After finishing the meal and tidying up all the dishes, carts, and tables, it was already past five in the evening.
Exhausted with a sore back and aching waist, Cheng Su closed the exterior door of the restaurant before she began to tally up the day’s income. As for tomorrow’s vegetables, it was now too late, so she would have to go buy them early next morning.
In the box, there were plenty of banknotes as well as one-yuan bills. Cheng Su counted them one by one and bundled them into neat stacks. The final result took her by surprise.
Thirty-two yuan in total sales from fast food and individual stir-fried dishes was the gross income. After deducting costs for ingredients and labor, her net profit for the day was eighteen yuan.
She had thought that earning ten or twenty yuan would have been good, but she didn’t expect to have so much as net profit—it was a pleasant surprise.
No, the current prices were still low, the ingredients were cheap, and that’s why the profit margin was larger. As for the labor, she was both the owner and the worker, so for the time being, it wasn’t accounted for.
"Anyway, it’s a good start, not bad at all," Cheng Su said to herself with a smile.
But upon seeing the chairs stacked on the tables, her lips pursed. She really needed to hire someone. Relying on herself alone, there were too many tasks to handle. Even when customers ordered individual dishes, she couldn’t cope by herself.
Today had been exactly that. Some people had ordered individual stir-fry dishes, and due to the lack of help, she missed several orders. Those missed orders equaled missed business opportunities.
After all, the profit margins on individual dishes were even greater.
If she had more hands, she would be able to free up her own. So, it was time to hire someone. Otherwise, on her own, she was stretched too thin, and the business was bound to get better.
What was more important was that, though she wanted to make money, she had no intention of overextending herself to the point of compromising her health. Therefore, she must have someone to share the workload.
As the sky gradually darkened, Cheng Su couldn’t dwell on these thoughts any longer. She wrote a hiring notice and stuck it on the restaurant’s door, then locked up and took the money home with her.
The restaurant was some distance from her home, and it wasn’t good to go back too late.
She wondered how Qi Taiguo was faring and when he would return.
Cheng Su arrived home, too tired to cook. She simply ate a bread roll she had brought back on her way and took a bath. After preparing the menu for the next day, she went to rest and fell asleep almost as soon as her head touched the pillow.
The next day, she left home just as dawn was breaking. Her initial plan to make breakfast, now out of reach as she was on her own, had to be put aside.
So when she arrived at the restaurant, she pulled a cart to the market to buy ingredients, just like the day before, and once again did all the washing, cutting, and cooking by herself.
Just as Cheng Su had anticipated, once the business got rolling, the customers came consistently. Today she prepared one and a half times the amount of food as the day before, but by the end, it was all sold out.
Like she expected, because she was shorthanded, she missed a few orders for individual dishes. Cheng Su could only apologize with a smile, knowing that once she had help, she would definitely be able to manage better.
After a busy day, and despite being very tired when doing the final tally, Cheng Su looked at the assorted banknotes and felt that the exhaustion was worth it; seeing them made her feel less tired.
"Indeed, what better way to dispel worries than to strike it rich?" Cheng Su said proudly to herself. Although being rich was still a long way off, she had opened up the game, hadn’t she?
As long as she worked hard and managed well, striking it rich was not impossible, especially now that she was tapping into the excellent resources provided by the reform and opening-up policy.
With this thought, Cheng Su hummed a tune cheerfully, her confidence in the future growing stronger.