Rebirth of the courtyard, the start is 80s

After chatting with the eldest sister Cao Jiajia for a while, the time soon came to two o'clock in the afternoon.

As soon as two o'clock arrives, the restaurant will no longer serve food except for takeaway, but it will not force people to leave.

To put it simply, after two o'clock, the restaurant will no longer provide services to the guests who are dining in the restaurant, but it doesn't mean that they will drive you away immediately, and you can still eat for another hour.

An hour later, that is, at three o'clock, it officially closed and closed until five o'clock in the evening.

If a customer stays until [-]:[-] p.m., the restaurant will not force you to leave at that time, but they will not provide anything, including a glass of water, and the waiters will start to clean the tables on their own.

The old people in Peiping in this period have to face. Generally, if they do this, unless they are really shameless, they will not be able to stay.

If he was really sloppy, he wouldn't lose his temper with He Yuzhu around.

Of course, according to Cao Jiajia, so far, no customers have not cooperated, and they will not stay in the store at three o'clock in the afternoon.

Sure enough, from one to two o'clock, many people left voluntarily, leaving only a few guests who came for the first time, were not familiar with the rules, and hadn't finished their meal. This also caused the restaurant to be deserted immediately.

However, although dine-in and private rooms have ceased service, there is still an endless stream of people queuing outside to buy takeaway.

It’s just that those who buy takeaways are queuing up next to each other, and they are in their own way. They don’t eat in the dine-in for a walk, but go directly to the back kitchen to get a meal, and many of them bring their own lunch boxes.

There was a line of people queuing up to get food, and the restaurant turned into a big canteen in no time.

It is said that this is also a scene of Food For Heaven. After all, no other private restaurants have such a situation of queuing up for a meal. Only Food For Heaven has opened a takeaway outlet, so this situation occurs.

Originally, Cao Jiajia was still a little worried, worried that these people queuing up for takeaway would affect the regular diners in the canteen, but who knew that after asking, everyone found out that everyone was very warm-hearted and adaptable to this situation.

Because at this time, most of the large factory canteens are in this mode, that is, a team of workers line up to eat, and they can go back to eat after eating, or sit and eat directly in the canteen.

The difference between Shiweitian and that kind of canteen is that people who have eaten can't eat in the restaurant, they can only take it home to eat, and there are many hard dishes and freshly fried dishes, which are not available on the takeaway side.

In addition, the takeaway meals are all ordinary big pot rice. Although the price is not cheap, it is relatively fair, which is completely different from the recipes for dining in restaurants.

All kinds of differentiated treatment, on the contrary, give the diners who eat in the restaurant a sense of superiority, a feeling that the leader eats a small stove.

That's right, the unit canteens in this period are generally divided into lobby and small hall.

The lobby is a large room, which is also the main body of the cafeteria, where ordinary employees gather to eat.

Xiaotang refers to a small room, generally called a side hall or a small stove, and it is mainly a place for leading cadres to eat.

Of course, in addition to this, the cafeteria also has private rooms, which are mainly for the real senior leaders to treat guests, but the number of such private rooms is very small.

In other words, the canteens of the work units are also divided into grades, and there is no such thing as fair dining.

Leaving aside the private rooms of Shiweitian Restaurant, even the largest dine-in can’t compare with the lobby of the unit’s canteen, at most it can be compared with the Xiaotang or side hall of the unit’s canteen.

The guests who came to eat didn’t feel it at first, but they saw a lot of customers queuing up to get food, but they could only pass by the lobby to go to the back kitchen to get food. People who dine in the hall have a feeling of being a leader.

After all, in an ordinary unit canteen, only leaders can go to the side hall to eat small stoves.

Isn't this situation the same as the leader's feeling of eating a small stove?
As for going to the private room to eat, needless to say, it is a senior leader running a wine bureau, which is also very immersive.

People these days don't have a deep feeling about making a fortune in business, but their expectations for being a leader are definitely full.

Through this way of food delivery, Shiweitian has made everyone feel like a leader, which may be one of the reasons why Shiweitian has suddenly become popular recently.

