Losing Money to Be a Tycoon

Pei Qian felt a little faint.

I had opened this restaurant; I can’t even make a reservation myself?

Lin Canrong reminded: “Rest assured, Boss Pei. According to your request, the 20th of every odd month is completely blocked out while the biggest private room is always reserved for you the first and third Sundays of each month.”

“Hence, next Sunday, September 5th, you can come over and have a meal.” Pei Qian, “…”

He had indeed made such arrangements. He would book out Ming Yun Private Kitchen during the 20th of every odd month as a company cohesion dinner while he would reserve the biggest private room every first and third Sundays of each month for potential client entertainments.

Come to think of it, this now seemed a little conservative; and he should reserve a couple more days for his own use.

Most importantly, Pei Qian had never thought at the moment that Ming Yun Private Kitchen would become like this.

Pei Qian had thought that even if Ming Yun Private Kitchen had a fixed group of customers —as Ming Yun Private Kitchen had so many private rooms serving two meals a day, he could just reserve a private room occasionally.

However, reality had given him a tight slap in the face!

How on earth had information about this place leaked?

Could it be Lin Wan causing trouble again? Pei Qian thought about it. Most of his treasured employees had been recruited from him and nurtured from the beginning; none of them had prominent backgrounds, and they shouldn’t have such capacity.

The only possible person was Lin Wan.

However, Shenhua Corporation didn’t have much influence in Jingzhou. Their properties were mainly in Shenzhen; where could they have found so many people to come and have a meal at Ming Yun Private Kitchen?

Could it be… other enemies had appeared?

Pei Qian didn’t speak for a long while. He hadn’t recovered fully from such a heavy blow while he was also thinking where he had made a misstep.

Hearing Boss Pei grow silent for a long time, Lin Canrong actually thought that Boss Pei was extremely happy with Ming Yun Private Kitchen’s explosive popularity as he hurriedly sucked up to Boss Pei.

Wait, no, this couldn’t be considered sucking up. What he intended to say was all the truth; there wasn’t a single lie in his words.

“Boss Pei, I have to say that you asking us to focus on the private kitchen and ignoring any publicity efforts was such foresight! It was the right thing to do!

“You have gotten a good grasp on the wealthy segment of Jingzhou, their attitudes, and thought processes. Every step had been so accurate; I am really impressed.”

Pei Qian, “???”

What are you talking about? I don’t understand anything at all.

Pei Qian knew that Lin Canrong was bootlicking; he wasn’t interested in such things and was actually very repulsed.

Such bootlicking was putting salt on Boss Pei’s wounds!

However, Pei Qian couldn’t not-listen. He had to find out from Lin Canrong’s bootlicking, where he had gone wrong with Ming Yun Private Kitchen!

Lin Canrong had not realized Boss Pei’s change in attitude and happily continued talking.

“Come to think of it, my understanding of rich people is really shallow. Jingzhou doesn’t have that many rich folks. Furthermore, most of them recognize that our private kitchen is specifically targeting them. Hence, you deciding not to do any publicity was the accurate move.

“That is because information spreads so rapidly within this small circle!

“That customer Xue Zhebin had seen Zhang Zuting’s Weibo message and started to look for this place. He had then found Quanmin Reviews’ Wang Peng; Boss Wang told him about this place. In the end, Boss Wang had left his ratings and review on Quanmin Reviews; and Ming Yun Private Kitchen’s popularity had skyrocketed! “I didn’t think that it was so simple for a low-key restaurant like ours to become so popular so fast! “Of course, your other strategies had also complemented this. “Ming Yun Private Kitchen didn’t have a name. As such, Boss Wang had not left a name on Quanmin Reviews. This immediately showcased the uniqueness of Ming Yun Private Kitchen and triggered a debate!

name

“Furthermore, as we didn’t have a name, every time someone left the name column blank and searched for keywords; they would all find our restaurant. That was how our visibility had been raised!

“The most crucial point was the rules you have set for our restaurant, such as no taking of photos and changing of the table setting and cutlery according to the dishes served, our wait staff’s breezy and attentive service… all these aspects satisfied our customers’ expectations. Among the ballers, everyone is praising all these!

“The good reputation of our restaurant among the ballers also had an impact on ordinary consumers. Although our dishes are rather expensive, most ordinary customers that came all felt that it was worth their buck. This was precisely because the ballers had sung their praises!”

Lin Canrong continued to praise Ming Yun Private Kitchen’s success model; he wasn’t just bootlicking Boss Pei but was also saying all these emotively. He had personally experienced everything. Initially, he did not understand Boss Pei’s arrangements and had not been optimistic about the private kitchen’s prospects.

Now, all his misgivings had all been cleared and Boss Pei’s astute arrangements had worked! Pei Qian was lost for words. Lin Canrong’s words came in from his left ear and left in the right ear; he didn’t remember much of it. Two names, however, Pei Qian now remembered.

One was Xue Zhebin, and another was Wang Peng. These were the two culprits!

Xue Zhebin had come after seeing Zhang Zuting’s Weibo message; that meant that Zhang Zuting was complicit as well!

Pei Qian now could only think of four words: it was impossible to guard against all sides!

There were too many enemies; he felt like he was completely surrounded.

Pei Qian sighed quietly. Aye, I have to add another three names to my notebook.

“In that case, help me to reserve the private room for next Sunday. Make some variations to the menu from the previous time.”

