After the restaurant was on the right track, Cheng Su discussed the food company registration with Ning Ge.
The company brand name was still Joy Soon Loy, and Ning Ge took care of the registration process. Since they were using the same name as the small restaurant, Ning Ge insisted on Cheng Su being the legal representative, which also made it easier to promote the restaurant—killing two birds with one stone.
Registration wasn’t an issue, but the location for the company was key. Other food companies had large factories and produced a variety of foods.
However, Ning Ge could only invest a hundred thousand, and Cheng Su was even tighter on funds. They needed to build a factory, purchase equipment, and hire staff. After budgeting down to the last cent, it wasn’t quite enough.
If the budget wasn’t sufficient, they would have to scale down and start small.
Cheng Su’s suggestion was to build the factory like those traditional workshops, purchasing only the necessary equipment. Once the business was on a firm footing, they could gradually expand—after all, Rome wasn’t built in a day.
As for the jam they were going to produce, to stand out, they couldn’t just make pineapple jam, as many food companies already produced it. Following Cheng Su’s thinking, they needed to create something fresh; she wrote strawberry jam and blueberry jam into the business plan.
In Cheng Su’s knowledge of what she had tasted in her previous life, the best had to be blueberry and strawberry jam—these were the kings of jams.
While working on the business plan, Cheng Su also took the time to research the market and found that the most common types of jam were pineapple, followed by apple and orange. However, strawberry and blueberry were still missing from the market, at least in Qing City.
"Blueberries?" Ning Ge was surprised as he read her business plan.
"Didn’t you say that you spent a few years ’drinking foreign ink’ abroad? Don’t you know about this? Haven’t you tried it?" Cheng Su raised an eyebrow.
"It’s not that I haven’t tried it, but I know it’s mainly produced in the United States. Strawberries are fine, but do we have blueberries in our country?" Ning Ge hesitated.
"Blueberries from America are the most famous and most expensive. But whether we have them in our country or not, I’m not sure—so we need to look for them," said Cheng Su. "Even if we can find blueberries, the cost will definitely be high. If we make them into jam, the pricing will inevitably be high as well, meaning we can’t market them to ordinary folks!"
She wasn’t deeply knowledgeable about the history of berries and didn’t know if blueberry cultivation technology had been introduced yet; but if it had, it surely would be exorbitantly expensive. Using them to make jam would indeed turn it into a luxury product.
Ning Ge was excited by the idea: "Why worry about this? There are poor people in this world, but there are also rich people. Just like watches, bicycles, and cars—they might be luxury goods to the average Joe, but to the wealthy, they’re just everyday items! As you said, if we’re going to do this, let’s aim for the high-end luxury market!"
Cheng Su chuckled and shook her head: "Don’t get your hopes up too high. If we don’t have blueberries, we definitely have strawberries. We can start with that."
Ning Ge nodded and began writing: "It’s time to show off the people skills of ’Fourth Young Master’ once again."
Cheng Su rolled her eyes at him, unamused.
"I’ve looked at a few places suitable for a small factory these past couple of days, take a look." Ning Ge passed the list of addresses to Cheng Su.
Two of them were in the suburbs, requiring over an hour by bus, with cheaper rent and larger spaces.
The other two were on the eastern side of downtown. One had been a ham processing plant, the other a garment factory. Neither was very large, each only around a hundred square meters.
After looking at them, Cheng Su flipped through her schedule and said: "It’s not enough just to look at this, let’s go out tomorrow and take a look at the actual sites."
Ning Ge nodded in agreement.