Chapter 216: Let Zheng Da do it

Hearing that Qin Huai was willing to work overtime, Foreman Cao became even more excited; the look in his eyes as he watched Qin Huai was practically glowing.

"It is truly wonderful that Master Xiao Qin has this heart. Now, I must speak of the second most urgent matter, which is the operating hours of our Huang Ji."

"Master Huang, I feel there is no problem with the lunch operating hours, but the evening operating hours are indeed a bit too short." Foreman Cao looked at Huang Shengli.

Huang Shengli remained silent and did not speak.

The last time Huang Ji modified its operating hours was because of *Zhi Wei*.

"Since we have now confirmed the rule that *Guo'er* will be limited in quantity, I can roughly calculate the daily sales volume of *Guo'er* based on the operating duration and the customer traffic from the past few days."

"Considering that the production time for *Guo'er* is much longer than that of ordinary pastries, I think we can gradually increase the operating hours starting tomorrow. Let's increase it to 9 o'clock tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow we will..."

"Extending the ordering time to 10 o'clock in the evening is about right." Huang Shengli interrupted Manager Cao. "Stop taking orders at ten, and close the shop at eleven. The lunch operating hours will remain as they are; stop taking orders at 1:30, as we must leave ample preparation time for the chefs in the back kitchen."

Foreman Cao had worked at Huang Ji for so many years; he could calculate customer traffic and output, and naturally, Huang Shengli could too.

"10 o'clock is the limit. Even if Xiao Qin and I can stably produce *Guo'er* after 10 o'clock, the others in the back kitchen won't be able to keep up with such a large output."

Foreman Cao quickly noted this down in his notebook.

Huang Shengli looked at Qin Huai again: "Xiao Qin, you don't need to work that late before getting off. Start at 4:30 in the afternoon, and based on your output speed, working until 8 o'clock in the evening is sufficient. However, since you have to work in the evening, you should rest well at noon. I will have Gong Liang set up a VIP sleeping lounge in the bone-setting shop. From now on, you can go over and sleep after eating lunch every day to recharge your batteries."

Qin Huai knew what Huang Shengli meant. The biggest difference between *Guo'er* and other pastries is that it can be steamed repeatedly, and the taste after re-steaming is not much worse than when it is fresh out of the pot.

As a novel pastry whose prototype is an apple-shaped fruit, *Guo'er* is originally shaped, then steamed in a pot until cooked, and only then taken out to be colored. After coloring, it is served directly to the customer, and the serving temperature is just right.

After coloring, it is left to cool, and when a customer places an order, it is steamed in a steamer for a few minutes, which is also delicious.

Admittedly, the production process of *Guo'er* is very troublesome, and there are very few people in the Huang Ji back kitchen who can assist Qin Huai.

For kneading the dough, *Guo'er* requires standard dough skin for fruit-shaped pastries; it must be firm, but it cannot be completely uniform, and it needs to be slightly adjusted according to the characteristics of the pastry.

On this matter, even Zheng Siyuan could not help. Just because Zheng Siyuan knows how to knead dough for fruit-shaped pastries does not mean he knows how to knead dough for *Guo'er*. He simply does not make this pastry, and he hasn't even mastered the big flip-spoon technique yet; Zheng Siyuan won't practice *Guo'er*.

Making the filling is Huang Shengli's step. To say nothing else, just the big flip-spoon technique required for stir-frying the filling—in all of Huang Ji, and in the entire Suzhou region, one cannot find a second person besides Huang Shengli who can handle it.

Shaping is relatively simple, but that is only relatively speaking.

If the shaping of fruit-shaped pastries were something any chef could master after practicing for a few days, fruit-shaped pastries would not be synonymous with top-tier pastry craftsmanship.

What? You say Qin Huai didn't even practice for a few days, and he mastered it as soon as he tried?

Regarding this, Zheng Siyuan can only say that the physical constitution of one person cannot be compared to another.

Breaking down the production steps of *Guo'er*, the only parts where a helper can assist, besides the steaming which just requires having hands and feet, is the final coloring.

