The next day, Jiang Li had not slept soundly for a long time, so today she allowed herself to rest as much as she wanted. She slept until whenever she naturally woke up, and by the time she got up, washed up, and left the house, it was almost noon.
Not far downstairs was a well-known breakfast shop. She used to often eat their steamed buns before, but today she was a bit late and there weren’t many left. She packed a few buns to eat later, then, under the pretense of ordering breakfast as employee benefits, she placed a larger order with the owner: pork buns, red bean buns, vegetable buns, custard buns, and various other types, 20 of each. She also ordered 20 fried dough sticks and other items, enough for a full month, with pickup every morning. She paid half the deposit upfront.
After leaving the shop, she planned to go to the company. She had already arranged for professionals to come in the afternoon to assess the company’s valuation. Jiang Li had left the company for five years; although it wasn’t large, it was still a small-to-medium enterprise.
Selling a company couldn’t be resolved in a day or two, so it had to be handled quickly in order to free up capital as soon as possible and use it to purchase supplies.
Looking at the company she had built from scratch, Jiang Li still felt a bit reluctant, but there was no other choice.
After handing the company over to the professionals, it was already past two in the afternoon. She drove to the largest grain and oil wholesale market in the city. Buying here was cheaper than outside, which could save a lot of money. She had learned this before when she was in the orphanage, once she had followed an aunt in charge of procurement out here. The market was about half an hour’s drive from the city center. After getting out of the car, she found a relatively large grain and oil store.
“Hello, little girl. What would you like?” The person who greeted me was an enthusiastic middle-aged woman.
“Hello, ma’am. I want Northeast rice, pearl rice, black rice, purple rice, glutinous rice, millet, and all the regular types of rice your shop has, in large quantities. Give me 50 bags of each.”
“Then red beans, mung beans, broad beans, black beans, buckwheat, 100 jin of each.” She pointed at the assorted grains displayed together near the shop entrance as she spoke.
Then she pointed to another side and said, “Cornmeal, sweet potato flour, buckwheat flour, vermicelli, bean jelly sheets, and dried noodles, give me 50 jin of each as well.”
“Also starch, rice flour, high-gluten flour, low-gluten flour, medium-gluten flour, corn flour, wheat flour, 50 jin of each.”
“Then corn oil, olive oil, walnut oil, sesame oil, peanut oil, rapeseed oil, soybean oil, 10 barrels of each.”
“Little girl, that’s a lot. What do you all do? I’ve never seen you here before,” the shop owner said. The young girl in front of her was neatly dressed and very pretty; she would have remembered her if she had seen her before.
These quantities were all within reasonable wholesale purchase limits that Jiang Li had already looked into. If she bought too much, it might draw the attention of relevant authorities, who could suspect her of deliberately inflating prices, especially since she was purchasing under a personal name.
“Oh, ma’am, I’m a new procurement staff member at our company. Our boss has recently contracted several school cafeterias and factory canteens, so the demand is quite large.” This was the explanation Jiang Li had already prepared in advance; the people in the shop wouldn’t be able to verify whether it was true or not.
“No wonder. I thought you looked unfamiliar. Do you have a vehicle? I’ll have them load everything onto your truck first, then I’ll calculate the total for you.”
“Okay, the truck is parked at the entrance of the market. The license plate number is ×××××××, and the driver’s surname is Zhao.”
The truck was rented near the market. Wholesale markets like this usually had cargo trucks available for hire. She gave the shop owner the driver’s contact information and the license plate number so they could deliver the goods directly onto the truck.
The total came to 400,000. After paying the shop owner, she also asked for her contact details, planning to make several more purchases in batches later. That way, the buying would be more dispersed, though the total volume over half a year would still be considerable.
After leaving, she gave the driver an address for a warehouse and paid him a 500 deposit, instructing him to deliver the goods there once everything was loaded. She also hired a few laborers for unloading, arranged the unloading time with them, and then headed to the next location.