Chapter 32: Traffic Explosion

Hearing the number the boss mentioned, Feng was stunned for a moment before she immediately realized what was going on.

She hastily explained, "Look at my memory. I was too busy just now, so I forgot all about it. If it’s thirty-five yuan, then there’s no mistake."

The boss was curious. Not quite understanding what his employee meant, he quickly pressed, "What’s going on? Explain it to me right now."

"Didn’t a handsome guy come to review the restaurant today?" Feng replied. "Boss, you instructed us to give him a ten percent discount. His bill was originally 350 yuan, which came to 315 after the discount. However, after he heard the price, he still insisted on paying the original amount and just scanned the code to pay. There were a lot of orders at the time, so I didn’t have time to change the price on the receipt."

Hearing Feng’s explanation, the Boss of the Mediterranean’s heart gave a heavy THUMP.

Celestial Treasure Restaurant was already quite popular on its own, with long lines forming at every mealtime, so he didn’t need to hire any food reviewers to help promote it at all.

However, he was a businessman after all, and he certainly wouldn’t be foolish enough to offend these food vloggers. He had hosted quite a few of them before and treated them all the same: no free meals, but they would get a discount. But this was the first time he had encountered a vlogger who refused a discount like today.

He couldn’t help but mutter in his heart, "Could that sunny and handsome young man today actually be the type of vlogger who specializes in negative review videos?"

Although he was already in his forties, as a big spender who frequently tipped the young ladies on live streams, he watched a lot of Douyin. He knew very well that some vloggers would say absolutely anything and everything for traffic.

Feeling a bit uneasy, he opened his Douyin and started searching in the search bar. After casually swiping the screen a few times, he quickly found the video he was looking for.

[Surprise Visit to Celestial Treasure Restaurant, Yangcheng’s Authentic Sizzling Pot]

Seeing the video’s caption, he was a bit surprised. "Did I guess wrong?" he wondered.

Once he finished watching the entire video, his suspended heart finally relaxed. A trace of shame flashed across his face. He had judged a gentleman by the measure of a lesser man.

This wasn’t one of those wildly critical negative review videos. Although this vlogger, named "Brother Li Loves Food," didn’t offer one-sided praise for the food in the restaurant, his review was very fair and objective.

However, as someone who frequently watched short videos, he quickly noticed something seemed off. This vlogger had fewer than 10,000 followers in total, and this video had just been posted—it hadn’t even been two hours since it went live. Yet, the likes on this new video had already surpassed 1,000, and there were over 400 comments.

Curious, he opened the comment section.

[Looks delicious! I’m taking my wife to try it tomorrow!]

[Unbelievable, I’m watching this video in Kangaroo Country! Are you trying to make me die of cravings?]

[How much Dou+ did the host buy? I actually saw this video in Star Country?]

[Great, my tenth diet plan of the year has been declared a failure!]

[Good grief, Douyin sending me food videos late at night. My diet plan is ruined again!]

[Where did this god-tier streamer come from? Giving out thousands of yuan in red packets during a single live stream? Whenever the host goes live next, I’ll definitely be there to support.]

...

Looking at these comments, the Boss of the Mediterranean was deep in thought. He now somewhat understood why this vlogger had fewer than 10,000 followers, yet this newly posted video was so popular.

It wasn’t hard to see from everyone’s messages that this vlogger must have paid for Dou+ promotion, and the amount invested certainly wasn’t small. Otherwise, the IPs in the comment section wouldn’t be from all over, stretching from the South Seas to the northern reaches, with quite a few even from foreign countries.

If he had paid to hire this vlogger, then it would be perfectly reasonable for the other party to spend some money buying traffic to meet the agreed-upon view count and metrics. However, he had never invited any vloggers to review his restaurant.

This instantly left him feeling baffled. The other party had no relation to him whatsoever, so why would they pay out of pocket to promote him?

However, when he clicked on the other party’s profile, preparing to send a private message to ask, he quickly noticed their bio.

[I’m a wealthy second-generation heir. I don’t take ads or promotions. Food reviews are purely a labor of love, and I guarantee absolute neutrality. Anyone who has evidence of the host accepting promotion or advertising fees from stores can report it. The current reward is 300,000 yuan. There are irregular events and red packet giveaways in the live stream. Welcome to join.]

After reading this bio, the boss couldn’t help but shake his head with a wry smile. His finger, which had been reaching for the private message button, paused.

So he was a wealthy second-generation heir—that explained everything. Since the guy could casually throw around thousands of yuan in red packets during a live stream, it was no wonder he didn’t need a discount. Wealthy heirs did things entirely based on their preferences; there was no need for logic at all.

It seemed he had struck dumb luck today, having someone pay out of pocket to promote his place for free. Although his restaurant’s booming business meant he didn’t lack this bit of traffic, he couldn’t just ignore someone else’s good intentions.

After thinking it over, the boss quickly came up with a way to show his gratitude. Since this wealthy vlogger’s hobby was sharing delicious food with viewers, the guy should be very happy if he sent some traffic his way. Besides, boosting this video’s popularity would also greatly benefit him.

After all, the vlogger’s evaluation of their restaurant in the video was very fair. In his opinion, those food review videos that offered one-sided praise actually didn’t have much promotional effect. It was obvious at a glance that those types of videos were paid promotions by the stores, making them highly inauthentic. It was precisely this kind of video with a relatively neutral attitude—containing both praise and criticism—that had higher credibility and better promotional results.

He returned to the video interface, clicked on the promotion feature, and casually invested another 2,000 yuan in Dou+ for the video.

Early the next morning.

Li Xiao habitually opened his Douyin backend.

Seeing that his latest video’s view count had already exceeded 400,000, likes had surpassed 5,000, and comments had reached over 1,000, he was instantly dumbfounded.

He rubbed his eyes, thinking he hadn’t fully woken up yet.

Although he remembered that he had indeed bought Dou+ for this video, he had only invested 1,000 yuan. Logically speaking, 1,000 yuan couldn’t possibly bring in this much traffic, and the video itself didn’t have any viral hooks. There was no way it could have such exaggerated numbers.

Feeling a bit suspicious, he clicked on the backend data details. The next moment, he made a surprising discovery.

Late last night, someone had actually bought Dou+ for his video, and it was a full 2,000 yuan worth of Dou+.