Abnormal Gourmet Chronicle
Chapter 325 - 201: Rare to be a Good Mentor

Chapter 325: Chapter 201: Rare to be a Good Mentor

Hearing Qin Huai’s words, Guli paused for a moment, seemingly hesitating, then quickly complied.

A little bit of progress, but not much.

Qin Huai didn’t continue speaking and went on filling.

The addition of six people from Zhiwei Restaurant greatly relieved the enormous work pressure at Huang Ji caused by a flood of orders. Huang Shengli no longer just managed without cooking; he dared to choose orders and cook some good dishes to give distant guests a pleasant surprise.

Zheng Da completely abandoned his model worker role and returned to being himself, slacking off whenever he could, with his work efficiency plummeting. It seemed as if the Zheng Da from two days ago, who was bustling around tirelessly and working to exhaustion, was just everyone’s illusion.

Seeing Zheng Da return to his previous status, many people at Huang Ji breathed a sigh of relief.

Normal, finally normal!

PM, the peak time for queuing at Huang Ji.

It’s not that the queuing speed is faster at this time, but reaching this time means people at the back might not be able to buy anything.

The overwhelming customer flow briefly extended Huang Ji’s business hours, though only briefly, changing business hours to 11 AM to 1:20 PM.

Once it reached 1:20 PM, the kitchen stopped accepting orders. The meat chef finished frying the remaining dishes, and the pastry chef wrapped up work and started cleaning, completely clocking out after the last batch of snacks steamed out of the bamboo steamer.

The first fiery popularity at Zhiwei Restaurant taught Huang Shengli a lesson: simply extending business hours cannot satisfy all customer demands.

Due to the booming business, extending hours to accommodate more guests, overworking the chefs, and leaving everyone in the kitchen fatigued is an extremely drastic act akin to killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

The chefs’ energy is limited, and customers come with high expectations; making them queue for so long and not experiencing the taste they’re looking forward to is disrespectful to them.

Huang Shengli is not a management genius and cannot think of a perfect solution. All he can do is strictly control the restaurant’s business hours while ensuring dish quality, never delaying.

Team leader Cao, as the team leader of Huang Ji, strictly adhered to this rule. From around 12:30 PM, Team leader Cao started estimating how many customers the remaining snacks could serve, factoring in the kitchen’s snack production speed, persuading customers who obviously couldn’t get any snacks to leave.

At 1 PM, Team leader Cao would lead several waiters to start distributing number tickets, limiting numbers to 100-120, and persuading customers without a number ticket to leave.

Due to Team leader Cao’s cautious calculations, there are usually a few snacks left. Customers who didn’t get a number ticket, especially those just one or two short, would persist in the queue, strictly supervising, hoping to grab any leftovers.

As for what exactly to supervise...

Supervise whether the customer with the last number ticket seizes the opportunity to buy in bulk beyond the limit. Should this happen, a supervisor would jump out to execute justice; one was just enforced the day before yesterday, taking Team leader Cao five minutes to mediate the dispute.

In a certain sense, the queuing scene in front of Huang Ji has become a major characteristic. Many retired residents living nearby, who don’t queue to buy snacks, still squeeze in to watch just to see if a justice execution turns into a heated argument.

If it weren’t cold now and holding food outside for fun would cool it quickly, Team leader Cao suspected many elderly would directly hold their bowls, watching and eating at Huang Ji’s entrance.

Incidentally, Team leader Cao also grew up near Huang Ji as a child of a state-owned enterprise family, having eaten at the entrance of the State owned Restaurant while holding a bowl back then.

Sometimes, standing at the entrance, Team leader Cao would hallucinate, seeing himself from many years ago holding a bowl, eagerly standing across the street corner, enviously watching the line buying steamed buns, and thinking about how the State owned Restaurant was then indisputably Gusu’s NO.1, filling him with motivation.

Even his mediation was particularly vigorous.

"Last number 115, no more queuing if you haven’t got a number ticket, especially you handsome guys at the back, we told you when you arrived you definitely couldn’t buy it, don’t queue any longer, come back tomorrow." Team leader Cao loudly proclaimed with vigor.

Qu Jing, who had just locked her bike, inexplicably felt a bit guilty.

Since having a gathering at Huang Ji last time, Qu Jing hadn’t returned. That day, when Qu Jing arrived, she saw Qin Huai, and when leaving, Xu Cheng had already entered the kitchen, missing him, taking only the special treats Qin Huai prepared for her —

cups of Dried Tangerine Peel Tea, 10 Fermented Rice with Steamed Buns, 10 Three Meat Buns, 2 pounds of sticky rice cake, half a pound of Green Bean Cake, 1 pound of Lard Rice Cake, 1 pound of jujube and yam cake, and 5 pounds of fresh meat mooncake.

The fresh meat mooncakes and extra Dried Tangerine Peel Tea were divided among her office when Qu Jing returned; the remaining snacks were brought back home and eaten over a few days.

From that day on, Qu Jing’s name spread through Gusu Branch, and most doctors from the departments who liked attending gatherings at Huang Ji recognized Qu Jing. In the canteen, Director Liu from the Neurology Department would stand straight, no longer calling Qu Jing "Xiao Qu," but directly "Jingjing."

Qu Jing felt she hadn’t even started attempting to foster good relationships and offerings of kindness with her colleagues when their goodwill flooded toward her, almost overwhelming her.

Qu Jing didn’t understand anything about Xu Cheng or what "Taste" was, but she overheard the orthopedics department saying, while eating at the canteen, that Huang Ji’s business was so booming recently it was hardly possible for those working regular hours to get any.

The orthopedics department’s doctors had just biked from the subway station to Huang Ji’s entrance the day before, and seeing the queue, they didn’t even bother asking, just turned around and pedaled back. A group of ravenous men with muscular builds nearly cried in the canteen over the leftover bland clear soup that even dogs wouldn’t eat.

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