The two of them went at it like this for two days straight.
Wang Yaofa was no longer the person he used to be. Across two lunchtimes and two evenings over those two days, his skin had gradually darkened, but he had also grown considerably. Before coming over this morning, he even knew to go to the wholesale market to pick up five or six hundred lunchboxes.
He and the proprietress shared a tacit understanding.
One bought, the one sold.
The proprietress genuinely believed he was buying lunchboxes for an orphanage, while Wang Yaofa honestly believed he was doing a good deed. The owner of the neighboring shop felt both of them were a bit too deep into their roles, but didn't dare say anything; after all, this piece of good fortune was meant to be caught by him.
Although the price remained the same, the daily volume of lunchboxes purchased kept increasing.
"I have to say, even though our unit price isn't high—just ten yuan a bento box—we're making quite a lot. By last night, we'd made close to six thousand."
"If we keep doing this for a month, wouldn't we make nearly a hundred thousand?"
Faced with Pangzi's unwavering optimism, Liu Chuanfeng responded with just two words: "Heh heh."
Wang Yaofa naturally heard that this was sarcasm, not praise.
"What?"
"Making three to four thousand a day, thirty days a month,"
"A little under a hundred thousand is no problem at all."
"Besides, starting last night, not only people from the construction site came to buy bentos, but some office workers from nearby showed up too."
"After all, our goods are high quality and reasonably priced, and the food tastes good. Tomorrow I'll run a few extra trips and haul back more lunchboxes so we can sell a thousand copies a day."
"What's wrong with that calculation?"
Liu Chuanfeng rolled his eyes, cutting short his rosy daydream: "Stop thinking about it."
"This business model of ours can only make money for a week or two."
"After that, there's basically no guarantee we'll keep making this much."
Hearing that it would only be profitable for such a short time, Wang Yaofa immediately objected: "Why?"
Liu Chuanfeng pointed at the small sundry shop not far away: "Take a look."
Wang Yaofa turned his head to look. At the entrance of that sundry shop, the proprietress was constantly peering in their direction. She could easily have walked out to watch, but instead kept the door half-open, hiding half her body behind it with a very stealthy demeanor.
"What is she looking at us for?"
Liu Chuanfeng smiled and said: "Back when I spent money on cigarettes to get information about the construction site here, she thought I was asking on someone else's behalf, so she charged me a hundred yuan for a pack of Zhongghua."
"She thought the people behind me might be selling building materials or running some other business."
"She just didn't expect this young man to start a fast-food gig himself."
"And as for this business model of mine, it's very easy to copy."
"As long as you have lunchboxes and know how to cook a few signature dishes, that's it."
"Not only that, she was just watching the past few days, but now she sees that a lot of people come to buy bentos every day."
"We don't even prepare enough to meet the demand."
"So...."
"So she wants in on this too?"
Wang Yaofa had a sharp mind; having heard this much, he guessed it instantly. His expression turned murderous in a split second: "Damn it, that was our idea."
"Damn."
After all, his family was in business, and he had been exposed to it since childhood. In the end, this kind of thing was impossible to avoid. Counting money over the past two days had made him a bit giddy and carried away, but now that he had calmed down, he felt a lot more sober.
Doing business in China, the thing you fear most is that once you take off, copycats will pop up right behind you—it's hard for one person to eat all the meat and drink all the soup by themselves. Yet deep down, he still felt a bit resentful.
"Feng, what do you think we should do?"
"Should we go wreck her?"
Liu Chuanfeng spread his hands: "There's nothing to do."
"I originally planned to do this for two weeks at most anyway."
"Ah?"
Wang Yaofa was baffled again. As young people, shouldn't they have some passion? Someone was bullying right to their doorstep, and they were just going to swallow it? And with how much money they were making, why only do it for two weeks?
How could he know that Liu Chuanfeng was only doing this to save up money to buy sports lottery tickets?
Yet Liu Chuanfeng couldn't tell him the truth directly, so he had to bluff: "There are two reasons why this fast food is selling so well right now."
"First, it's affordable. Not only are our portions generous and the flavors good, but we also give away an aluminum lunchbox."
"Second, nobody is competing with us right now, which means we hold a monopoly in this area."
"That's why we're able to make money."
"However, our business model is too easy to imitate, and others can learn it very quickly. Another thing is that our product is singular. Selling so well right now is partly because our bentos are cheap and taste good."
"Yet our dishes can hardly change much. No matter how good they taste, nobody is going to eat at our place every single day. The construction workers have no choice, but those office commuters are a different story."
"So, as time goes on, our sales volume will drop."
"Doing it for two weeks is pretty much enough."
"This kind of money is hard manual labor; we've made enough, and that's that."
"All right then."
Hearing his "analysis," Wang Yaofa felt it made a lot of sense, but the thought that so much money would soon have nothing to do with him still left him feeling somewhat disappointed.
Liu Chuanfeng could tell that if the other person's enthusiasm dropped, it would affect his subsequent plans: "Don't be discouraged. This is just our first wave of entrepreneurship."
"In textbooks, how did those countries develop? They all had to build up a wave of primitive accumulation first. Only when their pockets are well-padded can they go on to secondary and tertiary entrepreneurship."
"Through this continuous accumulation, we'll be able to make several tens of millions in the future."
"We've already started making money on our very first try. Do you think our first thirty million is far off?"
"Fatty."
"Think about it: did your Old Wang make money as fast as you when he was your age?"
"In a year or so, he might not call you his son at home anymore—he might start calling you President Wang."
"Think about it again: instead of you asking Old Wang for pocket money in the future, Old Wang will be asking you for pocket money. Wouldn't you feel awesome?"
Wang Yaofa's eyes gradually grew hazy, squinting narrower and narrower, yet a different kind of bright light flashed within them.
"That's right, Feng, you're right."
"For our very first venture, we turned three or four hundred into over ten thousand. Once we have ten thousand, we can make three hundred thousand; with three hundred thousand we can make ten million, and with ten million..."
"Hehe, hahaha."
Wang Yaofa felt like he suddenly couldn't even calculate the numbers anymore, standing off to the side and laughing foolishly.
Liu Chuanfeng didn't want to disturb his daydreaming. Making ten or twenty thousand was already this exhausting; if he had ten million and multiplied it by tens or hundreds of times, people would literally be worked to numbness.
"I refuse to be the passive one; I want to be the active one."
"And when it comes to making money, it's better to take it step by step."
"Just like myself, steadily saving up money to buy sports lottery tickets!"
"Once I have money later, then I'll go splurging."
Liu Chuanfeng thought to himself.