Cao Jiajia couldn't see the doorway here, but how could Cao Zhiqiang not see it?

He only came and walked twice, and he figured out the taste of it through the expressions and conversations of everyone.

The answer is simple, there is no superiority without comparison.

This also made Cao Zhiqiang hesitate a little, hesitating whether to open a window.

Because the window is open, people who buy takeaway don't have to pass by the lobby, they can buy it directly outside.

It is convenient to do so, but it will make people who eat in the cafeteria, especially the people who eat in the hall, lose the joy of comparison.

But if everyone is allowed to continue queuing to pass by the hotel lobby and go directly to the back kitchen to buy takeaway, it will indeed affect the operation.

And now it's just the beginning, everyone has not figured it out, and there is less trouble.

In the future, if this situation lasts for a long time, friction will inevitably occur.

After all, there are always people who owe money.

Suddenly, Cao Zhiqiang's eyes lit up, and he had two good ideas.

He thought of shop windows.

Yes, he thought of it, the takeaway window should be done, but the joy of comparison should also be kept.

The method is very simple, you only need to replace one wall of the hall with a glass curtain wall, and then people who order takeaway have to line up outside the glass curtain wall.

In this way, people who come to the restaurant to eat can see the people queuing up to buy takeaway outside through the floor-to-ceiling glass wall, thus creating a sense of superiority. Pointless strife.

Well, many restaurants in later generations, especially Western restaurants and cafeterias in large shopping malls, mostly have this design.

To put it simply, it is surrounded by a glass wall, so that people who eat inside can see the outside, and the outside can also see the inside.

But what about the situation in later generations, this method is mainly to attract foreign guests, so that people who have not entered the restaurant can see the environment and food of the restaurant at a glance through the glass curtain wall. up.

But in this period, the restaurant with glass curtain wall is still very interesting. Not only can people outside envy the dining environment inside, but it can also make people dining inside have a sense of superiority.

Although demolition of a wall seems to be a large project, and technical problems such as design and weighing are beyond the reach of ordinary people. If the wall is smashed hard, it is estimated that the house will collapse.

But this is a piece of cake for the people in the design institute.

After all, Cao Zhiqiang knew that when the design institute renovated and remodeled the courtyard, it strengthened the interior.

Therefore, if you just remove one wall on one side of the hall, or even remove two walls, and replace it with floor-to-ceiling glass windows, it should be no problem.

After all, this courtyard house along the street is not a high-rise building, but only one floor, so it should not be difficult.

If I have to say something bad, it is a big project. During the renovation period, the restaurant will be closed for a period of time, which will cause a period of loss, including money and popularity.

But once the transformation is successful and the restaurant with glass curtain wall appears, it is estimated that it will be able to earn back soon.

Okay, this plan can be put on the agenda, and it will be done this month, and it must be done within half a month.

And since it's going to be a big deal, it's better to turn the outside into a gazebo.

In this way, in summer, you can also put some tables outside for barbecue.

In this way, barbecue, takeaway, dine-in, and private rooms can definitely catch diners from all walks of life!
Perhaps it should be said that this marketing method will not be too complicated.

Actually not.

Frankly speaking, although this courtyard house along the street has been remodeled to a certain extent, there are area restrictions and room type restrictions.

Coupled with the environment here, it is determined that it is impossible to make it into that kind of high-end restaurant.

Of course, it's not that you can't force it, but that if you go to such a high-end restaurant in this period, you basically lose money and make money.

The reason is simple, that is, Chinese people are too poor to afford consumption.

Even if this is the capital, if the really rich people in the capital want to eat high-end food, they have to go to foreign-related hotels such as Jianguo Hotel and Beiping Hotel.

When overseas Chinese and foreigners come to the capital to stay and eat, they usually stay in big hotels, and rarely go to the roadside fly house to eat.

In this case, it is the same reason that when Chinese people go to India in later generations, they usually eat in big hotels and seldom go to Indian roadside stalls.

Without him, the sanitary conditions are really not good.

