Pei Qian felt dizzy.
The restaurant I opened, and now I can’t even make a reservation?
Lin Canrong reassured him: “But don’t worry, Mr. Pei. According to your previous instructions, the 20th of even-numbered months is reserved for private events, and the largest private room is kept available on the first and third Sundays of each month.”
“So next Sunday, September 5th, you can still come for a meal.”
Pei Qian: “…”
He had indeed arranged this before—on the 20th of even-numbered months, Mingyun Private Kitchen would be reserved for company team building; on the first and third Sundays of each month, the largest private room would be kept available for potential business dinners.
Thinking about it now, this standard seemed a bit conservative; he should have reserved more days.
The main issue was that Pei Qian could never have imagined that Mingyun Private Kitchen would become what it is now…
Pei Qian had thought that even if there were a batch of regular customers, Mingyun Private Kitchen had so many private rooms, serving lunch and dinner daily—wouldn’t it be easy to keep one or two rooms available?
Now, reality had slapped him hard in the face!
So… how did the news leak out??
Could Lin Wan be causing trouble again?
Pei Qian thought about it. Most of his treasure trove of employees were grassroots people whom he had promoted himself. None of them had particularly strong backgrounds, so they shouldn’t have such influence.
The only employee with that kind of influence would be Lin Wan.
But Shenhua Group’s influence in Jingzhou wasn’t that strong—their main business was in Pengcheng. How could they bring so many people to eat at Mingyun Private Kitchen?
Or… had another enemy appeared???
Pei Qian didn’t speak for a long time, partly because he hadn’t recovered from this severe blow, and partly because he was thinking about which link had gone wrong.
Hearing no response from Mr. Pei on the other end of the phone, Lin Canrong thought Mr. Pei was happy about Mingyun Private Kitchen’s popularity and hurriedly took the opportunity to offer more flattery.
No, how could this be called flattery? What he was about to say was all the truth, without a single false word.
“Mr. Pei, I must say, your previous instruction for us to focus on the private kitchen business and not worry about promotion was indeed far-sighted and correct!”
“Your grasp of the mindset of Jingzhou’s wealthy class has reached an unparalleled level. Every step is interlocking, truly admirable!”
Pei Qian: “???”
What are you talking about? I don’t understand at all.
Pei Qian knew Lin Canrong was blowing exaggerated compliments, and he wasn’t interested in such flattery at all—in fact, he was quite repulsed by it.
This kind of flattery was like pouring salt on Mr. Pei’s wounds!
But Pei Qian had to listen because he needed to figure out what had gone wrong with Mingyun Private Kitchen through Lin Canrong’s flattery!
On the other end of the phone, Lin Canrong hadn’t noticed Mr. Pei’s bewilderment and continued excitedly.
“Looking back, my understanding of the wealthy circle was too shallow. Jingzhou’s local wealthy circle isn’t large, and most know each other. Our private kitchen mainly caters to clients in this small circle, so you felt there was no need for promotion—that was correct.”
“Because information spreads so quickly in this small circle!”
“That customer named Xue Zhebin came because he saw Zhang Zuting’s Weibo post, and then he brought Wang Peng, the head of Public Reviews. After Wang posted a review on the review website, Mingyun Private Kitchen immediately became popular!”
“I never imagined that our low-profile restaurant could become popular so easily!”
“Of course, all your other decisions have also had the effect of adding flowers to brocade.”
“Mingyun Private Kitchen has no name, so Wang’s review on Public Reviews didn’t include a name either. This immediately highlighted Mingyun Private Kitchen’s unique character and sparked widespread discussion!”
“Moreover, having no name means that every time someone searches with spaces in their keywords, they find us, so our exposure has greatly increased!”
“Most crucially, the rules you set for the restaurant—like no photography, changing tables and tableware according to the dishes, service staff providing service like a gentle breeze—all perfectly match the needs of our target customers and are highly praised among the wealthy!”
“And the good reputation among the wealthy group, in turn, influences ordinary consumers. Although our dishes are priced relatively high, most ordinary consumers who come to dine feel they get their money’s worth, precisely because of the reputation effect from those top wealthy groups!”
Lin Canrong couldn’t stop praising Mingyun Private Kitchen’s successful model. This wasn’t just to flatter Mr. Pei but also a genuine feeling of admiration.
He had experienced the whole event himself. At the beginning, he had many doubts about Mr. Pei’s arrangements and was even very pessimistic about the prospects of the private kitchen.
But now, his doubts had been completely resolved. Mr. Pei’s unexpected arrangements had worked perfectly!
Pei Qian remained silent. All of Lin Canrong’s flattery went in one ear and out the other—there was no need to remember it. But he did remember these two names.
One Xue Zhebin, one Wang Peng—two culprits!
Xue Zhebin had come after seeing Zhang Zuting’s Weibo post, which meant Zhang Zuting was also to blame!
Pei Qian now just wanted to say four words: impossible to guard against!
Too many enemies—it was truly like being surrounded.
Pei Qian silently sighed. Ah, three more names to add to his little notebook.
“Then book me a private room for next Sunday. Just make sure the menu is different from last time.”
Pei Qian spoke with little energy.
…
…
After hanging up the phone, Pei Qian felt tremendous pressure, and his mood was no longer pleasant.
