The Game of Life TGOL

Chapter 796: Chapter 795: Hunger Marketing Chapter 796: Chapter 795: Hunger Marketing The pure meat dumplings recipe was actually not bad at all.

Although its buff was incredibly stifling, it at least guaranteed steady sales. Selling a stable thirty servings every day, it was basically assured of harvesting thirty positive reviews, unless it was eaten by someone seeking something beyond artistry.

Scoring sixty points every day, that’s three hundred in five days; this score isn’t high, but definitely not low.

This time, Jiang Feng submitted five recipes, which are pure meat dumplings, Eight Treasures Chestnut Fragrant Pigeon, crab-stuffed oranges, Chicken Beanflower, and braised pork.

Of course, the braised pork was a last resort.

The sales of these dishes were basically fixed. Chicken Beanflower was a dish made to order, selling a steady twenty-three servings every day. Even if Jiang Feng wanted to sell more—he wouldn’t be able to. Under the premise of ensuring normal operation, carefully preparing a pot of clear soup daily was his limit. Any more was truly impossible.

Eight Treasures Chestnut Fragrant Pigeon was also a dish made to order, with slightly more sales. If Jiang Feng pushed himself, he could at most make about seventy servings a day, to the point of feeling nauseous at the sight of pigeons.

Crab-stuffed oranges had more variable sales. On a slow day, there might only be a dozen or twenty servings sold, but on a better day, sales could reach forty or fifty servings. This dish was time-consuming and mainly relied on apprentices, as the task of picking crab meat was usually done by Ji Xia.

Braised pork was chosen by Jiang Feng after analyzing the sales data of his menu for the past month, concluding that it was the non-signature dish that should definitely be submitted. It’s a homestyle dish, not too expensive, and being a meat dish, its sales won’t be too low once it’s on the menu, which makes it a safe bet.

Among these five dishes, pure meat dumplings might not be the best, but they were definitely not bad.

Jiang Feng’s dishes were like that. He had too many signature dishes, each one very popular, with the majority involving complicated processes that were time-consuming and difficult. He couldn’t possibly have a product like Sun Jikai’s stir-fried beef ho fun, which had good sales, fast serving speed, and was superbly suitable for point accumulation, comparable to a Red Chef dessert.

From last week’s point situation, it could be seen that most restaurants were like this, and Yonghe House lost out exactly on this point.

Taste House had high scores because they had tapped into high sales. When White Chef and Red Chef vied for sales, Red Chef could only stand by, sighing in defeat, waving the white flag. Similarly, if Taste House were to advance to the finals and enter the normal cooking competition phase, competing against White Chef or Red Chef in the richness of ingredients, cooking skills, and methods, they would still face the same fate of surrender.

Each had its shortcomings, each had its strengths.

The top-tier restaurants scored high because they drew two favorable lots. One was an appetizer from a top-selling meal set, with high sales, easy to make, with no technical content nor time-consuming, and the other was a dessert drawn by Rolan, which was a viral dish of the top-tier restaurant. Almost anyone visiting out of curiosity, and without much money to spend, would order it to try something new.

Why Eight-treasure House scored high was needless to say—it was all thanks to Zheng Siyuan. They also had delivery service, and drawing a lot like the fresh meat mooncake was unbeatable.

Excluding those restaurants that had management scores over two thousand in the past three days, the other restaurants’ scores were all below two thousand. Jiang Feng felt that as long as Taifeng Building could ensure a management score around two thousand this week, and not stumble during the weekend test, they could truly fight a beautiful comeback battle in the second phase of the competition.

No matter which restaurant he switched to, as long as it wasn’t Taste House, Jiang Feng was confident he could churn out a report’s worth of sales.

And as a seasoned variety show viewer, Jiang Feng felt that in the second stage, it was certain that Eight-treasure House would be the one to draw Taste House. Otherwise, the competition simply couldn’t be fair. The chefs from the other restaurants didn’t specialize in White Chef desserts, only Zheng Siyuan did.

Sun Maochai and Sun Jikai could indeed make Cantonese pastries, but Taste House specialized in selling Suzhou-style pastries, a different expertise altogether.

Wu Minqi had no idea that Jiang Feng’s thoughts had already raced to the following week, thinking that Jiang Feng was disappointed with the pure meat dumplings lot. He hastily reassured, “Fengfeng, I think it’s quite good that you drew the pure meat dumplings.”

“Look, there’s a stable score of thirty every day, and you can make it unlimited, right? I remember, at the beginning of last year, weren’t some of your limited dishes offered in both limited and unlimited versions? And the prices were different too.”

Jiang Feng was still pondering which restaurant they needed to draw next week to gain an advantage when he heard Wu Minqi talking about the limited and unlimited issue and asked offhandedly, “What limited and unlimited issue?”

Wu Minqi repeated what he had just said.

Suddenly, Jiang Feng felt they were in a secure place.

Right, the show’s rules never specified that the original limited dishes couldn’t be turned into unlimited ones.

Making a dish taste good might be difficult, but making it taste bad was ridiculously easy.