Even a specially renovated restaurant like "Food is the Sky" has a better dining environment than ordinary restaurant canteens, but it is absolutely incomparable with foreign-related joint venture restaurants like Jianguo Hotel.

At most, Food for Heaven can be called a "specialty restaurant", which cannot be compared with a big restaurant.

Maybe you want to say, if this is the case, why can it attract the dining and admiration of Japanese tourists?

Is it true that the smell of wine is not afraid of deep alleys?

Of course not.

Food is the sky can make foreigners full of praise.

The reason is very simple, because it is all trust!
It's just that this entrustment is relatively high-end, not pretended by the Chinese, but a serious foreign entrustment.

In fact, if we want to talk about this matter, we have to start with the plummeting business of Food for Heaven.

At the beginning, Cao Jiajia, the manager of Food for Heaven, listened to his younger brother and big boss Cao Zhiqiang, removed the breakfast service, set a limited time for lunch and dinner, and greatly increased the price of meals, and the effect was immediate.

As a result, the people who came to enjoy the coolness and chatter about the air conditioner stopped coming, and the diners also stopped coming.

Without diners, there is no business. Although there is no need to pay rent, after all, the house is owned by Cao Zhiqiang himself, but water and electricity, as well as the wages of waiters and chefs must be paid accordingly.

This made Cao Jiajia very worried, and she would call Cao Zhiqiang to complain about her troubles when she had nothing to do, which made Cao Zhiqiang very annoyed.

In fact, in Cao Zhiqiang's view, this is all temporary, and it will get better sooner or later.

After all, He Yuzhu's culinary skills are on display there, and the location of Shiweitian is also good, at least it is at the intersection of Wangfujing and Jinyu Hutong.

And Cao Jiajia's so-called bleak business is actually an exaggeration. In fact, it's just not as popular as it was at the beginning, but there are always customers.

Even though restaurant meals are generally expensive, there are also cheap options.

For example, noodles with fried sauce are affordable for most people.

It’s just that the Jajangmyeon here is twice as expensive as the ones outside, and of course the ingredients are better.

In other words, the so-called deserted business just means that the nearby diners who are price-sensitive and greedy for cheap have stopped coming. It does not mean that the restaurant really has no customers.

Generally, the opening of a new restaurant is like this in the first three months. Compared with those ordinary restaurants, the business of food is actually not bad.

After all, although the price of food is expensive, the ingredients and cooking skills are really the same.

Let’s not talk about anything else, let’s talk about such rare things as abalone’s wings, belly, bear’s paw and hump, which are not found in ordinary restaurants.

However, due to Cao Zhiqiang's special supply channel, Food For Heaven can always produce some fresh and unique top-notch ingredients.

The reason is also very simple, that is, these ingredients are all signed by Cao Zhiqiang.

Some ingredients that Cao Zhiqiang himself doesn’t like to eat, and it’s a pity to throw them away, he just throws them to Shiweitian, cooks and sells them for money.

Of course, the high-end ingredients that Cao Zhiqiang provided to the restaurant were not illegal.

For example, bear's paw hump is allowed to be eaten during this period, and no one will care about your source channel.

Not to mention abalone winged belly, as long as you can have it, who will ask where you got it from?

Also because of this, Shiweitian’s business seems to be bleak on the surface, but in fact, there are fewer diners in the lobby, but in the private rooms, there are always a small group of high-end diners coming to support them. For nothing else, they come here to eat He Yuzhu’s own cooking The "high-end Hejia cuisine"!
It can be said that just cooking high-end dishes can make a lot of money.

But for these high-end dinners, because the restaurant has to give more than half of the profit to Cao Zhiqiang as "purchasing money" for high-end ingredients, and the supply of these high-end ingredients is not stable. But Cao Jiajia has always felt a sense of crisis.

The main problem is that Cao Jiajia is not stable enough, and she panics when she sees the hall is deserted.

Even the money earned from a high-end dinner in a private room for one night is more than a month's income of an ordinary restaurant.

That's right, Cao Zhiqiang is actually using this restaurant to launder the high-end ingredients he got from signing in.

Also because the purpose is to realize cash and to pay less tax, Cao Zhiqiang set the purchase price of these high-end ingredients very high.

