Ruyi got thirty-seven taels.

This made her very excited. After all, this money did not require her to get up early every day to work, and the labor costs were all borne by Manxianglou.

When closing the monthly accounts, you only need to deduct the costs, and the remaining profit can be divided into 30% and 70%. This was written in the agreement.

After paying the bill, Zhong Ruyi wanted to go buy some wine and meat with the money, but Manager Ding quickly stopped her.

"Ms. Zhong, please don't be anxious. I'm not here to ask for wine today."

Seeing Zhong Ruyi stop, he pulled the slightly plump man beside him.

"Ms. Zhong, I'm here today not only to give you last month's share, but also for my friend."

Zhong Ruyi glanced at the slightly plump man next to Shopkeeper Ding. When he saw her looking at him, he smiled at her.

"Miss Zhong, you can just call me Old Wu."

She asked hesitantly, "Is there something wrong?"

Shopkeeper Ding rubbed his hands together, a little embarrassed. "It's like this. When Lao Wu and I were drinking a few days ago, we talked about this braised food recipe, and he was very interested."

"I thought that since Miss Zhong and our Manxianglou can cooperate, what's the harm in having one more company cooperate? So today I specially brought him along to talk to Miss Zhong about the prescription."

"A recipe for braised food?"

Zhong Ruyi didn't expect that Manager Ding would actually tell this to others, so she pulled Manager Ding aside.

"Manager Ding, why did you mention this recipe to him?"

Shopkeeper Ding didn't want to think about it either, because it was Old Wu who asked him about it himself.

"Ms. Zhong, if you don't want to, just refuse. I've already told him this when I came here. If you don't want to, then I'll go ask our boss if I can sell him the braised goods in the building at Zhong's price. If I sell him half a day, he should be satisfied."

What Old Wu was talking about that day was a recipe for braised food. He thought that since he could make peanuts so delicious, then wouldn't it be possible to braise other things, such as spare ribs, pork belly, or some vegetarian food like edamame, broad beans and black fungus?

What he cares about is the recipe. As long as he has the recipe, he can braise anything he wants.

Zhong Ruyi glanced calmly at Old Wu who was standing nearby. Seeing that his eyes were looking elsewhere but his ears were facing their direction, she knew that he was eavesdropping.

She whispered to Shopkeeper Ding, "Shopkeeper Ding, how is your relationship with this Boss Wu? What kind of person is he?"

Shopkeeper Ding also followed her gaze and glanced at Old Wu, then began to speak in a low voice as well.

"Miss Zhong, have you noticed that there are a few unfamiliar guests at Zhong's recently?"

A new guest?

She suddenly thought of the young people who had been there as soon as the store opened. "Recently, there have indeed been a few young people who came early. Judging from their attire, they seem to be working in a restaurant or pub."

Manager Ding nodded. "That's the guy in his shop. I heard him say that three people come every day, but it's still not enough to meet the demand in the tavern, so he wanted to come to you to talk about this recipe."

So that's how it is. To supply the needs of a pub, a few spoonfuls a day would definitely not be enough.

Just like the couple who own the noodle shop. Their noodle shop is not big, but they still need to bring their older child to queue up and buy noodles in order to meet the daily demand.

Noodle shops just add some braised food to the noodles, and the main thing they sell is still the noodles, the braised food is just a bonus.

Taverns use braised food as a side dish, so a few spoonfuls a day is certainly not enough.

After they finished talking in a low voice, they went back to sit down. Zhong Ruyi met Old Wu's expectant eyes.

She cleared her throat and said, "Boss Wu, I believe you should have heard from Shopkeeper Ding about signing an agreement with me."

Old Wu nodded. He had heard that night that the recipe could be purchased for money, and he had planned to spend several hundred taels of silver to buy the recipe from Zhongji.

It was only after hearing his plan that Lao Ding said that the recipes for Manxianglou’s braised dishes were purchased with money, but not bought out in one go.

Instead, they signed an agreement of 70%-30% profit sharing for a term of ten years. After ten years, the recipe would belong to the tavern and no further dividends would be required.

He found it incredible at the time that such a big Manxianglou would sign such an agreement with a small shop like Zhongji.

But on second thought, this is indeed in line with the behavior of the boss of Manxianglou. He never wants to give people a chance to criticize him when doing things, and he will do his best to do his best.

He always felt that the owner of Manxianglou was a bit hypocritical, but that had nothing to do with him, and whether he was hypocritical or not would not hinder him.

At that time, Shopkeeper Ding was reluctant to introduce him to Zhong Ruyi. He knew what kind of person Old Wu was and was afraid that Miss Zhong would not agree in the end and things would get ugly, so Old Wu would resort to underhanded tactics.

"Ms. Zhong, I've heard from Lao Ding about the agreement you signed with Manxianglou. If you're willing, I can also cooperate with you like Manxianglou did."

If he is not willing, then let Xu Xiaohu keep an eye on Zhongji's people. Sooner or later, the recipe will fall into his hands, but it is better if he is willing. He is not the kind of person who likes to cause trouble.