That afternoon, while Ouyang was eating crab roe noodles, he told Qin Huai about the conversation he had in the morning with Xu Tuqiang.
He recounted everything without adding any embellishments.
At that time, neither of them paid much attention; they knew the elderly folks loved to curry favor with Qin Huai. Because of this, they had a competition pact before, prohibiting malicious competition, such as secretly giving Qin Huai and his family expensive gifts.
Initially, the pact only prohibited giving gifts directly to Qin Huai. Later, the elders found another path, giving things to Qin Luo, Qin Congwen, and Zhao Rong. At first, it was fine, usually just fruit, snacks, and such, mainly to Qin Luo, pretending they happened to buy some snacks and then encountered Qin Luo to give them to her.
With the elders’ excellent acting skills, Qin Luo couldn’t tell at all. Every time she got some treats, she came back to brag to Qin Huai. Since they were really just cheap little trinkets, the Qin Family members chose to turn a blind eye. Sometimes, when Qin Huai heard a certain elder’s name more often, he’d instruct the waiter to secretly add an extra fermented rice with steamed buns for them.
As a result, it was unclear whether Qin Huai had heightened their crisis awareness by visiting Huang Ji, or if his culinary skills made a sudden leap after returning from Huang Ji. One elder, who might have had too much money or perhaps didn’t quite think it through, actually gave Qin Luo a famous luxury brand bracelet while handing over fruit, with a price tag nearing six figures.
Even the Qin Family didn’t recognize the bracelet at first; it was Qin Luo who wore it every day because she found it pretty, until Chen Huihong recognized it at a glance.
The way they handled it was to return the bracelet. Zhao Rong took Qin Luo to a shop selling affordable fine jewelry to buy a more beautiful one that was also well-made, relatively cheap, and to Qin Luo’s liking. The elders hurriedly revised their strategies to cut off such undesirable competitive methods at the source, prohibiting anyone from giving any gifts to the Qin Family members without reason, and implemented justice as soon as any infraction was found.
For this, Xu Tuqiang, Grandma Ding, and Grandpa Qian specifically came over to apologize to Qin Huai, making him feel a bit embarrassed and prompting him to invite the three to taste some snacks.
With such a ban in place, Qin Huai felt that unless Xu Tuqiang had tried Double Crab Bun like Uncle Wang, it’d be hard to develop anything significant in business with the Double Crab Bun.
The next morning at 7 o’clock when Qin Huai arrived at Yunzhong Restaurant, he realized he was wrong, and finally understood why the elders established so many bans, strictly adhering to them amongst each other. Because once someone breached the pact, they were indeed quite capable of breaching it.
Qin Huai, looking at the high-quality sea cucumber in front him, had a face full of question marks.
"So..." Qin Huai felt he was in a state where he thought nothing could surprise him anymore, yet was indeed shocked again, causing his brain to temporarily freeze, and even his speaking voice became softer, "Mr. Xu... do you have a channel to procure sea cucumber?"
Xu Tuqiang smiled proudly, then waved it off lightly with a casual air: "It’s nothing special, just that a relative is in that business, and knows a sea cucumber farm."
"Similar to Old Ding’s in-law who sells honey, all trustworthy family. Isn’t it that I heard from Xiao Ou yesterday that Master Qin, you want to make sea cucumber snacks? With surely a large consumption and high quality requirements for sea cucumber, I assure you that with my relatives the price would definitely be the most suitable, and the quality would definitely be the best!"
"Master Qin, do you have any need in this regard? If so, I’ll call him now. Rest assured, if there’s any problem, you just tell me, I’ll definitely give you an explanation!"
Looking at the sea cucumber in front of him, Qin Huai felt it was hard to refuse.
Yunzhong Restaurant’s current suppliers were all contacted by Huang Xi, whose connections were accumulated from previous work. Even though Huang Xi had wide connections, getting high-quality goods was still really difficult.
