Chapter 281: Astonishing Profits

Beiguan Village. Hot Pot Restaurant!

Li Yi had no idea that the casual suggestion he’d made would come true so quickly.

Nor did he realize that this incident had firmly cemented his reputation as a “prophet” with an uncanny ability to predict the future in the eyes of Jiang Longcheng and Ye Jianhua.

To be honest, while Li Yi knew Ye Jianhua was getting married in a few months, he had no idea when his family had actually started arranging the wedding for him.

This was nothing short of a stroke of luck—or perhaps just a case of the door slamming on his dick!

Besides, given his personality, he wouldn’t have cared even if he’d known.

Right now, he was busy attending to the steady stream of customers coming into the shop.

After seeing Jiang Longcheng and Ye Jianhua off that afternoon, Li Yi closed the shop and rested briefly with his head on the table.

It wasn’t until Dongzi and the others showed up at 4:30 p.m. that he opened the shop again!

That’s how it usually goes in the restaurant business!

However, what Li Yi and the others didn’t expect was that customers started arriving before 5:00.

It was a young couple; they didn’t ask for a private room but simply found a seat in the main dining area.

At first, Li Yi thought this was an exception—after all, these days, factories and businesses typically let employees off work between 5:30 and 6:00 p.m., and people usually eat around that time; it was rare for anyone to dine at 5:00 p.m.

But he never imagined that these two customers were just the beginning.

Shortly after seating them, a car pulled up in the empty lot outside. Several middle-aged men got out and walked into the restaurant.

From 5:00 p.m. all the way until 9:00 p.m., the flow of customers never stopped.

By 7:30 p.m., the peak dining hour, there were over thirty tables of diners in the restaurant, filling nearly half the seating capacity.

Keep in mind that for a restaurant, a 30% occupancy rate is already quite good, and reaching 50% is considered a huge success—after all, you have to factor in table turnover.

With so many customers, Dongzi and his team were kept incredibly busy.

At the busiest moments, even Li Yi, the owner, had to step in as a server to bring out dishes to the guests.

By 9:30 p.m., after seeing off the last table of customers, the group was nearly exhausted.

After a quick bite to eat, Dongzi and the others headed back to the kitchen to clean up, while Li Yi sat at the front desk to tally the day’s earnings.

Li Yi had already tallied the afternoon’s receipts earlier that day; they had served a total of 12 tables, with a turnover of 667 yuan.

In addition, the restaurant had collected over 70 jin of grain coupons.

There was no way around it—these days, grain coupons were required to buy many things. Without them, not only would you have to pay a high price, but you might not even be able to get what you wanted.

Therefore, Li Yi’s restaurant collected one jin of grain coupons from every customer who walked in.

However, calculating profit required accounting for costs, which meant weighing the remaining beef and mutton. Li Yi didn’t bother with that effort; he planned to handle it all at once that evening.

He took out all the money and grain coupons from the drawer to count them: 965 yuan in cash and 112 jin of grain coupons.

Adding the 667 yuan from lunch, the total daily revenue came to 1,632 yuan.

Next came calculating the costs, after which he could determine today’s profit.

Since almost all the beef and mutton purchased today had been sold, the small amount left over could be offset against yesterday’s leftovers. He only needed to factor in today’s purchase price to determine the cost, so the math was straightforward.

After doing the math, Li Yi was surprised to find that, after deducting various costs and expenses, the shop’s profit for the day had reached 808 yuan.

To be honest, Li Yi was quite taken aback when he saw this profit figure.

As for this barbecue and hot pot restaurant, Li Yi had always held high hopes for it.

After all, this was Beijing in 1980—the Imperial City of that era was practically paved with gold, brimming with opportunities.

In an era where selling tea eggs was more profitable than building missiles, even pushing a cart down the street selling pancakes could easily earn you a month’s salary in a single day.

Not to mention that he was running a barbecue and hot pot restaurant—making money was definitely a sure thing.

But even so, Li Yi thought that a daily profit of three or four hundred yuan would already be quite good.

It wasn’t that Li Yi lacked confidence in his shop; it was simply that current purchasing power was what it was.

Don’t be fooled by the fact that reform and opening-up have already taken place—whether in the countryside or the city, incomes haven’t changed much.

And since his was a high-end restaurant, most people simply couldn’t afford to eat there!

Yet, to his utter surprise, the restaurant made 800 yuan in just one day.

Wow, that really took him by surprise.

If he could maintain this level of revenue, his monthly profit could easily exceed 20,000 yuan.

With that kind of income, he could easily afford a courtyard house in Beijing every month.

After crunching the numbers, Li Yi breathed a sigh of relief.

To help the villagers resolve their food crisis and to ensure the shop would have access to his own cattle and sheep in the future, Li Yi had already invested over 40,000 yuan in the village alone.

And this was just the beginning; he might have to invest even more in the future.

Add to that the 15,000 to 16,000 yuan he’d put into opening the shop, and the money he actually had left to spend was now less than 10,000 yuan.

Not to mention, he still owed the bank a 40,000-yuan loan.

Although this loan wasn’t a major burden for him, it would be nice if business at the shop picked up and he could pay it off as soon as possible.

After crunching the numbers, Li Yi couldn’t help but think of Tang Xue, who was far away in Nianzishan Village!

It had been over twenty days since he left at the end of October, and to be honest, he really missed that girl.

Now that the shop was up and running and turning a profit—a pretty substantial one at that—

He wanted to share this good news with her right away.

He figured she’d be thrilled to hear the news!

Unfortunately, Nianzishan Village was too remote and underdeveloped; not a single household had a telephone yet.

Although he could contact his family via telegram, that method simply isn’t suitable for everyday greetings and communication. Setting aside the cost, the most important thing is that the villagers’ understanding of telegrams is different from that of city dwellers.

To the villagers, sending a telegram is usually reserved for emergencies—often matters of life and death.

Li Yi could easily imagine that if he actually sent a telegram home, it would certainly not be a pleasant surprise for his family—it would more likely be a shock.

On second thought, maybe I’d better not!

At the same time, Li Yi thought of his older sister back in the county seat.

If things went as expected, her due date would be in just over ten days.

He thought back to his previous life, when his older sister, under the abuse of those scum at the Yang family’s house, ultimately couldn’t bring that poor child into the world—and she lost her own life in the process.

In this life, he absolutely couldn’t let anything happen to her or the baby.

So Li Yi was just waiting for business at the shop to stabilize a bit before heading back—he had to be there to make sure his older sister gave birth safely.

However, he was a bit worried—what would happen to the shop if he went back now?

Could Dongzi and the others handle things on their own?

The answer was clearly no!

Although Dongzi, Qiangzi, and the others were hardworking and reliable, and had learned a lot from him recently, they were still young and lacked experience. If an emergency arose, they certainly wouldn’t be able to handle it.

Li Yi couldn’t help but think of the “Eight Golden Warriors” he’d commanded in his previous life. With those capable, independent-minded men by his side, he wouldn’t have had to worry about anything like this at all.

Unfortunately, in this life, he’d only managed to bring Long Zhanjun back; the other seven were still following their predetermined paths.

Perhaps they would cross paths at some point in the future, but for now, there was no way those men could come to his aid.

Thinking of this, Li Yi couldn’t help but feel a sense of melancholy and helplessness!

What he didn’t know was that the help he was waiting for was about to arrive!