Chapter 32: New Additions to the Dining Area!
‘Your current business establishment is the [Rudimentary Restaurant]. At daily settlement, the [Rudimentary Restaurant] will deduct 50 points for routine maintenance. Routine maintenance includes cleaning, electricity, and water supply.’
When she clicked back into the shop expansion interface, this prompt popped up on the system panel.
She wasn’t surprised; normal business operations worked exactly like this.
Transitioning from a street vendor to renting a storefront, and then expanding that storefront, operational costs were bound to increase. At the very least, she currently didn’t have to worry about labor or advertising costs.
Ling Jing took another look at the daily quests.
Sure enough, the daily quest requirements had risen with the tide of the shop upgrade.
Daily Quest: [Rudimentary Restaurant] Tier – Daily Revenue (0/500) (Takes effect starting at midnight) —Failure to complete the daily quest will result in a 20% deduction in revenue.
It had jumped from two hundred to five hundred.
The only reason her revenue was overflowing was because, aside from upgrading the system-provided standard roaster, she had also introduced pork cracklings and the one-pot hodgepodge stew on her own.
The one-pot stew contributed significantly to her daily earnings.
Now that she didn’t have to scrape by right on the borderline of the management system’s requirements, Ling Jing wasn’t the type of person to settle for merely meeting the minimums anyway.
Based on that “Rapid Progression Bundle,” Ling Jing had a bold hypothesis: the faster she upgraded, the more generous the rewards.
She was ready to put that to the test.
When it came to running a restaurant, Ling Jing had plenty of confidence.
Besides, she had already been planning to develop new menu items.
—The number of customers visiting every day had clearly exceeded her shop’s capacity.
Even after upgrading from a rudimentary stall to a rudimentary restaurant, this remained true.
A storefront of this size in her original world could host thirty or forty customers at once, tops.
And even then, the kitchen would struggle to keep up.
But the foot traffic had been steadily increasing over the past two days. There had to be at least eighty or ninety people today, Ling Jing estimated mentally.
Naturally, for many, buying roasted potatoes and roasted sweet potatoes was enough.
This was because they were just starting to earn money.
Without savings, it was hard to convince people to spend on expensive dishes.
Foodies, of course, were the exception.
Once the shop rolled out more suitable dishes and the customers had more coins in their pockets, they would choose to buy them.
That all depended on what the establishment had to offer.
More often than not, whether a restaurant survived came down to a combination of factors: taste, price, and whether the dishes suited the customers’ palates.
A business owner had to operate, but they also had to strategize.
Unlike running a regular restaurant, right now, the “Chinese Restaurant” had absolutely zero competitors.
This was a massive advantage.
But Ling Jing didn’t want to rest on her laurels and coast by relying solely on the roaster.
Roasted potatoes and roasted sweet potatoes were the most basic food guarantees, and their “toxin-purging” effect was equally fundamental.
This demographic of customers would always exist, and almost every new customer’s first purchase would be a “roasted potato.”
Therefore, she needed to set aside a dining area specifically for them.
Ling Jing tapped into the Shop Decoration & Layout tab and entered the interior view.
It was still rendered in that pixel-art style, but just like those management mini-games, everything aside from the main building structure could be dragged and rearranged.
First, she used the panel to store the tricycle parked outside the entrance into the warehouse.
Next, she selected the cashier counter situated at the back of the dining area and dragged it right up to the entrance.
She positioned it flush against the left side of the doorway.
Ling Jing bought a small table from the Mall, dragged it over, and placed it next to the cashier counter.
She tapped the chibi roaster icon in the left sidebar of the layout menu and placed the roaster on the small table.
The Cash Box was dragged onto the cashier counter.
Having done all this, Ling Jing opened the Mall, bought ten sets of resting benches, tapped back outside the restaurant, and lined them up neatly in the clearing before the entrance.
Leaving a small patch of space on the far left outside the doors, she dragged the Item Exchange Box over.
OK.
Now, customers buying roasted sweet potatoes and roasted potatoes could pay directly at the entrance. Even if they lined up in front of the roaster, it wouldn’t interfere with customers settling their bills at the cashier counter.
After buying their food, customers could sit and rest on the benches while they ate.
They could chat while sitting down.
They were no longer forced to squat or sit directly on the ground like most had done previously.
The various scavenged crops brought back could also be recycled directly at the side of the entrance.
With this adjustment to the customer flow, resting area, and dining area, everything instantly felt much smoother.
Having finished this setup, Ling Jing opened the Mall again.
Browsing for the items she needed.
Found it.
[Food Display Cabinet]
Priced at 100 points each.
Checking her remaining points, Ling Jing bit the bullet and bought one.
She then dragged it to a spot just inside the door on the right.
Once placed, the [Food Display Cabinet] turned out to be a clear glass case, much like the self-serve display cases in a bakery where customers used tongs and trays to pick out freshly baked pastries.
But it was much smaller, about the width of a nightstand, featuring three tiers of shelving inside.
One tier could hold five portions of the one-pot stew; two tiers meant ten portions.
The remaining tier would hold the pickled white radish, likely fitting around twenty-something cartons.
Ling Jing planned to place the prepared food directly inside so customers who wanted some could pay at the door and serve themselves.
Once sold out, she would restock it.
The official Restaurant Manager perk—”All ingredients and prepared dishes will remain in their freshly produced state until sold”—was a massive help.
Even “pre-made meals” would be perfectly fresh the moment they were bought.
She then bought two wooden four-person tables and eight small round stools, placing them flush against the right side immediately inside the entrance.
This provided a place for customers who bought the one-pot stew to dine at a table.
Of the 1,970 points she had painstakingly saved up over two days, 1,000 points went to upgrading the restaurant, 180 points for the benches, 20 points for the small roaster table, 100 points for the Food Display Cabinet, 80 points for the two four-person tables, and 40 points for the eight round stools.
She now had 550 points remaining.
Ling Jing appraised the remaining space in the dining area on the left side of the shop, mentally calculating the dimensions.
It should just about fit.
She tapped into the Mall.
A specialized table for Malatang skewers.
The marble tabletop featured three large 3×2 grid compartments.
Price: 400 points.
Hiss… That was steep.
It was equivalent to her entire day’s earnings when she sold pork cracklings.
But you have to spend money to make money.
—This semi-self-service style of Malatang was the perfect “new dish” for the Chinese Restaurant right now.
Ling Jing didn’t have staples like flour or rice on hand, and buying them from the Mall was simply too cost-ineffective.
Manpower-wise, trying to single-handedly cook for dozens of people while simultaneously juggling front-of-house service and running orders was too difficult.
On the other hand, this Malatang method—where she brewed the broth base ahead of time and threaded ingredients onto skewers—could be prepped entirely in advance. During business hours, all she had to do was count the skewers and restock the food.
The ingredients were already available. Vegetables like potatoes, cabbage, sweet potatoes, mushrooms, and string beans were stockpiled in massive quantities inside the Item Exchange Box. Coupled with the automatic vegetable slicer, the difficulty of threading the skewers was drastically reduced.
Ling Jing felt confident she could handle the workload.
Moreover…
When it came to piping-hot, fragrantly savory, and numbingly spicy Malatang skewers, hardly anyone could resist, right?
At the very least, Ling Jing couldn’t.
She was a fiercely loyal Malatang enthusiast!
