Chapter 15: Restocking
On the way back, Xu Heping pedaled his bicycle with gusto, chattering nonstop the entire way, his excitement plain to see.
"Thirty meals! A full thirty meals! We actually sold them all! It’s incredible. I was already figuring out what we’d do if you couldn’t sell them all, but I never imagined we’d sell out."
"Hey, Heping, couldn’t you have a little more faith in me?"
They weren’t in a hurry on the way back, so Xu An pedaled leisurely, keeping a short distance behind Xu Heping.
"Hehe, it’s my first time doing business, you know. I always hear my parents talking about how hard business is, but it doesn’t seem that difficult for you."
"This is different. I’m just messing around on a small scale. What your parents do, that’s what you call real business."
"It’s all the same. You’re just selling stuff to people."
"..."
Truth be told, Xu An wasn’t quite sure how he felt himself. He was excited, a little emotional, somewhat dazed, and there was also a lingering trace of disbelief.
With Uncle Dongliang’s help, he had taken the first step with ease.
Now that he had taken this first step, as long as he kept his head down, worked hard, and didn’t try anything crooked, the business would be on solid ground.
The cardboard sign he’d hastily prepared before leaving had also been a huge help; quite a few people were drawn in by the menu written on it.
But he couldn’t keep using a new piece of cardboard every day; they didn’t have that much of it at home. He’d have to get a whiteboard he could erase the writing from. Then, before heading out each day, he could just wipe it clean and write on it, and that would be that.
He was also running low on to-go containers, so he’d have to go to the wholesale market to restock. While cooking this morning, he’d also realized the kitchen was missing quite a few things, like a large basin for holding cooked dishes, a slotted spoon, and so on. He’d have to buy those as well.
The two of them steered the tricycle toward the entrance of the wholesale market. The stalls near the entrance sold dried goods, and there was a decent amount of foot traffic.
But the farther they went in, the fewer people there were. By the time they reached the meat stalls, the place was practically deserted. The butchers were either swatting flies or dozing off.
Xu An walked up to Bald Chen’s stall, pulled out a cigarette, and offered it to him. "Boss Chen, how come there’s so little foot traffic over here?"
Bald Chen woke from his doze, raised a hand to wipe the corner of his mouth, and groggily took the cigarette with his eyes half-open.
"Oh, it’s you, kid." Bald Chen recognized Xu An. "Hah. Ever since that store over there opened up, the number of people coming to the wholesale market for meat has dropped by more than half. We lost all the small restaurant owners, so of course it’s quiet."
Xu An didn’t feel it was his place to comment on the topic, so he got straight to the point.
"Boss, set aside fifteen pounds of pork for me for tomorrow morning, with a thirty-seventy fat-to-lean ratio. I’ll come get it around the same time as this morning."
"You don’t want it now? If you take it today, I’ll knock half a yuan off per pound." Bald Chen took two cuts of meat from the freezer to show Xu An. "Look at this meat. It’s exactly what you’re looking for."
"I don’t have a fridge at home. In this heat, it’ll be spoiled by tomorrow."
"Well, if you don’t have a fridge, then there’s nothing to be done." Bald Chen put the meat back in the freezer and shut the door. He pulled out a notepad and a pen. "For a fifteen-pound reservation, you’ll need to leave a twenty-yuan deposit. The deposit is non-refundable if you cancel, but you can use it as credit for a future purchase."
"Alright." Xu An pulled out twenty yuan and handed it to Bald Chen.
"What’s your phone number? Can you leave a number?"
Xu An’s family didn’t have a landline. They used to rely on Mr. Xu’s cell phone or a neighbor’s phone to contact people.
But Mr. Xu had always carried his cell phone with him, and it had been smashed and rendered completely unusable when he fell.
Just as Xu An was about to say he couldn’t leave a number, Xu Heping rattled off a string of digits from the side.
"I’m with him. If anything comes up, you can call me, and I’ll pass the message on."
Bald Chen glanced at Xu An. Seeing no objection, he wrote the number Xu Heping had given him on the order form.
"It’s in duplicate. Bring this receipt with you tomorrow morning."
While the adults were talking, Xu Kang and Xu Le had slipped under the counter. They were staring, wide-eyed, at Bald Chen’s two full-sleeve tattoos, whispering to each other in voices loud enough for everyone to hear.
"What are those on that bald uncle’s arms?"
