Within a week of Da Tuanzi posting his video, it surpassed 300,000 likes. Among the ten thousand plus comments, aside from those cursing the counterfeit shop, the rest were filled with praise for Wen Ji Restaurant.
Once the praise reached a certain volume, skeptics inevitably appeared.
[Is it really that good?]
[Wait a minute, isn’t this the shop right in front of my school? I’ve eaten there before; it’s not that delicious.]
[I can testify, the food there is quite light—just regular home-cooked meals.]
However, regardless of the skepticism, business in the shop saw a sudden, explosive growth. Lunchtime was manageable since many people preferred delivery due to the scorching heat, but when evening rolled around…
Mother Wen felt the pressure as she watched the crowd begin to line up as early as five o’clock. These young people were well-behaved, voluntarily forming a long queue that stretched from the Wen family’s entrance past the pharmacy and all the way to the intersection. This sight left the residents of the neighborhood at the end of the street utterly shocked.
“What are they lining up for?”
“I don’t know. I just saw people queueing, so I joined in.”
An old lady at the end of the line was carrying a small stool. “We’ll find out when we get to the front anyway.”
Several residents thought about it and decided that since they had nothing to do at home and plenty of time, they just had to see what was so delicious that it warranted such a massive line.
Mother Wen focused on packing food and collecting money, Father Wen worked tirelessly in the back kitchen mixing cold side dishes, and even Wen Fan stood behind the counter taking orders and packing deliveries. Yang Tao and Qu Xiaoyu blew in like whirlwinds, grabbing several orders before flying out again. By the time everything was sold out, it wasn’t even nine o’clock.
Mother Wen didn’t even have time to count the money, and Father Wen’s arms were so tired he could barely lift them. Wen Fan’s recent exercise had shown some results; mainly, because her parents took over the two busiest positions, her work was manageable aside from the effort of cooking.
“This is just too exhausting,” Mother Wen sighed. When business was slow, she worried; now that business was booming, she was worn out.
Mother Wen estimated that today’s revenue exceeded 6,000 yuan. After a careful calculation, she found it far surpassed her expectations; a sum of over 7,000 yuan was essentially equivalent to what they used to make in a month.
Father Wen suggested hesitantly, “The shop is so busy; should we stop the meal sets?”
After the ordeal with Sun Mengyun, the number of people ordering the student meal sets had stabilized at around fifty per day. With only about twenty days of summer vacation left, Father Wen felt they would have to stop sooner or later. The shop was so busy now that preparing separate meals just for the student sets felt like an extra burden. He could handle the cold and braised dishes, but the stir-fry still relied on their daughter. From a cost-benefit perspective, it didn’t quite make sense, but mainly, he was worried about his daughter being too tired.
Mother Wen also began to hesitate.
However, Wen Fan felt it wasn’t necessary. “The traffic from the internet comes and goes quickly. Everything will be different once school starts.”
If one observed closely, they would notice that most of the people coming to eat lately were young. When Yang Tao returned from deliveries, he had encountered his old classmates no less than three times. It could be said that most people following Da Tuanzi’s reviews were local youths, mostly college students.
“When school starts in September, these people won’t be coming anymore.”
What Wen Fan didn’t say was that she sometimes worried about her parents’ livelihood. In her previous life, no matter how much she served as a slave, she never truly lacked money. If she had stayed in the palace for a few more years, she wouldn’t have had any trouble buying property or land outside. But the Wen family now… forget about commercial property; even their residence was rented. Wen Fan kept the goal of lifting her parents out of poverty close to her heart.
Mother Wen had no idea her daughter was worrying about the family’s survival. Although she also thought about making money to change their lives, she hadn’t yet dared to dream of buying a house.
“Then we need to hire someone,” Mother Wen agreed.
Wen Fan nodded. “Yes, we need to hire.”
“We’ll hire two delivery drivers and two more to help out in the shop.”
Since it was summer vacation, things were easy to arrange. Mother Wen didn’t even need to post a recruitment ad; she settled the matter right on the street. After all, whose family didn’t have a few college-aged relatives?
Soon, four clear-eyed young people arrived at the shop. One was Yang Tao’s classmate, Da Zhang, who was intimidatingly tall but quite simple-minded. Once Mother Wen confirmed he had an electric scooter and a convenient place to charge it at home, she kept him.
Another was the nephew of the stationery store owner, a dark and thin boy named Gao Yun. The stationery store owner brought him over personally. “This kid is just shy and doesn’t like to talk, but he can definitely handle whatever you tell him to do.”
Mother Wen looked at Gao Yun, who kept his head down in silence, with some concern, fearing he might be too embarrassed to work. Delivering food was hard work; how could anyone in the service industry avoid dealing with difficult people?
Yang Tao had encountered such a situation before: a young man ordered food and lived on the eighth floor without an elevator. After Yang Tao struggled to deliver it, the guy called just as Yang Tao reached the bottom floor, saying he forgot to mention it and wanted Yang Tao to buy a pack of cigarettes for him.
Yang Tao was nearly laughed out of his wits. “If you wanted cigarettes, why didn’t you say so earlier? Besides, I’m a delivery driver; why should I buy you cigarettes?” The man started shouting and threatening a bad review, insisting Yang Tao buy a pack and bring it up immediately. Yang Tao, furious, called Mother Wen and then blocked the man.
While such eccentric people were rare, meeting even one was enough to ruin one’s mood. With Gao Yun looking like this, Mother Wen really wasn’t sure if he could persevere.
“…Let the child try for a day to adapt. If he can do it, it’s 1,000 yuan plus lunch and dinner.”
As the order volume increased, Mother Wen gave Yang Tao and Qu Xiaoyu—the “senior employees”—1,000 yuan each as a bonus and promised another 1,000 if they worked until the end of summer. She didn’t plan to raise the pay for the two newcomers, as there were only twenty days left, and the order volume would likely drop toward the end.
