The Heartburn-Free License

32-year-old big tech product manager Zhou Ye is laid off and returns to his hometown, only to find his father's 30-year-old braised food stall is being forced to close due to a "Heartburn-Free Certification" deadline. Across the street, the "Model Store" has a long queue, while his father's stall only has a regular customer saying, "No star anise." Zhou Ye uses product thinking to set up ledgers for his father and renovate the kitchen to be open and transparent, finally obtaining the city's first "Heartburn-Free License." But on the day he gets the license, the regular customer says, "It's heartburn-free, but it's not the same taste." Soon after, a competitor's fake license scandal erupts, and trust collapses citywide. Zhou Ye investigates and discovers that the source of the fake licenses is actually the "simplified certification SOP" he created for promotion. Capital enters, aiming to replicate "Heartburn-Free" as a national franchise standard. Zhou Ye signs a consulting contract, but his father refuses to sign over the old soup recipe and pushes his cart to a street corner to set up an unlicensed stall. Father and son fall out. When Zhou Ye sees his own PPT in the capital conference room, he finally understands: "What he made wasn't trust; it was a substitute for trust." Ultimately, he chooses to expose the system's flaws and dismantle the license in a live stream. He turns a license into "daily public ledger + regular customer blind testing + supplier real-name verification." The license remains, but his father does not return. — Description from novelcodex.orgFull novel: The Heartburn-Free License — read the rest free on N​o⁠v​e⁠l​C⁠o​d⁠e​x⁠.​o⁠r​g⁠