Chapter 68: taste testing starts, Ji Rou’s grievances
(Part 1)
The next morning, Lu Anran punctually appeared in the downstairs dining room and the other people also arrived right on schedule.
“Yo!” Xue Dingan waved his hand in greeting, “little mushroom!”
“Tsk….” Lu Anming punched his arm, “why are you calling my little sis ‘little mushroom’!”
“Secret!” Xue Dingan giggled, “you jealous ah!”
“Jealous your head!” Lu Anming and Xue Dingan were childhood friends who played together from young, so there were times that whenever they spoke to each other, they always tried to irritate each other by bickering non-stop with one another, neither letting the other party win. But in reality, they were really good friends.
Lu Anran stood with her arms akimbo and looked at Lu Anwei, she was actually still a little worried about Lu Anwei. Lu Anwei was wearing a casual styled suit matched with the sunglassed gifted to him by Artha, and from the angle when Lu Anran raised her head, she could see that behind Lu Anwei’s eyes were red and swollen behind his sunglasses. From this, Lu Anran understood what happened immediately and her heart ached for this older male cousin of hers…..
“Since everyone is all present already, let’s go!” Lu Anran was not willing to waste anymore time. “Today is Uncle Zhang’s off day, which one of you can drive? I have Uncle Zhang’s car keys.” Lu Anran jiggled the car keys in her hands.
“I’ll drive!” Xue Dingan was quite confident in his driving skills.
This group of four people took advantage of the fresh morning air to embark on to this difficult “journey”……
They first one by one ate at the breakfast restaurants, in total eating across seven restaurants. As Lu Anwei and co. ate, Lu Anran was at the side recording down their opinions as well as the specialities of these famous breakfast restaurants.
When the three people finished eating at the seven breakfast restaurants, they all thought that the taste testing was over, but with a wave of Lu Anran’s little hand, “let’s go, it’s time to eat main course!”
“Urg……” All the three guys were all stunned, they have already eaten a whole tummy full of all different types of breakfast specials and now she was telling them to eat the main course. She might as well just twist off their necks and directly poured in all these dishes, it’s faster!
“I already told you guys at their first restaurant not to eat too much!” Lu Anran crossed her arms and helplessly shook her head. “Since all of you don’t feel so well, then walk to the next restaurant!” Lu Anran look at the route she drew out in her book and said, “We can reach the next restaurant after going through this park.”
“This park is pretty big ah!” Lu Anming took a glance and said, “let’s go! It should be able to aid lots in our digestion!”
The four people left the car where it was, making sure that it’s locked and proceeded to walk through the park, towards their destination. As they walked, Xue Dingan asked idly, “how many restaurants are you planning to taste test today?”
“Seventeen restaurants.” Lu Anran flip her book and said, “the next restaurant has three signature dishes, we’ll leave immediately after eating!”
“Seventeen restaurants, we just ate seven restaurants, so there’s only ten remaining?” Lu Anming said. “Five restaurants for lunch and dinner each, makes ten.” After all Lu Anran only orders the signature dishes and every restaurant only have so many speciality dishes, all they need to do is casually taste each one.
“Hng!” Lu Anran snorted in laughter and rolled her eyes at Lu Anming, “naïve!”
“En?” Lu Anming and co. were all surprised, and they all gazed at Lu Anran waiting for her to continue her sentence.
“The previous seven shops were breakfast restaurants; the other seventeen shops are main course restaurants!” Lu Anran chuckled and said.
“We still need to eat seventeen main course signature dishes!” Xue Dingan’s facial expression did not look very good.
“It’s seventeen main course restaurants.” Lu Anran corrected Xue Dingan’s words unobtrusively.
“What else do we have other than the main course restaurants?” Lu Anwei could hear that there was more to Lu Anran’s words than it meets the ear.
“There are still seven deserts stores.” Lu Anran grin like a little fox, and her eyes were curved like crescent moon, full of little schemes. “Eight winery shops!”
“…..” Xue Dingan was really regretting it now, why did he insist on wanting to eat a meal of Lu Anran! What should he do now, it’s not just one meal….Xue Dingan felt as if his whole tummy was churning.
Chapter 68: taste testing starts, Ji Rou’s grievances
(Part 2)
“……” Lu Anming face twisted in suffering, he knew it, this outing was not as good as it sounds! He wants to go to work…wu wu wu…But the one thing that’s worth rejoicing about is that he managed to drag Xue Dingan along, everyone are good brothers right! They should share joys and sorrows, and where there’s food, everyone must also eat together too….
“Anhu…” Lu Anwei look at Lu Anran’s face and guessed, “did he also fall sick like this?”
“Hehe~” Lu Anran laughed awkwardly, “After having lunch and taste- testing at 12 restaurants yesterday, comrade Lu Anhu died heroically!”
“Ugh….” Lu Anming and Xue Dingan felt extremely nauseated. Taste-testing continuously at 12 restaurants after lunch? Oh my God…. If it were them, they would also readily surrender!
“It’s because there were fewer people yesterday, today there are more people! I’ll eat the vegetarian dishes myself, as for the meat dishes, one person per dish, just tell me your feelings after tasting it! It definitely won’t be as tragic as Lu Anhu yesterday!”
“……” The three men looked at each other and could only nod in resignation of their fate. They could only agree on this first.