“Qiqi, you’re really brilliant. I’m going to call the production team right now and ask if we can change the limited dishes to unlimited ones.” Excitedly, Jiang Feng slapped his thigh and began to make a call.

The production team probably expected that contestants would call with inquiries or suggestions after announcing the dishes, as the phone was answered almost instantly. Before Jiang Feng could speak, the other end emitted a crisp, standard, customer service-accented English.

“Excuse me. May I help you?”

“Can you speak Chinese?” Not that Jiang Feng couldn’t understand or speak it, but he just didn’t want to.

“Alright, this is Jiang Feng, right? What can I assist you with?” The other end switched to Chinese instantly; it was quite obvious that the person answering was an employee of Good Taste.

“Here’s the thing, the dish I drew this week is pure meat dumplings. According to past sales methods, I’m limited to thirty servings per day. Can I change that to unlimited?” Jiang Feng asked.

“Okay, I’ll record your question, and you’ll have a result shortly, within half an hour at most. Do you have any other concerns?”

“No.”

“`

“Okay, please hold on for my… oh, no, have a great life.”

The call ended.

Jiang Feng: ?

What exactly did the staff at Good Taste used to do?

After the call ended, Jiang Feng and Wu Minqi discussed the dishes they each drew in the WeChat group with Sun Maochai and Sun Jikai, and it was all decent. Sun Jikai had drawn his once proud creation, Wenchang Chicken, a dish only he made at Taifeng Building. Ji Xue couldn’t make it, and Sun Maochai was not willing to make it. Although its daily sales couldn’t compare with Stir-fried Beef Ho Fun, it was still okay, and if customers wanted to eat it, they could only order Sun Jikai’s.

Exclusive monopoly is just that confident.

Sun Maochai’s draw for the week could be called very good, as he drew Ding Lake Vegetarian Stew, one of his specialties at Taifeng Building. Generally speaking, once this dish was on the menu, those who could get a dish from Sun Maochai would definitely choose it, unless they were completely ignorant about food or did not like vegetarian dishes at all.

And another advantage of Ding Lake Vegetarian Stew was its speed in coming out of the kitchen.

Compared to Jiang Feng’s Eight Treasures Chestnut Fragrant Pigeon, Chicken Tofu Flower, and Stuffed Crab Orange, the speed of serving Ding Lake Vegetarian Stew was super fast, even faster than braised pork.

It could be said that Taifeng Building was almost guaranteed to score two thousand points this week. If Jiang Feng’s pure meat wontons were not limited in quantity, and the art-pursuing students didn’t mind a soul-lacking, work-reduced meal, Taifeng Building even had the potential to hit three thousand points.

The production team quickly returned a call to Jiang Feng.

Having drawn a limited dish and wanting to change it to unlimited was not an excessive or unreasonable request, so of course the production team agreed. However, the production team also had a requirement that aside from the pre-ordered dishes, all of Jiang Feng’s limited dishes must be made unlimited.

Then, a conflict arose between the two parties.

In the eyes of the production team, changing limited to unlimited was just a matter of one word.

But for Jiang Feng, it was the difference between having a buff and not having one.

The difference was huge.

It could make people cry or laugh.

The production team couldn’t understand why Jiang Feng insisted on specially marking some dishes as limited and using the remaining as unlimited, and Jiang Feng couldn’t make the production team understand.

He surely couldn’t say to the director, “Come try it, and you’ll know the difference with just one bite.”

Eventually, the production team gave in and allowed Jiang Feng to change the menu back to the way it was when Taifeng Building first opened, but in reverse. The initial menu at Taifeng Building had dishes with the same name, but the limited ones were more expensive than the unlimited ones. However, this time Jiang Feng had to make the unlimited ones more expensive than the limited ones.

For example, if Sweet and Sour Yam was selling for ninety-eight per serving, then the unlimited one had to be sold for one hundred and eight or even one hundred and twenty-eight.

Pure meat wontons sold for one yuan per serving, so the unlimited ones had to be sold for two or even three yuan.

This way, pure meat wontons would seem more advantageous.

Setting the price for the dishes wasn’t Jiang Feng’s job; it was Wang Xiulian’s. She would negotiate with the production team, and after an hour-long tug-of-war, they redefined the prices.

By the end of the tug-of-war, Jiang Feng’s phone was handed to a Good Taste staff member who couldn’t resist the curiosity and blurted out a question.

“Can I ask why these dishes are set as limited? I don’t see any need to limit wontons or Sweet and Sour Yam,” the staff sister still didn’t understand.

This question indeed stumped Jiang Feng.

Jiang Feng thought for a moment.

“You know about hunger marketing, it’s just hunger marketing.”

“But why implement hunger marketing for wontons that only cost one yuan? It’s not profitable,” the staff sister still didn’t get it.

“That’s what you don’t understand. It’s because it’s not profitable that we need hunger marketing; otherwise, we’d have great sales but no profit.”

Staff sister: ?

Is this what I think hunger marketing is?

“Oh, and don’t air this part, okay? This is Taifeng Building’s commercial secret, I absolutely can’t let you broadcast this, alright!”

“`