Coloring is simple; as long as you have hands, you can do it.

But *Guo'er* is not just ordinary coloring.

Many people in the Huang Ji back kitchen feel that the styling of *Guo'er* and the styling of apple-shaped fruit pastries are simply two extremes: one is extreme aesthetics, and the other is violent ugly aesthetics.

The former requires a certain aesthetic and artistic foundation, and the latter also requires a certain aesthetic and artistic foundation.

When Qin Huai occasionally made *Guo'er*, it wasn't that the enthusiastic folks in the Huang Ji back kitchen hadn't tried, but no one could paint *Guo'er* uglier than Qin Huai.

Xu Cheng emphasized in his article that the styling of *Guo'er* is ugly and outrageous.

If the *Guo'er* served to the table isn't ugly enough, what should be done if the customers are disappointed?

Isn't that false advertising?

The meeting of the three people, Qin Huai, lasted for a full hour. The whole time, it was Huang Shengli and Foreman Cao discussing, while Qin Huai listened from the side.

Huang Ji's current business strategy is very simple.

Grasp the customer base, retain the customer base, and create brilliance once more.

*Zhi Wei* is published today. If domestic customers are fast, they can arrive by noon or evening, while foreign customers will be slightly slower and will have to wait until tomorrow or the day after.

It can be said that throughout January until the Spring Festival, Huang Ji will definitely be packed, and long queues are completely foreseeable.

And the queuing at that time will not be the small fuss of these past few days, with people queuing for a hundred or two hundred meters every day to buy *baozi*.

At that time, all the people queuing to eat will be dine-in customers. The queuing time will be long, and it is not impossible to queue from six in the morning until 10 at night.

To this day, Huang Shengli and Foreman Cao still remember that when Huang Ji first appeared in *Zhi Wei* back then, because they had no experience and did not strictly control the number of people queuing and the operating duration, it led to many customers queuing overnight just to eat Huang Shengli's dishes. At two or three in the morning, Huang Ji had already closed, but there was still a long queue outside.

The scalpers, line-cutting, quarreling, and fighting that followed need not even be mentioned.

Why are the diners at Huang Ji and the surrounding neighbors so adept at dealing with various unexpected situations that arise during queuing, and ready to jump out at any time to execute justice?

That was all practiced back then.

However, times are different now. Back then, information was not developed, and there were not even smartphones. Many customers came for the reputation, and before arriving at Huang Ji, they did not know that Huang Ji's business was so good. Having made a special trip, they were reluctant to leave, so they could only queue hard outside the shop. In the cold of winter, there were countless people wrapped in blankets and holding quilts.

If it hadn't been for the queuing like that back then, Huang Shengli wouldn't have bitten the bullet and insisted on increasing the operating hours, almost working himself into the hospital.

It's much better now; one can queue online and inform customers of the current queuing progress at any time, greatly alleviating the pressure of queuing on-site.

After the meeting, Qin Huai felt that his pressure as the maker of *Guo'er* was not very high, but the pressure on Foreman Cao, who was in charge of management, was very high.

Increasing the operating duration meant that shift adjustments, shift rotations, and time-off adjustments all had to be rearranged. Everyone is a working person; some, like Foreman Cao, have deep feelings for Huang Ji, while others are just ordinary workers who are unwilling to work overtime.

How to set overtime pay and how much to adjust the bonus coefficient—these were all Foreman Cao's jobs.

However, Foreman Cao was very happy. After the meeting, he found a corner to actively make a table, and from time to time he would answer phone calls; his nature as a workaholic was undoubtedly exposed.

Foreman Cao went to find a corner to make the table, but Qin Huai and Huang Shengli did not leave the private room and continued their two-person meeting.

"Master Huang, will I only be making *Guo'er* starting tomorrow?" Qin Huai asked.

He had no objections to the adjustment of his working hours, and he had no opposition to the adjustment of his main work content.

Qin Huai had a very clear positioning of himself; he was here to help.