After that, the brutal and inhuman taste- testing process begun once more for the entire afternoon.
Both Lu Anran and Lu Mingan have inherent genetic superiority. One mouthful was enough for Lu Anran to determine the taste, Lu Mingan need at most three mouthfuls to approximate the taste. Lu Anwei was also the same, though he does not say much, but he ate about five mouthfuls, the points he made were also useful. However, as Xue Dingan was a layman, he could not express fully. On contrary, during the last stops, when they went for wine sampling, the superiority of Xue family who was from generations of winemaker slowly emerged. No matter which country the wine was from, just a tiny cup was sufficient to taste the different flavours and fermentation time. Lu Mingan and Lu Anwei were complete outsiders in this instant, so these eight wineries allow Lu Anran and Xue Dingan to have a rare cheerful conversation under the influence of alcohol.
After a full day until 8PM at night, the four of them finally tried all of the signature dishes recorded in Lu Anran’s little book. The recordings in the little book also spanned over 10 pages.
When she reached home, Lu Anran took a shower and sat at her desk to flip through the recordings in her little book. She sure visited a lot of interesting stores today.
There was a breakfast store that only sells dumplings. Other than dumplings, they also offer free hot tea. They had a variety of dumplings, and even had buckwheat fillings. There was another Chinese restaurant which was very famous, but their store was very small, and could only serve very few customers. The skill of the chef was not bad, and the queue outside the shop was quite long which attracted a lot of passers-by.
At the last store, Lu Anran realised that the store had a theme. The interior of the store was all related to bamboo, even the main ingredient of their signature dish was bamboo shoots. The pandas which was placed all over also looked very cute.
A theme store…… Lu Anran’s eyes shone. Why hadn’t she thought of it? With a knock on her forehead, Lu Anran hurriedly flipped to a new page and wrote her thoughts in a neat handwriting until about 11PM when Ji Rou knocked at the door, Lu Anran was still happily focused and buried in her writings.
Placing the hot milk gently on Lu Anran’s desk, Ji Rou said, “Anran, it’s late, time to go to bed!”
“Mum!” Lu Anran sparkled and was excited by her thoughts when she wrote it down.
“Hm?” Ji Rou looked at Lu Anran, puzzledly tilted her head and asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Mum, I’ve come up with a lot of ideas. Please help me with them!” Lu Anran said.
“Okay!” Ji Rou was also willing to help her baby daughter, so she sat beside Lu Anran’s bed.
“I’m going to open a store at Xin Dong that is totally different from all the other Lu Corporation’s stores. The interior decoration of the store will be mainly based on an ancient style, and all the dishes in the store will be vegetarian.”
“All vegetarian?” Ji Rou frowned. “This idea is a little too bold….” To open a vegetarian restaurant in a shopping mall where there are a lot of foot traffic? Everyone knows that fast food was still the main restaurant in a shopping mall. Lu Anran’s idea made Ji Rou a little uneasy.
“That’s right!” Lu Anran said, “I have already roughly written about 10 menus. All of which depend on the seasonal vegetables. Every season’s menu will change according to the availability of the seasonal fruits and vegetables. Its draft name is ‘Vegetarian Health’.”
“Vegetarian Health?” Ji Rou muttered, “This slogan is not bad.” As an advertiser, she was very particular about a product’s slogan and publicity.
“Rather than catering to the tongues of customers, I would rather take the lead and attract specific groups of customers!” Lu Anran said, “Even though, there are many meat-eaters, but there are also quite a few vegetarians. This meant that the vegetables dishes and drinks would not only attract vegetarian customers, but also meat-eaters who wants to occasionally try different dishes. In addition to that, the shopping centre originally already has high turnover rates, so the prices of the vegetarian dishes would be accepted as reasonable.”
“But if it is vegetarian, the price of the dish will be very low. If the customer flow does not reach a certain level, then it is very likely to lose money.” Ji Rou said frowningly.
“As long as it is delicious, customers will come!” The corners of Lu Anran’s mouth rose, “Also, I am planning to lower the price of the dishes and choose all the relatively expensive varieties of wine and tea.”
“But if there are too few people who order tea and wine, it won’t be profitable and would still lose money. At the same time, warehouse wastage and stagnation of supply of goods are also a problem!” Ji Rou was still worried.
“This will have to depend on publicity by advertising!” Lu Anran smiled smugly.
“As for advertising, I’ll fully cooperate with you, and if necessary, I can put in a request to buy the front page of the newspaper on the opening day and advertise for a month.” Ji Rou said.
“No need!” Lu Anran shook her head. Buying a page of the daily papers for a month long advertisement would cost at least 1.8 million yuan. There was no need to spend this kind of money. “When I went to attend Long Corporation’s banquet two months ago, I have discussed this with the heir of Long Corporation. He said he was willing to handover the right to advertise on the first- floor entrance of Long Corporation’s shopping mall for two months from its official opening. And it will be for free!” Lu Anran said while grinning. Could anything else be better at attracting customers?
“Oh my god…..” Ji Rou covered her mouth with her hand and looked surprised. Before she could express her happiness, she felt a sudden heartache and pulled her daughter into her arms. Ji Rou was filled with distress… Anran was only fifteen ah… A fifteen- year- old girl has to already learn from others to negotiate. How would others understand this kind of heartache?