Pei Qian said this a little feebly.

After hanging up the phone call, Pei Qian felt a mountain of pressure on him; he was not feeling very good.

According to the popularity of Ming Yun Private Kitchen now, it would definitely make money.

However, it won’t make that much.

Ming Yun Private Kitchen had a limited seating capacity; the space was only that big. Even if it was packed for both lunches and dinners, it wouldn’t be able to receive that many customers.

Ming Yun Private Kitchen’s daily expenses were immense. Pei Qian had hired a few top chefs as well as well-trained wait staff, table movers, and ornament movers; manpower costs were significant.

Although the restaurant’s dishes’ prices were considered high, they were astronomically so. That was why Wang Peng had thought his meal had been rather worth it.

Hence, Ming Yun Private Kitchen would definitely make money. However, it was probably impossible for it to recoup all the initial investments in the short-term.

This was a small saving grace. Pei Qian had bought two semi-commercial villas that cost six million in total. The amount recorded in the System Funds would be six hundred thousand.

That meant that before Ming Yun Private Kitchen made five hundred and forty thousand, it was still worthwhile for Pei Qian.

However… it was only a matter of time before it became an issue for him.

Pei Qian felt so much pressure. It was going to be September soon, and it was already halfway into this cycle; there wasn’t much time left till settlement.

He had two most pressing things to deal with now.

One was launching Bloody Battle Song: The Powerful Version and letting it flop, to give Boss Pei some reprieve and assurance.

Second was he had to start implementing his reputation-rating bonus system immediately.

Ever since he had this ‘reputation-based reward’ idea, Pei Qian had already formulated a concrete plan; it was more or less finalized.

The base figure for the prize money would be based on the early-stage investments into a project. A ranking and benchmark would be created based on the project’s reputation. Once the base figure was met, the award would be given to all the project’s members based on seniority and responsibilities.

The most important part of this system was how to determine a project’s reputation.

If he wanted to use external website ratings, some gamers might continuously spam the same review; and so they might not be accurate.

For example, some rating sites might give higher points for a certain type of game while others might give the same game a lower rating; which rating should be used as the benchmark precisely?

Basing it on the combined ratings of all netizens wouldn’t be reliable as well. They could actually be falsified by fake reviewers.

If it was a combined collation of authoritative media sites, gamers’ opinions, and internal company feedback…

How would the last factor differ from him himself coming up with a rating?

Hence, Pei Qian considered this matter and felt that if he wanted to implement this system, he had to have a perfect internal rating system.

All in all, ratings had to be ascertained based on two things:

One was it had to filter out malicious intent, such as fake reviewers and trolls. Another aspect was that it had to be broad-based. Many movie and game reviews had the same phenomenon: the smaller the target base, the easier it was to get a higher rating.

As the target audience was specific, all die-hard fans were willing to give high ratings. Furthermore, before such films were released, those who were not interested in this genre or type would not interact with these videos and wouldn’t give a rating as well. Hence, the ratings would be inflated.

Once these films were released, the ratings would naturally drop.

Hence, after taking into consideration all these elements, Pei Qian finally decided on a Tengda internal reputation-rating system. He had also thought of a more westernized name: TPDb, which was the acronym for Tengda Project Database.

This database would take note of all of Tengda’s projects as well as conducting a holistic assessment based on the following criteria:

Tengda High-Level internal review, Tengda ordinary employee review, Authoritative media holistic review, Consumer review, and Netizens’ review.

Every type of review would have different weights.

Tengda internal employees’ opinions would weigh more than ordinary netizens. All employees’ reviews had to use their real names, and only a small number of high-level executives (like Pei Qian) could see who had commented what.

While Pei Qian could not completely eliminate his employees giving troll reviews or friendship points to their comrades, at least everyone would treasure their right to review as these reviews could be traced and were recorded.

If they gave their own projects higher ratings to get a higher reward or if they purposely posted low ratings for their competitors’ projects, Boss Pei would take all this into account as well.

Consumer reviews and netizens’ reviews also carried different weights. For players who had bought a game and those who hadn’t, the formers’ views would be more highly prized.

Naturally, regardless of what system was used, some would feel that the ratings were not accurate.

If Pei Qian kept on giving the loss-making projects more rewards—while that would accelerate losses, the employees from other projects would definitely become suspicious. This would then seem unfair.

Hence, Pei Qian had thought of using TPDb as a professional rating database. As there were a rather holistic and fair system and benchmark in place with the reward given based on the ratings in the database and the initial investment amount of each project, everyone would be more appeased by this. At the same time, there would be differences in the release of rewards for different projects as well. The longer a project had been ongoing, the more times rewards would be given.

Take Upwind Courier stations for example. As Pei Qian intended for this project to last forever, he could consider giving a reputation-based reward quarterly.

For a game like Repent and be Saved which was a buy-to-play game, he could just give rewards twice or thrice. When a downloadable content was launched subsequently, Pei Qian could then give more rewards based on the downloadable content’s reputation.

Of course, Pei Qian also had to achieve a balance among all his projects. Although Boss Pei was more biased towards projects like Upwind Courier stations that would burn money in the long run, he couldn’t make his bias too obvious.

After finalizing all these plans, Pei Qian happily gave the proposal to Assistant Xin.

“From next month, all project bonuses would be based on these criteria.”