Here to help Zheng Da, Zheng Siyuan, and Huang Shengli.

When Qin Huai first came to Huang Ji, Zheng Siyuan had entrusted Qin Huai, wanting Qin Huai to stay at Huang Ji for a longer period to help Huang Ji get through the difficult period while Huang Shengli's waist injury had not yet healed.

Qin Huai agreed at the time and did exactly that, and now he had indeed achieved it—Huang Shengli's waist was better.

Logically speaking, what Qin Huai promised Zheng Siyuan at the beginning had been achieved. He could now completely retreat and return to the Yunzhong Canteen to happily be the boss.

But Qin Huai knew he couldn't leave now. Now was the time when Huang Ji needed him the most.

A paragraph in Xu Cheng's article was very correct: Qin Huai is a thousand-mile horse, and Zheng Da and Huang Shengli are two Bole.

One Bole wants to be the master of a thousand-mile horse, so he teaches everything he knows.

One Bole is purely fond of talent, so he tries his best to give guidance.

Regardless of what the two Bole think, their actions are selfless.

Looking at the people at Zhi Wei Ju, one knows that the practices of Huang Shengli and Zheng Da are absolutely very rare among culinary masters. Normal people who want to learn craftsmanship should be like the people at Zhi Wei Ju: respectful, diligent, busy, and practicing hard, then waiting to be discovered by the masters and taken as apprentices or given a little guidance.

Masters usually only teach apprentices. Besides apprentices, the ones they teach the most are well-connected people from culinary families like Tan Weian.

Don't look at Tan Weian's average level; he really knows a lot of recipes.

But even for Tan Weian, it's impossible for him to say he wants to learn something and have the masters at Zhi Wei Ju teach him whatever he wants.

Qin Huai, like Foreman Cao, now sincerely wants to watch Huang Ji grow bigger and stronger and create brilliance once more.

Unknowingly, he had lived into the appearance of an old employee of Huang Ji.

"Do you want to do something else?" Huang Shengli asked. "Actually, there was one thing I didn't mention when Xiao Cao was here just now. Now that *Guo'er* is limited in quantity, shouldn't the *Jiu Niang Mantou* and *San Ding Bao* also be limited?"

"*Jiu Niang Mantou* can be handed over to Zheng Da to make. I know his business very well; he definitely has nothing to do recently. Otherwise, when you and Siyuan were researching the *Bai Guo* filling two days ago and he couldn't make it, he would have long ago found an excuse that a factory somewhere had a problem or a contract somewhere needed to be renegotiated and slipped away, and wouldn't have said anything about going home to retreat and research the *Bai Guo* filling."

"Although your Master Zheng is a bit lazy, there is no problem with his craftsmanship. He started making *Jiu Niang Mantou* when he first became a regular employee at the state-run hotel. He has been making it for decades, and his craftsmanship is not bad. Even if he just does it casually, there won't be any problems."

"What I am more worried about is the *San Ding Bao*. This is much more troublesome than *Jiu Niang Mantou*, and your Master Zheng might not be willing to do it."

Qin Huai indicated that he understood. Zheng Da had been lazy for so many years, and now he was actually very conflicted when making pastries.

He disdained making simple home-style pastries because they were too simple and there was no way to display his strength.

He was too lazy to make high-difficulty, complex pastries because they were too troublesome. Unless there was great motivation, Zheng Da didn't want to make things difficult for himself at an age where he had achieved financial freedom.

So this led to Zheng Da being very inconsistent now; after being stimulated, he couldn't persist for a few days before wanting to slip away.

"I can be responsible for the *San Ding Bao*," Qin Huai said. "Although I don't know much about how customer traffic and output are calculated, I just listened roughly, and I feel that if it's limited, the daily output of *Guo'er* won't be particularly large."

"I should be able to take care of both *Guo'er* and *San Ding Bao*."

"Master Huang, to tell you the truth, I don't like making the same pastry every day like Zheng Siyuan, especially making only one kind of pastry every day."