"I know! They’re stickers!" Xu Kang sighed like a grown-up. "That many stickers must have cost a lot of money. What a waste."
"Yeah, what a waste."
You could tell at a glance they had picked up the phrase from Granny Xu; the imitation was spot-on.
Bald Chen didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He widened his eyes, pulled a scary face, and tried to frighten them. "I heard you saying bad things about me! The bald uncle is very angry, and he’s going to eat you up!"
The two were instantly terrified and fled behind Xu An, burying their faces in his shirt and muttering, ’The bald uncle is so scary, so scary!’
After saying sorry to Bald Chen, Xu An patted the two kids hiding behind him and headed to the general goods section with Xu Heping.
They picked up a bunch of to-go containers and various kitchen supplies, spending nearly a hundred yuan in total.
On the way, they passed by the vegetable market, where a few stalls were still scattered about. Xu An got off the tricycle and went inside to have a look.
’He had used up the next few days’ worth of produce from the family’s vegetable garden all in one go today. From now on, he’d have to buy vegetables at the market, too.’
’Vegetables lose their value the longer they’re off the vine. If they aren’t sold today, most of them will be no good by tomorrow.’
That’s why at this time of day, the vegetables at the stalls were very cheap.
After picking through the selection, Xu An came out carrying two halves of a winter melon. Together, the two halves weighed a total of twelve pounds. At three mao per pound, the total came to three yuan and sixty mao.
After all that shopping, the tricycle was piled high. There was no room for the two winter melon halves, so he had Xu Kang and Xu Le hold them in their laps.
When they got home, Xu Heping was about to take off and find the other village kids to play with, but Xu An called him back.
Xu An took out a small cloth pouch. Inside was the money he had earned from selling the box lunches—two hundred and forty yuan, not a single fen more or less.
Each box lunch cost six yuan to make, and he had earned two yuan per lunch. For thirty lunches, the net profit was only sixty yuan.
When Xu Heping saw the numbers Xu An had calculated, his eyes went wide with disbelief.
He had thought the profit would be at least half, but after deducting costs, the margin was only a quarter. Once you factored in labor, it was really just back-breaking work for a little bit of pay.
Xu An, however, was quite content. Sixty yuan wasn’t a small amount; it was as much as he’d make from the vegetable garden during a peak harvest.
From the pile of profit, he pulled out eighteen yuan and offered it to Xu Heping. "You’ve helped out a ton, plus you contributed your family’s tricycle. Let’s just say you’re a shareholder who invested with labor and equipment. This is your thirty percent cut."
Xu Heping pushed the money back.
"You know what my family’s like. My parents can be a bit stingy with me, but they’ll give me money for proper business. I’m not hurting for this little bit of cash."
Xu An’s expression turned serious, but just as he was about to speak, Xu Heping cut him off.
"Here we go with the ’even brothers must keep clear accounts’ speech, right? Look, just treat it like I sold you the tricycle second-hand. Call it one hundred and sixty yuan, and you can pay me at the end of the month. How about that?"
’Hmm, that actually sounded reasonable.’
But Xu Heping’s help had been a real lifesaver. Without the tricycle, he wasn’t sure he could have even gotten the stall set up with just his bicycle. Paying him the price of a used tricycle was definitely not fair compensation.
"Since you’re not willing to treat this as a partnership investment, then..."
"Stop dithering over a hundred or so yuan." Xu Heping rolled his eyes at Xu An, annoyed. "If it really bothers your conscience that much, then wait until you’ve made eight or ten thousand yuan, and then you can pay me ten times the price. Just give me sixteen hundred then, how about it?"
"Fine."
Xu An nodded, put the money away, and made a note of the debt in his ledger.
"I’ll see you tomorrow morning." Seeing that Xu An had dropped the subject, Xu Heping gave a wave and left.
Inside the house, Granny Xu listened to the sounds coming from the courtyard. When she heard that the boys had actually made a successful go of it and even earned sixty yuan, her expression grew complicated.
She had only agreed to let Xu An skip college if he earned twenty thousand yuan because she felt the amount was so high that he could never possibly reach it.
College graduates from the village who worked in the city only made two or three thousand yuan a month. Earning twenty thousand in two and a half months was equivalent to a monthly salary of seven or eight thousand. How could a kid who just graduated high school possibly make that kind of money?
’Sixty yuan a day isn’t nothing, but it’s still a far cry from twenty thousand. This money he’s earned... it will be just enough to cover his living expenses for college.’