Chapter 171: Overlooked an Important Problem

Chapter 171: Chapter 171: Overlooked an Important Problem

"Go on, go on. You’ve already taken a bite, and now you want me to eat your slobber? You eat it. I don’t even like these anyway." He Fuli pushed it away irritably. Though her words were dismissive, a gratified smile couldn’t help but appear in her eyes.

"Come on, eat it! I’m not sick, what are you afraid of?" Xiao Li, not giving up, pushed the pork bun closer again. "You should taste it properly. Every time Dad brings them back, you only take one tiny bite. How can you even taste it like that?"

"Xiao Li, you eat it yourself. Isn’t there another one? Give that one to Mom, I won’t have any. Tomorrow, I’ll be with the guests, and I might get a chance to eat one or half of one. You guys won’t be at the table, and I doubt any of these pork buns will be left over." Just as the two were pushing the half-eaten pork bun back and forth, Xiao Li’s older brother, Xiao Yan, walked into the courtyard.

"In that case, let’s just buy twenty pork buns. We can set aside six for our family to eat tonight." Seeing her children being one more sensible than the other, He Fuli gritted her teeth. No matter how difficult things were for the family, they could still afford to let the kids have a proper treat once in a while. Thinking this, she decisively pulled out six yuan and handed it to her eldest daughter, saying with rare extravagance, "Go on, finish this half bun first, then take the money to your classmate’s house. We’ll order twenty pork buns. It’s not often we have a big event. We can’t let our own family just watch while others eat, with nothing for ourselves."

An order for twenty pork buns would actually yield twenty-four. After setting six aside for themselves, they would have eighteen left to serve their guests—more than enough.

"Okay!" Xiao Li jumped up with joy. No longer conflicted, she polished off her half of the pork bun in a few bites, then carefully re-wrapped the other half in paper for her little sister. Only after that did she take the money to find Gu Nuan Nuan and arrange a time to pick up the buns the next day.

After Xiao Li left, Gu Nuan Nuan immediately took the money to the kitchen and gave it to her mother in front of her grandmother and first aunt. "Six yuan, for twenty-four pork buns."

"How wonderful! We haven’t even officially opened and business is already coming to our door." Wen Xiu beamed, then added pointedly, "However, we haven’t officially started the business yet. Recently, all the expenses for building the house, the food, and everything else have been coming from your personal funds. So, you don’t need to record this income in our joint partnership ledger."

"Mom’s right. We can’t have you paying for the capital while the profits are recorded as everyone’s, can we?" Lin Qin, who had overheard, nodded in agreement. ’Come to think of it, my sister-in-law isn’t building this house just for herself; we’re all going to live here together. Seeing her spend money like water, my father-in-law and my husband offered to give her some money to help out, but my sister-in-law firmly refused.

Not only that, but her sister-in-law was also reluctant to use the meat from the two wild boars they had caught last time, saying that something so rare should be saved for the family to eat themselves.’

"Alright." Zhang Minzhen didn’t overthink it and simply nodded. She sighed, "We really need to start making the fish-filled buns as soon as possible. Although there’s profit in these pork buns, we make ours more generously filled than others, so our profit margin is naturally much smaller."

"Being generous has its own rewards. Once our reputation is established, do you think customers won’t come flocking to us? It’s about high volume, low margin. And honestly, these pork buns are still more profitable than we thought. The main thing is that there are many of us. Once we factor in the start-up costs for the shop and split the profits, it might seem like there’s not much to be made." Wen Xiu said comfortingly, "But everything will work out. As long as we get enough repeat customers, we can still make a good living even without relying on the fish-filled buns."

The two of them were saying this because after they had decided to sell the pork buns for thirty cents each, the three of them had specifically calculated the costs once and had a clear idea of the numbers.

"Mom, don’t just think of more people as more ways to split the money. You said it yourself—if we get a lot of repeat customers, how many pork buns can one person make working themselves to death? The benefit of having more people is that we can all work together, chatting and laughing, so it doesn’t feel tiring, right?" Lin Qin chimed in with a smile. After speaking, she sighed, "But buying pork from outside is just too expensive. It would be much cheaper to raise and butcher our own pigs than to buy ready-butchered meat. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough manpower or enough money. Otherwise, opening a pig farm would be great."

Lin Qin laughed at her own words. ’Saying that makes me sound too impatient. You have to take things one step at a time, right?’ She then explained, "It’s not just about the cost of buying ready-butchered pork. If our pork buns sell really well in the future, I’m afraid we could buy up all the pork in this area and it still wouldn’t be enough. It’s a good thing our main plan is to make money from the fish-filled buns, so we don’t have to worry about that for now."

Wen Xiu and Zhang Minzhen both laughed at Lin Qin’s words, but Gu Nuan Nuan’s expression suddenly changed. Realizing she had apparently overlooked a major problem from the very beginning, she furrowed her brow tightly.

"What’s wrong?" Zhang Minzhen was the first to notice Gu Nuan Nuan’s strange expression and was startled.

Wen Xiu and Lin Qin’s attention was also drawn to her, and they looked at Gu Nuan Nuan with the same concern.

"I’m not worried about what First Aunt said. The amount of pork we use now will definitely be different from the amount we use when we open the shop, so the price will naturally be different too. We can absolutely negotiate a price with the village butcher then. If it still seems too expensive, at worst, we can hire someone to buy pigs from Zhang Family Village or the nearby villages every day, butcher them, and deliver the meat. That would be cheaper and would solve First Aunt’s worry about the local pork supply not being enough. However, there is a big problem with the fish-filled buns."

"What problem?" Wen Xiu, Lin Qin, and Zhang Minzhen asked in unison.

"When we sell the fish-filled buns in the future, we’ll know where the fish meat comes from, but other people won’t. When our buns become a big hit, and we’re mainly using fish, won’t people find it strange that we use so much fish but are never seen buying any?"

Gu Nuan Nuan’s face was troubled. "We could buy some fish as a cover, that’s not impossible. But the problem is, the filling made from store-bought fish will definitely taste very different from the filling made with the fish we’re actually using. If customers buy them, take them home, and taste the difference, what are we supposed to say? We can’t just buy fish for show and then not use it, just to throw it all away, can we?"

"Then what do we do?" Wen Xiu was dumbfounded.

"Yeah, what do we do?" Lin Qin and Zhang Minzhen were also stunned. They all looked at each other, racking their brains for a solution. Unfortunately, by the time lunch was ready, the three adults and one child still hadn’t come up with a good idea. If it weren’t a topic unsuitable for Zhang Su and Zhang Kai, the four of them would have called Zhang Dazhuang over to brainstorm with them.

At noon, Lin Qin and Zhang Minzhen went to deliver lunch and helped serve the food. For each person, a large bowl was filled eighty percent of the way with fluffy, distinct grains of white rice. On top were placed three large, thick slices of fatty pork belly glistening in a rich, dark sauce, accompanied by half a ladle of tender, pale-yellow scrambled eggs and a large helping of crisp, bright green leafy vegetables in a cold dressing... Just looking at it was enough to make one’s stomach rumble even louder, making you wish you could grab the bowl and shovel the food into your mouth.

The soup was a pork and pickled mustard green soup. Small, individual bowls were already filled and set out for people to take as they pleased. If they finished, there was still more in the soup tureen for them to refill their bowls.