May 20th, Friday.

Tuoguan Fitness.

The gym wasn’t very crowded in the morning, and it felt somewhat empty. On the entire row of treadmills, only four female trainees were exercising, with all others vacant.

The equipment area wasn’t much better, with only six people, three of whom were fitness coaches working out.

Guo Licheng had just finished exercising and was wiping the fine beads of sweat from his forehead with a towel as he sat down in the rest area.

He had been quite busy as a manager recently.

Several other branch locations were being prepared in full swing. Guo Licheng couldn’t handle everything himself, so he selected a few familiar fitness coaches from the Tuoguan Fitness flagship store to serve as managers at those locations.

They purchased the same model of equipment for all locations, and Slackin’ food delivery had already been coordinated with Rui Yuchen to arrange unified meal ordering from nearby stores. These matters were easy to handle; only recruitment posed some difficulty.

Guo Licheng had established recruitment rules for all these branches, strictly implementing Mr. Pei’s instructions that coaches must first be evaluated on muscle development and physique. No matter how eloquently someone spoke, they would not be hired if their physical condition wasn’t up to standard.

As a result, large numbers of coaches were rejected for not meeting the physical standards. Fortunately, Mr. Pei was very generous with compensation, so despite strictly enforcing this standard, many qualified coaches transferred over, and branch affairs proceeded smoothly.

In the next couple of days, several Tuoguan Fitness branches will open successively.

The Tuoguan Fitness at Mingyun Villa seemed to be opening earliest. Guo Licheng had been too busy to visit, so he didn’t know whether the business situation after opening would be optimistic.

According to Guo Licheng’s speculation, it probably wouldn’t be too optimistic.

He could tell from the flagship store’s situation.

Besides being busy with these branch matters, Guo Licheng also had to train hard every day as instructed by Mr. Pei, fearing that if he slacked off for a couple of days and his physique changed, Mr. Pei would notice and criticize him.

But this left Guo Licheng with no time to attract new members or promote the gym.

It was better when Coach Ya Ling was here before, as new customers would sign up daily because of her. Now that Mr. Pei had reassigned Coach Ya Ling, the gym seemed even quieter.

“Manager, the fitness meals have arrived!” called the front desk girl.

Guo Licheng looked up to see two Slackin’ delivery staff taking off their insulated boxes, removing the Slackin’ meals, and arranging them neatly on the long table before hurriedly leaving.

As noon approached, these delivery staff had other places to deliver to. Since Tuoguan Fitness was considered family, there was no need for formalities—deliver and leave.

Guo Licheng called out: “Mealtime!”

“Oh…” A few weak responses echoed through the gym.

Guo Licheng felt helpless, knowing why everyone lacked enthusiasm.

They had no interest in fitness meals.

Slackin’s fitness meals were similar to others on the market, primarily salad-based. Although they had a balance of meat and vegetables with comprehensive nutrition, the taste was indeed bland. Eating occasionally was fine, but eating frequently was unbearable—people would salivate just smelling instant noodles.

The few trainees exercising in the gym were among the minority of loyal customers, the extremely determined type who hadn’t been discouraged. They had been eating healthy meals for a long time.

For them, eating healthy meals had become a task to check off. After exercising each day, regardless of what the fitness meal was, they would take a few bites to get through it, deceiving their stomachs, merely to complete the task.

Eating such food naturally generated little enthusiasm.

Since there weren’t many people at the gym, there was no need to eat in shifts. Everyone sat down and opened their meal boxes.

However, as soon as he opened his box, Guo Licheng was stunned.

“Wrong delivery?”

In the meal box, half contained shiitake mushroom chicken breast rice, and half was steamed tomato egg tofu.

The shiitake mushroom chicken breast rice used brown rice, topped with chicken breast, diced carrots, corn kernels, shiitake mushrooms, and green peppers. These ingredients were briefly stir-fried with a small amount of oil before being steamed together with the brown rice, allowing all the flavors to permeate the brown rice.

As for the steamed tomato egg tofu, it was prepared by stir-frying tofu with a small amount of oil, then adding beaten eggs over high heat. After the eggs were fully cooked and evenly coating the tofu, a small sprinkle of scallions was added as garnish.

These two dishes were the latest results from Slackin’ Food Delivery’s culinary laboratory. The former contained 320 calories per full serving, while the latter had 398 calories per full serving. Combined as half portions, they provided a more balanced nutritional intake.

Rui Yuchen felt these two dishes preliminarily satisfied his requirements for “fitness meals that could be eaten long-term,” so he arranged for them to be delivered to the Tuoguan Fitness flagship store today for everyone to taste and provide feedback.

But he hadn’t emphasized this to the delivery staff, who were very busy and forgot to notify the gym.

Guo Licheng heard someone swallowing saliva.

After eating salads for so long, everyone would salivate at the smell of instant noodles, and the aroma of barbecue was nothing short of torture.

Who could resist seeing this kind of hot, fragrant, normal food before them?

But still, no one dared to use their chopsticks, all looking expectantly at Guo Licheng.

Guo Licheng also swallowed.