The stationery store owner nodded, but she wasn’t entirely at ease with her nephew, who couldn’t utter a word even if prodded with a stick. she pulled him aside and nagged him for a long while.
Once the owner left, Gao Yun silently followed his “colleagues” to listen to Yang Tao explain how to register and accept orders. It happened to be after ten o’clock, and Wen Fan was testing a dish in the back kitchen. The aroma drifted throughout the room, making everyone restless.
Wen Fan took a bite and then plated the rest. Mother Wen heated up some steamed buns they had bought that morning and prepared a bit of cold side dishes.
“We eat lunch late, probably around 1:00 PM. Eat some of this to tide you over.”
Four steamed buns and two plates of food had almost become the daily standard. Yang Tao happily grabbed a few pairs of chopsticks to distribute. “Oh, we have chicken feet today.”
There were two plates: one was a cold dish, and the other was Spicy Stir-fried Chicken Feet. Among the soy-colored chicken feet were fragments of red chili. The skin and meat of the chicken feet were already tender and loose, with white gelatinous tendons visible at the joints. The sauce was thick and glossy, and just looking at it made one feel the searing heat of the spice.
Everyone couldn’t wait to pick up a piece. The gelatinous, soft texture conquered everyone the moment it entered their mouths. The spiciness arrived slowly after the savory soy flavor, like a wildfire spreading through the mouth. They scrambled to use the steamed buns to dampen the heat.
“So spicy!”
“This is too delicious!”
“Waaaah…”
Yang Tao had black lines across his forehead. “What are you doing?”
Gao Yun was crying while he ate. “It’s so spicy…”
It turned out he was literally crying from the spice.
“If it’s too spicy, don’t eat it.”
“No!” Gao Yun’s eyes were red from the heat, but he didn’t stop eating.
By the end of the meal, everyone had become familiar with each other. Yang Tao then realized that Gao Yun wasn’t someone who “didn’t like to talk”—he was actually a massive chatterbox!
“Brother Tao, when we take orders, do we deliver several at once?”
“Brother Tao, are there still chicken feet for lunch?”
“Brother Tao…”
Yang Tao snapped, “How can you talk so much!”
Gao Yun said sheepishly, “It’s because I talked too much in school, so the teacher kept calling my parents. It happened so many times…”
So that’s why you act shy in front of adults when you’re actually a chatterbox, right?
Yang Tao: …
The four young men quickly hit it off. The two waitresses Mother Wen hired didn’t arrive at the shop until the evening. One was Yang Hong’s niece, Yang Fei, a college junior. The other was a relative of the bun shop owner, Zhang Shan, a college freshman.
Both Yang Fei and Zhang Shan were late to start summer jobs this year because their schools had finished late. Yang Fei was alright; she had at least worked at a milk tea shop for a few days. Zhang Shan, however, had been idle at home.
The bun shop owner, Zhang Nian, came to the shop first to speak with Mother Wen. “This girl is fighting with her parents at home. Regardless of the pay, just let her stay out for a bit.”
When Mother Wen asked why they were fighting, Zhang Nian smiled awkwardly.
“She went home for her freshman summer, and her parents gave her a baby brother.”
Zhang Nian could understand her niece; she wouldn’t be able to stand it either if it happened to her. Zhang Shan’s parents—Zhang Nian’s brother and sister-in-law—were both in their late forties now. The sister-in-law had nearly lost half her life to have a second child and still hadn’t gotten out of bed. They said they had the child to give Zhang Shan a companion, but who didn’t know what they were really thinking?
Years ago, their workplace didn’t allow second children. As soon as the policy opened up, the desire for a son never ceased. No matter how much friends and relatives advised them, they finally had one. Now that this son was born, no one knew if he was born for them or for Zhang Shan. They had raised him in secret until he was a month old. The moment Zhang Shan returned home, she broke down.
She had been causing a massive scene at home these past few days, but her parents were righteous, saying he was already born and couldn’t be shoved back. If Zhang Shan kept causing trouble, they wouldn’t pay her tuition.
Zhang Nian sighed. “I see that Zhang Shan’s emotions are not right, so I brought her to my house. But it’s not healthy for her to stay locked in a room all day. She’s only nineteen; she has a long life ahead of her.”
Meeting such parents was truly bad luck. Zhang Nian felt for her niece and had guaranteed she wouldn’t let the tuition be a problem. No matter how messy her parents were, would they really dare to stop their daughter from studying? If they didn’t give the money, Zhang Nian would bring relatives to sit in their house.
But even with a backup plan, Zhang Nian couldn’t find the energy to look after her niece; she had her own shop to run, so she thought of bringing her niece out to work. “Yingzhi, the pay doesn’t matter much. The main thing is to let her see people.”
Mother Wen agreed. “Alright then.”
She had a daughter too, and Mother Wen felt pained just hearing the story. What kind of parents don’t consider their daughter before making such a decision?
Zhang Shan soon arrived at the shop. Mother Wen saw how thin the girl was—so thin there was barely any meat on her shoulders. Zhang Shan was even quieter than Gao Yun, but unlike him, her eyes seemed to hide an endless sorrow.
On the other hand, Yang Fei was a carefree girl who started chatting with Yang Tao and the others the moment she walked in. Yang Tao and Yang Fei had met a few times before, and there were few taboos between acquaintances.
He asked, “Weren’t you working at a milk tea shop?”
Yang Fei waved her hand in frustration. “Don’t even mention it. That place was small but full of drama. Can you believe a milk tea shop with only four people had its own cliques?”
“I was so mad that after I resigned, I ordered from them every day for a week and filed a complaint for every single order!”