Given how popular Mingyun Private Kitchen had become, it would make money.
But it wouldn’t make too much.
Because Mingyun Private Kitchen’s reception capacity was limited, it only had so much space. Even with both lunch and dinner fully booked every day, it couldn’t accommodate that many people.
Mingyun Private Kitchen’s daily expenses were also high, employing several golden-medal chefs, many well-trained service staff, as well as workers who moved tables and changed decorations—the labor costs were very high.
Although the prices of the private kitchen’s dishes were high, they weren’t exorbitant, which was why Wang Peng thought it was quite cost-effective.
So, Mingyun Private Kitchen would make money, but to say it would recover all investments in the short term was probably impossible.
It could be said to be fortunate in misfortune.
Pei Qian had bought this commercial-residential villa for over 6 million yuan. Calculating 10% of the system funds would be 600,000 yuan.
That meant that as long as Mingyun Private Kitchen didn’t earn back 5.4 million yuan, it would still be advantageous for Pei Qian.
But… it was only a matter of time before it became disadvantageous.
Pei Qian felt the pressure. It was about to enter September, and half the settlement period had already passed. Mr. Pei didn’t have much time left.
There were two urgent matters now.
First, “Hot-Blooded Battle Song Enhanced Edition” needed to launch and fail quickly, giving Mr. Pei some peace of mind.
Second, the previously considered mechanism of awarding bonuses based on reputation ratings needed to be implemented immediately.
Since coming up with the idea of “awarding bonuses based on reputation,” Pei Qian had formulated a set of rules, which, after discussion, were almost finalized.
Based on a project’s initial investment, a base bonus amount would be determined.
According to the project’s reputation rating, a coefficient would be determined. Multiplying this coefficient by the base amount would determine the bonus value to be distributed among all project members according to their positions and the importance of their work.
The most important aspect was how to determine a project’s reputation.
Using external website ratings was quite easy to manipulate and might not be accurate.
For example, with a game, some review websites might give high scores, while others might give low scores—which one should be used as the standard?
Relying on all netizens to rate together wasn’t very reliable either, as ratings could be manipulated, or competitors might organize trolls to maliciously give one-star reviews.
If it were a comprehensive rating combining authoritative media, player opinions, and internal company opinions…
How would that be different from creating your evaluation standard?
So after some consideration, Pei Qian felt that to award bonuses based on reputation ratings, there must be a comprehensive internal rating mechanism—this was unavoidable.
Overall, for a more accurate evaluation, two main points were needed:
On one hand, eliminate malicious ratings as much as possible, such as trolls boosting ratings or haters mindlessly criticizing. On the other hand, while focusing on target users in a specific field, also try to expand the evaluation body as much as possible.
Many movie or game ratings exhibited a phenomenon where more niche content tended to get higher ratings.
This was because, for niche films, die-hard fans were willing to give high scores, and before the film went mainstream, people not interested in the genre wouldn’t come across it or rate it, resulting in artificially high scores.
Once these niche films went mainstream, a drop in ratings was almost inevitable.
So, considering these factors, Pei Qian finally established a set of internal reputation evaluation mechanisms for Tenda and gave it a fashionable name: TPDb, short for Tenda Project Database.
This database would include all Tenda projects and provide comprehensive ratings based on the following factors:
Tenda executive internal evaluation.
Tenda’s ordinary employee comprehensive evaluation;
Authoritative media comprehensive evaluation;
Consumer evaluation;
Netizen evaluation.
Each type of evaluation would be weighted differently in the total score.
Among them, Tenda internal employee evaluations would have higher weight than general netizens, and each employee’s evaluation would be registered under their real name, visible only to a few executives (like Pei Qian).
It couldn’t completely rule out the possibility that internal employees might give random scores or friendship scores, but at least everyone would value their rating rights more because the rating records could be traced.
If someone gave their own project high scores to get more bonuses, or maliciously gave low scores to suppress other projects, these behaviors would be seen by Mr. Pei.
Consumer evaluations and ordinary netizen evaluations would use different weights. For example, for a game, the evaluation weights of actual consumers who bought the game would be different from those who didn’t, with the former being higher.
Of course, no matter which evaluation system was used, some people would find it inaccurate.
If Pei Qian decided everything himself and specifically gave more bonuses to loss-making projects, he could lose money faster, but employees from other projects would be suspicious, and the matter wouldn’t be seen as fair.
So, Pei Qian came up with the TPDb as a specialized rating database. With such a relatively comprehensive and fair evaluation system, awarding bonuses based on its ratings and project investment base, everyone should have no objections.
At the same time, the bonus distribution methods would differ for different projects.
The longer a project operated, the more bonus distributions there would be.
For projects like Headwind Inn, which Pei Qian aimed to keep open indefinitely, bonuses could be awarded quarterly based on reputation.
For buy-out games like “Turn Back to Shore,” two or three bonus distributions would be sufficient, with additional distributions for DLC based on the DLC’s reputation.
Of course, Pei Qian also had to consider the balance between different projects. Although Mr. Pei preferred projects like Headwind Inn that would continuously burn money, he couldn’t make his bias too obvious.
After finalizing everything, Pei Qian satisfactorily handed this plan to Assistant Xin.
“From next month onwards, all project bonuses will follow this standard.”