He coughed lightly twice: “Looks like they delivered the wrong meals, but there’s nothing we can do. We can’t waste food. Everyone, go ahead and eat, but we’ll add extra training afterward.”

“Great!”

Everyone immediately brightened up, holding their meal boxes, and began eating heartily.

Guo Licheng tapped the table: “Eat slowly! Chewing thoroughly aids digestion, and eating slowly prevents weight gain.”

Everyone slowed down their pace.

Two girls with spoons took one spoonful of rice and one spoonful of tofu, their eyes even glistening with tears.

It was so moving!

Finally, they were no longer eating grass but could eat food meant for humans!

Guo Licheng also ate with great enjoyment.

Undeniably, this kind of warm, flavorful food was on a completely different level from salads in terms of taste.

While eating, Guo Licheng was somewhat puzzled. Although it seemed like a wrong delivery, the ingredients were very healthy.

It appeared only a minimal amount of oil was used, and brown rice, carrots, green peppers, corn, chicken breast, eggs, and tofu were all relatively healthy ingredients.

But then again, Slackin’ food delivery was inherently a health-conscious brand. Their other regular foods also seemed to use less oil and salt, unlike other delivery services that favored heavier flavors.

So Guo Licheng didn’t say much, thinking he would ask Rui Yuchen when he had the chance.

…

…

May 21st, Saturday.

The Loss Management meeting began promptly.

Loss managers from each department reported one by one. When there were interesting parts, Pei Qian would ask a couple of questions; otherwise, he would move on if no abnormalities were detected.

“…Several Tuoguan Fitness branches have successively opened, but they’re similarly deserted with no customers.”

“On Friday, that is, yesterday, the fitness meals delivered by Slackin’ seemed to be wrong, but Coach Guo led everyone in extra training, so there was no impact,” reported the loss manager from Tuoguan Fitness.

Wrong delivery?

Pei Qian vaguely felt something was off.

Would Slackin’ food delivery make such a basic mistake? That didn’t seem right.

Rui Yuchen and his team weren’t incompetent. If they were prone to such basic errors, Pei Qian should have known about it long ago, not just today.

Pei Qian looked toward the loss manager from Slackin’ food delivery.

Sure enough, this loss manager, who was a server from the culinary laboratory, raised his hand and said: “It wasn’t a wrong delivery, those were the newly developed fitness meals from the culinary laboratory.”

Pei Qian: “?”

Something detected!

“Tell me more details,” Pei Qian said on high alert.

The loss manager from Slackin’ food delivery explained: “Regarding the previous fitness meals, Manager Rui felt they were too unpalatable and didn’t align with Chinese eating habits. So after research, he decided to make a trade-off between taste and health.”

“This version of fitness meals has somewhat higher calories compared to before, but the health quality has improved. Uh… of course, the cost has also increased.”

Pei Qian’s expression had initially darkened, but upon hearing “higher calories, increased cost,” it relaxed somewhat.

Higher calories could slow down the visible effects of fitness.

Price increases could discourage more financially constrained customers.

Perhaps this wasn’t such a bad thing?

“How much has the price increased?”

The loss manager from Slackin’ food delivery said: “The cost of each fitness meal has increased by about three yuan, which amounts to roughly 7 yuan per day.”

Pei Qian calculated quickly: an increase of 7 yuan per day, if training three times a week, would amount to nearly 1,000 yuan more per year!

Hmm… Tuoguan Fitness’s pricing had become even more inflated.

Tuoguan Fitness had already filtered out a batch of customers through pricing, and now with this price increase, wouldn’t it filter out even more customers?

That did not seem bad.

Pei Qian asked: “So how does Rui Yuchen plan to handle this pricing issue?”

The loss manager from Slackin’ food delivery said: “Manager Rui plans to let trainees choose between salads and the new fitness meals, with separate pricing for each.”

Pei Qian immediately shook his head: “That won’t work!”

Letting trainees eat salads to save money, and then spend a few extra yuan to improve their meals when tired of salads—wouldn’t this completely fail to discourage customers and have the opposite effect?

The current shared gym had already proven that the price increase strategy worked and could indeed discourage customers, so they should certainly continue increasing prices.

“Our gym is called Tuoguan Fitness, with the emphasis on ‘tuoguan’ (managed)! How can it be called managed if we let customers choose what to eat?”

“Have the culinary laboratory continue to research fitness meals regardless of cost, and bundle all costs with the gym fees!”

The loss managers from Slackin’ food delivery and Tuoguan Fitness exchanged glances and said: “Yes, Mr. Pei.”

“Wait.” Pei Qian realized an issue and raised his hand. “You two shouldn’t relay this; I’ll notify the department heads myself.”

The loss managers’ identities couldn’t be exposed.

They should remain transparent within their departments and not arouse department heads’ suspicions.

“Alright, next,” Pei Qian signaled for the meeting to continue.

The loss manager from Frightening Hostel reported: “Mr. Pei, regarding the Frightening Hostel project, Mr. Li and the investors have just signed a contract with Manager Chen. The investors plan to jointly fund a large shopping mall for us within the Frightening Hostel project, with half the profits going to us.”

Pei Qian was silent for a moment, a question mark slowly forming above his head.

?