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In the secret base, six people sat around the living room’s laptop watching Xu Qingfan operate.
"Brother Fan, buy an extra portion of edamame, I love them!" Xiao Ruawen pointed at the photo of the marinated edamame in the vegetable section and called out.
"And the kelp knots, Brother Qing Fan, you haven’t bought the kelp knots yet!"
"Don’t rush, let me finish selecting the meat section first." Xu Qingfan reached out and ruffled the girl’s hair, and also clicked to purchase next to the image of the crayfish.
"So this means they will deliver it directly to our house?" Xia Xiaoxiao asked curiously after Xu Qingfan had finished placing the order.
"What else, the website just went live today, probably only a few minutes before they can deliver." Xu Qingfan said while browsing the homepage of the site.
Good Taste Takeout had been preparing for nearly a month and officially began operations on December 12th.
The webpage still had a long way to go before it could match the future Meituan, and for now, the takeout options available were limited to Good Taste duck neck, Good Taste Milk Tea, and major chain convenience stores like Meiyijia and 711.
As for introducing other gourmet businesses, that would have to wait until they had firmly established themselves after the initial battle.
As expected, less than ten minutes after placing the order, Xu Qingfan’s phone rang, and immediately after he answered, a trained script came from the other end, "Hello, your takeout has arrived at the doorstep, please come out to pick it up."
"You can just... okay, okay, I’ll be right there." Xu Qingfan suddenly had a feeling of déjà vu, reminiscent of ordering takeout in college and almost let slip the words to leave it downstairs.
All five girls were experiencing online shopping for the first time and followed him out, curious, after he hung up the phone.
Sure enough, a delivery guy was already standing at the gate of the small courtyard, dressed in Good Taste Takeout’s red uniform, with a work badge around his neck, and the electric scooter parked behind him was the company’s uniformly ordered red model, looking very professional.
Little White, thinking the stranger lingering at the door was a bad guy, bared his teeth and barked at him.
"Your Good Taste Takeout, please confirm receipt on the computer and give a five-star rating, thank you." The delivery guy respectfully handed over the takeout after seeing Xu Qingfan and the others come out.
"Thanks for the hard work." He reached out to accept the takeout and had wanted to ask how many orders the guy had received that morning, but decided not to delay his work.
Xu Qingfan patted Little White’s head as a gesture of encouragement, and the six of them returned inside.
They huddled around the coffee table, their heads together, examining the order slip on the packaging box.
The slip clearly showed the order time, the merchant’s address, the phone number he had left on the website, the delivery address, and his ID: Li City’s Number One Honest Man.
Xu Qingfan opened the packaging, with both meat and vegetarian dishes packed separately in their own containers, without any sign of leakage.
"How amazing, Brother Qing Fan, does this mean we won’t have to go out to shop anymore!" Lin Wanning sipped her milk tea and nibbled on the duck neck while her eyes shone like little stars as she looked at Xu Qingfan.
All five girls knew it was Xu Qingfan who came up with the idea of online takeout, and now seeing the idea materialize, even though Zhang Chunxue had arranged almost ninety percent of the work, they still held him in the highest admiration.
"It’s not that easy, probably still two or three years to go." He recalled in his mind which year touchscreen phones became popular.
"Brother Fan, tell us about it!"
"Exactly, Brother Qing Fan, tell us about it!"
He took out his Apple phone from his pocket, "When this thing is in everyone’s hands, that’s probably when we can."
"So what, you can’t even put a SIM card in this thing!" Xia Xiaoxiao immediately retorted.
He couldn’t remember which year the Apple phone got a domestic mobile license either—it was useless for internet or phone calls without it; just a brick.
Xu Qingfan scolded Xia Xiaoxiao for her interjection, then continued, "It can’t go online now, but in the future it will be able to, right? These phones will definitely be mainstream in the future. Then everyone can use their phone to order takeout—how convenient. With a larger market, more businesses will join, and then you can buy whatever you need without stepping foot outside."
Moreover, the most important thing at this stage was that the cost of training a delivery person was too high. Equipping them with custom phones and electric scooters was a huge expense. The algorithms were also not perfected, unable to allow riders to grab orders on the platform like in the past life and plan out the shortest delivery routes.
For now, they could only assign territories based on the location of stores with Good Taste duck neck, with each person responsible for a specific area, owning all orders within a three-kilometer radius.
"That’d be wonderful. I wish that day would come sooner!" Xiao Ruawen nodded, seemingly understanding.
Xu Qingfan squatted in front of the computer and clicked "delivered" for the order, then on the evaluation page that popped up, he gave both the store and the delivery man five-star ratings, "At most by the time we’re in our third year of junior high, it will definitely come."
"Brother Fan, here!" Wu Lingyu helped him insert a straw into the Yili Duo Bao Passion Fruit Tea and handed it to him.
"Mm." Xu Qingfan took a long sip before taking it.
The formula for this fruit tea was naturally provided by him as well. Since its launch, it and another fruit tea, Grape Duo, had become bestsellers.
The operation of Good Taste Milk Tea was still based on the duck neck shop setup, except this time they didn’t buy the storefront directly but chose to rent and get on the road with a lighter footprint.
Because the target audience for milk tea and duck necks overlapped nearly completely, they only had to situate a Good Taste Milk Tea next to a Good Taste duck neck store, saving a lot of time.
In half a year’s time, Good Taste Milk Tea had blossomed all over Lingnan Province. Where there was a Good Taste duck neck store, there would be a Good Taste Milk Tea. The achievement of opening a thousand stores in half a year was truly luxurious.
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