Surrounded by wasteland, Lin Yinghui asked the landlord and then directly built a high wall, enclosing a large, spacious backyard.
He repainted the interiors and connected three rooms so they could accommodate the machines. He also laid down a cement floor.
Lin Wan also had the workers dig a cellar of over two to three hundred square meters in the backyard. This was a large project. Just digging the cellar cost them a thousand yuan.
In this way, half a month later, with a machine, a room, and several large vats, their workshop began operating.
The machine cost three thousand two hundred yuan, one hundred yuan for Li Congnan’s friend, and another hundred for the technician, to guide them during his break time on how to use it. The yard cost six hundred, plus the rent, and the rest for renovations and other miscellaneous expenses over a hundred. Buying fruit and glutinous rice cost over a hundred.
Lin Wan discovered that the rice wine brewed by Mom was especially popular in the store. So they decided to make some rice wine.
Lin Wan took out her homemade recipe, increased it several times and started using the machine to make it.
Indeed, using the machine was much faster than doing it by hand. The only point was the early stages of sorting and drying the fruit.
They were just a workshop now, not planning to hire anyone. The three of them were enough.
Now the hot pot restaurant only opened in the afternoons, not needing to be there in the morning, and with Xiao Gu managing it, she was reassured.
In the evenings, Lin Wan would also go over.
For the rice wine bottles, they chose small ones, similar to the size of Erguotou bottles. The others used black wine bottles.
Small bottles cost three cents each, and the wine bottles four cents each. They ordered a thousand of each, and since they were from the bottle factory of Li Congnan’s family, when they were delivered, they got a few extra.
It was more than a week before the first batch of wine was brewed. The three of them busied themselves every day labeling and boxing them. Hundreds of bottles were produced. The rice wine was refreshing and tasted good, but could easily get someone tipsy. The plum wine and cherry wine could also be heady, but the mulberry wine tasted nice and was good for beauty and skin care.
Li Congnan took a few sample bottles to the market. Just like how he recently promoted the soda, he first provided a box, kept a tab, and would settle the payment once they were sold out.
Lin Yinghui and Lin Wan continued producing the next batch at the factory.
Lacking cold storage, each time they completed a batch, they needed to bring more fruit. Taking advantage of the current fruit season, they aimed to produce enough to ensure a year’s sales.
But they had only one machine, limiting production capacity.
However, the rice wine production was larger, as it didn’t need the machine. A few vats were enough.
The leftover lees from the rice wine, besides being sent to the two stores for sale, were put into some canning jars that Li Congnan brought back, processed a bit, and sold directly with the wine, at forty cents per can.
The rice wine was wholesaled at eighty cents, with the fruit wines priced at a dollar per bottle except for the mulberry red wine, which was ninety cents.
The market price ranged from thirty to fifty cents. There was profit for them, and profit for us.
In this era, fruit wines were rare and intrigued people.
Li Congnan had just placed the products at the supply and marketing cooperative, and a few days later each day took a round about it, but few were sold, and there was no feedback. This greatly worried Li Congnan.
Fearing he might become overly anxious, Lin Wan quickly reassured him, asking him to help with the wine production at the workshop: "Wandering around them every day can easily scare customers away. No worries; it’s normal not to have business at the start. Let’s take it slow."
With Li Congnan at the workshop, Lin Wan could finally spare time to work in the store.
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