"I want to be like before, except the fixed pastries will become *Guo'er* and *San Ding Bao*. Interspersed with making a few things I want to make that day, and hanging up 'sold out' once they are sold."

Huang Shengli hesitated a little, but he knew Qin Huai's habits very well, so he thought about it and nodded: "That's fine, do your best."

Qin Huai returned to the kitchen.

The meeting had delayed a lot of time, and usually at this time, the steamers would already be at full power. Qin Huai glanced at everyone's working state and found that Zheng Da, the master chef, was a bit unable to keep up with the efficiency of the helpers.

The helpers were working too fast, and the master chef hadn't kept up with everyone's rhythm.

Of course, Zheng Da didn't think so; Zheng Da felt that he was going to smoke from making *mantou* today.

Think of him, Zheng Da, who followed his master to learn craftsmanship before he was 10 years old, and was a helper in a state-run hotel in his teens.

Burning fire, cutting vegetables, cleaning, kneading dough, mixing filling, taking out the trash—at that time, among the chefs and waiters in the state-run hotel, who didn't say a word about how capable young man Zheng Da was when they saw him.

He, Zheng Da, also started as a helper back then, a professional helper, a jack-of-all-trades.

But why is the efficiency of the helpers now so high? What's wrong with Zhi Wei Ju? Do they have so many customers? Is it necessary to force the helpers like this? Can't they recruit more?

You surnamed Su, are you that poor? Don't you Zhi Wei Ju earn quite a lot every year?

Zheng Da was grinding his back teeth while making *mantou*.

"Master Zheng, let me do it." Qin Huai walked to Zheng Da's side. "You've been busy for a while, take a rest."

If you don't rest today, there won't be another chance.

Zheng Da was moved to tears, insisted on not leaving, and stubbornly said: "No need!"

"My waist has no problems, and my body is great! When I was young, after my master retired, I was responsible for all the pastries in the entire state-run hotel. What is this little bit of work?"

"Master Huang said that starting tomorrow, *Jiu Niang Mantou* might need you to be responsible for it, and I will only do *San Ding Bao*," Qin Huai reminded in a low voice.

Zheng Da:...?

Huang Shengli, what's wrong with you? Didn't you say do a little work? You call this a little?

Do you know how many *Jiu Niang Mantou* Huang Ji Restaurant has to sell every day? Do you know how much money I, Zheng Da, make every minute?

I, Zheng Da!

Stay in this broken kitchen starting tomorrow to make *mantou* for you?

Zheng Da wanted to say something, but thought of the article in *Zhi Wei*.

Huang Ji hadn't appeared in *Zhi Wei* for many years.

Although most other restaurants were like this, after all, it was a great honor for a chef's dish to appear in *Zhi Wei* once, but there were also those who could appear in *Zhi Wei* multiple times.

If a famous chef developed any new or good dishes, it was impossible for Xu Cheng not to write a food review.

Like Pei Shenghua of Cheng Fang Ju, he had appeared twice.

Sun Maocai from Hong Kong had appeared several times, and every time he released a new dish, he could appear in *Zhi Wei*, making everyone envious to the point of grinding their teeth.

Zheng Da also wanted to let Huang Ji create brilliance once more, and when he swept his master's grave next year, he could say lightly:

Master, Huang Ji's business now is even better than when you were in the state-run hotel back then.

Thinking of this, Zheng Da could only curse inwardly that Huang Shengli was really useless, not having researched any new dishes for so many years, unable to appear in *Zhi Wei* and unable to advertise.

Still had to rely on him.

Zheng Da followed the trend and said: "Eh, I suddenly feel that I should take a good rest. By the way, Xiao Qin, which master in the bone-setting shop next door has better techniques? Recommend one to me."

"I suddenly feel that my waist isn't doing well either, I need to get it massaged properly."

Might have a slight cold these past two days, state isn't very good, feeling dizzy.

Rest and adjust for one day tomorrow, no update (or maybe a short update of one chapter that is not a two-in-one), normal update the day after tomorrow.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 217 =====