Qin Huai, during his time at Huang Ji, heard Huang An Yao complaining that even if it was Huang Ji’s supplier, they were selective based on the person. If Huang Shengli personally asked for high-quality items, suppliers would surely deliver if they could. But if Huang An Yao contacted them, they would delay as much as possible. Of the few criticisms Huang Shengli had for Huang An Yao, nine and a half out of ten were because Huang An Yao got fooled by suppliers again.
The young master was indeed not very suitable for being a young master, his abilities in work and social skills were lacking significantly.
The sea cucumber quality at Yunzhong Restaurant was not good, not just because poor-quality sea cucumbers were cheap and saved money, but mainly because Huang Xi didn’t have good avenues.
Of course, normally, Yunzhong Restaurant wouldn’t have a sea cucumber dish. It’s a community cafeteria; no one would leisurely sell such high-end dishes.
Now, with Xu Tuqiang proactively saying he had a channel, with high quality, reasonable price, assured quality and quantity, and guaranteed post-sale support, no matter what Mr. Xu asked to eat next, Master Qin would do his best to satisfy him.
"Mr. Xu, is there any snack you want to eat recently?" Qin Huai wasn’t one for roundabout talk and asked directly.
He knew this was what Xu Tuqiang most wanted to hear.
Xu Tuqiang was overjoyed.
Such melodious words, words he could only hear in his dreams before!
Haha, whether it’s Old Ding or Old Wang, what’s the big deal about getting there before me? Isn’t it true that I, Xu Tuqiang, am now overtaking them!
Do you even know who was the first to discover that Yunzhong Restaurant was a treasure trove of a cafeteria?
Do you even know the value of writing earnest food reviews on snacks diligently every day?
Suppressing his inner elation, Xu Tuqiang excitedly said, "Sticky rice cake!"
Qin Huai really didn’t expect that after all this time, the white moonlight in Xu Tuqiang’s heart was still sticky rice cake. Even after having tasted premium three filling buns, guo’er, Four Happiness glutinuous rice, green bean cakes, and crab roe noodles, his favorite food was still sticky rice cake.
What a consistent love!
Xu Tuqiang’s steadfastness for sticky rice cake made Qin Huai a bit ashamed.
Qin Huai had a recipe for sticky rice cake, but he hadn’t been looking at it or practicing it at all. One reason being his inability to make it, and another being that spending a lot of time practicing without completing any side missions or main tasks was impractical.
The sticky rice cake recipe was fished out from Qu Jing’s memory. Qu Jing had already woken up, and while Qu Jing loved eating rice cakes, her favorite wasn’t sticky rice cake but rice cake soup; she ate both delicious and unappetizing ones.
This directly led to Qin Huai choosing rice cake soup as the first choice when making rice cakes, cooking a pot for everyone to enjoy joyfully.
On pondering, Yunzhong Restaurant indeed hadn’t sold sticky rice cake for a long time.
Seeing how Xu Tuqiang adored sticky rice cake, Qin Huai even felt a little guilty, starting to think that perhaps he had been studying and making snacks too profit-oriented, letting side tasks and main tasks control him.
Since frantically practicing Four Happiness glutinous rice, Qin Huai rarely made snacks as he pleased daily like in the beginning.
Yunzhong Restaurant hadn’t sold Master Qin’s whimsically made snacks for a while.
Even the snacks that Qin Luo loved to eat were made by Qin Huai less frequently now.
At that thought, Qin Huai looked at Xu Tuqiang with a trace of gratitude and a bit of guilt.
"It seems like I haven’t made sticky rice cake for a while, or snacks like fried dough stick or Crab Shell Cake." Thɪs chapter is updatᴇd by N0v3l.Fiɾe.net
"For sticky rice cake, it has to be made tomorrow, and you can eat the finished product the day after tomorrow. Mr. Xu, if you have time, please help me advertise a bit. From now on, every day after 11 a.m., like before, Yunzhong Restaurant will randomly sell some unfixed snacks."
"Everyone’s welcome to come grab some."
This is first-hand information!
News only fed to insiders!
Haha, I, Xu Tuqiang, have finally managed through my own efforts to be an insider, Wang Laogen, let’s see what you’ll compete with me using going forward.