Chapter 445: – Dad plans to open a store
The one and a half hour outing to Wanda added over 150 people to Lin Jin’s task objective. At this rate, she should be able to finish the task by tomorrow or the day after that.
So when Lin Jin got back to her rental apartment, she wasn't too anxious about the task anymore. She took a shower. She flopped onto her bed, feeling sore all over, and stared up at the ceiling.
"Lin Jin."
This afternoon, her dad hadn't gone out gambling or earning money. Instead, he had stayed home and played on his phone. He walked up to Lin Jin’s bedroom door, knocked twice, and called out: "Do you want to go out for a walk together?"
"No. After half an hour of rest, I still have something to do."
Speaking of which, her dad seemed to have really made some money. Although she didn’t know if it was from gambling or actual work, but lately, he would have already bought breakfast and all the groceries before Lin Jin even woke up. The cost was probably at least in the tens of yuan.
Her dad had also bought a shoe cabinet, saying that leaving shoes outside the door made it easy for someone to steal them or something. Plus, he also bought an electric kettle, saying something about how bottled water wasn’t safe.
God knows where he got the money.
Maybe he really did make a lot of money by running the street stall?
Lin Jin lazily stretched and was too lazy to dwell on her dad’s affairs. She turned on the AC, pulled the quilt over her head, closed her eyes, and planned to have a good nap.
Even though she had to head to the welfare institute in half an hour, Lin Jin still felt tired and wanted to sleep.
But after lying there with her eyes closed for about ten minutes, Lin Jin suddenly sat up again and rubbed her temples in frustration.
She said she was too lazy to keep thinking about her dad, but once she closed her eyes, questions about him kept popping into her head. In just ten or so minutes, because she couldn’t stop thinking about her dad, her sleepiness was now almost all gone.
With a helpless pout, she got up from the bed. She slowly opened her bedroom door and then stood there behind the door with her hands behind her back, watching her dad, who was sitting on the couch looking down at his phone.
"Why are you up again?" Her dad noticed Lin Jin’s presence and raised his head to look at her.
Recently, her dad was starting to act more and more like a dad.
Lin Jin looked at her dad’s face, looked at his smile carrying “fatherly love” and frowned a bit. She really disliked this kind of smile from her dad. After all, he had already not done his duty as a father for more than ten years. Yet now he was showing such an expression, it made her somewhat lost.
"Can't sleep." Lin Jin turned around and went to the kitchen and poured herself a cup of warm water. Holding the cup with both hands, she sat on the sofa directly across from her dad. After a couple sips of water, she asked in a flat tone, "Have you still been gambling recently?"
Her dad basically shook his head without any hesitation: “No, I already stopped gambling a long time ago.”
Lin Jin stared into her dad’s eyes. Seeing there was no hint of guilt at all in his gaze, she didn’t say anything more. She shrugged, and lowered her head to continue drinking water.
"I recently used the borrowed money to open a milk tea shop." Dad suddenly said. "Just right by the back gate of your school. That store was originally a milk tea shop, but the taste wasn’t good so it shut down. I directly took it over. I also won’t do any franchise or anything, I’ll make the milk tea myself."
"You know how?" Lin Jin never knew her dad had this skill.
"I know a little bit." Her dad nodded, saying. "Before when I traveled around, I picked up some things. These past couple of days while the shop happens to be getting renovated, I’ve been redoing the flavors. It should be okay."
"Make me a cup? If it's good, I'll find someone to help promote it for you?"
"Sure."
He nodded, stood up, and walked to the kitchen to start tinkering.
Speaking of which, Lin Jin had noticed some weird things in the kitchen lately. So it was all used for making milk tea.
She was somewhat looking forward to his father’s milk tea. But this milk tea thing didn’t actually have much technical skill. It was just tossing some specific ingredients into a cup and shaking it a bit.
She kicked off her slippers, curled her feet up on the sofa, and lowered her head to go on her phone while waiting.
In just a few minutes, her dad came out holding a regular drinking cup. He placed the cup with the milk tea on the coffee table before her and expectantly looked at her.
Lin Jin took a look at the milk tea and saw it didn’t look any different from your ordinary milk tea. She picked it up and took a sip, yet found that the flavor of the milk tea her dad made was a bit stronger than the ones you'd buy elsewhere, and the texture was smoother too.
"It’s not bad." Lin Jin looked at her dad, a bit surprised.
"This one's the classic milk tea. If I add coconut jelly to this, it'll be coconut jelly milk tea. Anyways, this is the base for all the milk teas." Her dad said thoughtfully. "At that time, I'm also planning to hire people to line up outside to make it look very popular."
"Let’s just forget that, okay? It's not like you're in some shopping mall" Lin Jin shrugged. "If you hire people, it’ll definitely be hired students from the school, right? But when you hire students, you'd need at least thirty or forty people, right? Once they start talking, everyone at school will know you paid people. You might as well just honestly do takeout orders, at least you'll make money."
"Didn't the last shop close because they lost money?"
"That's because they tasted bad."
Lin Jin showed a disgusted face. The moment she heard a milk tea shop had closed, she knew exactly which one it was, okay? That shop, like her dad, didn’t join any franchise brand and made all the milk teas themselves. But the owner wasn't local, and the taste was way off for people here in Xiamen. So after just a few months with no customers, they shut down.
However, Lin Jin regularly drank milk tea, so she naturally knew that the business at milk tea shops, other than that one, was usually quite good. They might not be packed, but there was hardly any downtime. If you spent ten minutes inside, you’d hear the owner’s phone ring with at least ten or twenty orders.
"When it opens, you should do some advertising, run some promotions, and people will always come. Even if the taste isn't a huge advantage, it's still a bit better than the shops on campus. For the price, around seven or eight yuan’s about right. Higher and the students can’t afford it. " Lin Jin said while thinking, while her dad took a small notebook and wrote everything down. "Also, you need to run some promotions. Something like discounts based on Honor of Kings rank, or buy one get one free for couples, stuff like that…"
"Oh right, what's our cost per cup of milk tea?" Lin Jin suddenly asked.
"Cost... about two yuan" Her dad rubbed his short hair and said after thinking "Using good quality boba pearls or coconut jelly would add about one more yuan. The cheaper stuff would just be ten or so cents."
"Then let's go with the cheaper ones. It’s fine as long as it’s similar to the ones on campus."
Since this was the first time in a while her dad was doing actual business, Lin Jin was still pretty invested. At least he was going to do something proper now, right?
As long as he paid off his gambling debts and started working, then even if he kept gambling, Lin Jin wouldn't mind too much. After all, his dad would at least be able to support himself, instead of relying on others and borrowing money all over the place like before.