This led to the fact that although high-end meals are expensive, from the "book" point of view, the restaurant itself earns a lot of hard work and processing fees, and Cao Zhiqiang, the food supplier, "swallows" most of it.

But Cao Zhiqiang knew about this, Cao Jiajia didn't, and neither did the others.

Therefore, Cao Jiajia doesn't know how much money is made by Food for Heaven. He only knows about the public accounts, and he doesn't know how many food materials signed by the system have been laundered and how much cash has been earned by Cao Zhiqiang's restaurant that relies on Food for Heaven.

Cao Jiajia's panic also affected the panic of other waiters and chefs.

They don't know how much money high-end dinners make, they only see that the business is not good.

Cao Jiajia called Cao Zhiqiang again and again, making Cao Zhiqiang feel bad.

In addition, he also felt that if the restaurant's business was not good, it seemed that it would be unfavorable to always hold high-end dinners, so he decided to help and make the restaurant popular again.

Cao Zhiqiang's method is very simple, that is to worship foreigners and flatter them with advertising.

The method is very simple, that is, Cao Zhiqiang found a foreign travel agency through his relationship, and through the foreign travel agency, he contacted a group of Japanese tourists who came to China.

Cao Zhiqiang himself can speak Japanese, so it is no trouble at all to communicate with those Japanese tourists.

Chinese people in this period generally looked up to the Japanese who came to China for tourism because of the relative lack of information, thinking that these Japanese friends were very rich and wealthy.

But Cao Zhiqiang knew that this was actually a fake.

In fact, most of the Japanese who came to China to travel during this period were middle-class, and the really rich Japanese traveled to Europe and the United States.

It's like the Chinese people of later generations travel, the rich go to Europe, the next-best go to Japan and South Korea, and the poor go to Southeast Asia.

In the same way, most of the friends who travel to China during this period and live a good life are salarymen, and their income is not particularly high compared to their domestic income.

This also determines that these people are very sensitive to money.

This is easy to handle, Cao Zhiqiang directly discussed with them, asked them to help advertise, negotiate the price and sign the contract, and then rehearse and rehearse, everything is OK.

Of course, it’s not enough to have only actors and no audience.

So Cao Zhiqiang approached Cai Ling, a female reporter from the Peking Youth Daily, and asked her to help write articles.

Naturally, Cai Ling knew that Cao Zhiqiang had bought off these international friends in advance, but she felt that there was nothing wrong with it. After all, this level of fraud was not uncommon in China.

Moreover, Sino-Japanese friendship is now the main theme, and the active development of domestic tourism is also advocated by the head of state.

So at this time, writing an article about Chinese food conquering Japanese friends can definitely become famous.

It can kill multiple birds with one stone, so to speak.

Japanese friends can get performance fees, which is equivalent to free domestic travel.

Cai Ling can use this to write another review article that is enough to arouse topics and discussions.

Cao Zhiqiang can use foreigners and the Peking Youth Daily to advertise his restaurant vigorously.

Don't you all worship foreigners?Isn't the foreign moon particularly round?

That's good, I will let the international friends who come to China and live a good life say that food is the best, and belittle other restaurants.

Those who say food is good are international friends, and those who say other restaurants are not good are also international friends, which is none of our business.

And the ones who recorded all this were the newspaper reporters who happened to have dinner here. They also reported the charm of Chinese food and the benefits of open tourism.

So you see, a small soft article was born, everyone benefits, and it is a win-win situation for all parties.

The power of newspapers in this period is still very good, especially this kind of article that boasted that Chinese food conquered foreigners, so you must be proud and have to try it.

With the background of this article from Beiping Youth Daily, the shortcomings of food is no longer a problem.

The price is expensive, it must be because the ingredients are good and the environment is good.

You get what you pay for, and the well-informed old Beijingers still understand this truth.

As for not being open all day, no breakfast, and lunch ending at two o'clock, this is also not a problem.

A high-end chef must of course have a high-end temper.

Only the meals made by such chefs are the "Chinese cuisine" that can conquer foreigners!