Drilling copper and silver eyes (A daily economic observation of a Shanghai person)

Author: Yuan Nianqi
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-06-01
Features: The story begins with a microphone at the checkout counter. Let's start with an economist. One day, this economist came to a small shop for a meal. The shop owner greeted him immediately and said, "I've heard your lectures and read your books. You say speed is money, and it's really true." The economist thought the owner was just being polite, but after listening to his words, he felt the owner was genuinely not just flattering. The shop primarily served braised pork rice, which is called "lu rou fan" in Taiwan. Lu rou fan consists of rice, braised pork, braised eggs, and a few pickled vegetables. After being influenced by the economist's "speed is money" theory, the owner began his research. Through careful observation and statistics, he discovered that during the lunch hours of 11:30 AM to 2:30 PM, each table in the shop turned over more than eight times. In other words, there were eight batches of customers paying for their meals. Additionally, the average dining time per customer was about 15 minutes. To achieve the economist's idea of "speed is money" and generate economic benefits through speed, the owner needed to increase the number of times each table turned over within a given time frame. In other words, under the same time constraints, the only way to improve was to shorten customers' dining time. However, the customers had the ultimate control over how long they ate, as their eating speed depended on their chopsticks, teeth, and tongue movements. The restaurant was not a military canteen, and outsiders could not control the eating speed. The only thing the owner could control was to shorten the waiting time for customers. The owner implemented a reform: he installed a microphone at the checkout counter. After customers ordered their food but had not yet sat down, the cashier used the microphone to relay the order to the kitchen. This allowed the owner to meet his speed requirement: from ordering to serving, completing the entire process within one minute. After this reform, the number of table turnovers increased by two times. This way, without adding more staff or increasing wages—meaning no additional costs—the restaurant's revenue increased by 25%. Of course, this also increased profits, turning speed into cash. After hearing this story, I looked around and noticed that a nearby small shop selling spicy pork noodles and a 24-hour snack shop next to a cold house all had microphones at their checkout counters. Interestingly, whether through word of mouth or firsthand observation, most of these shops that valued speed were snack and meal shops. This is because the profit margin on individual products is low, and they need to rely on high turnover to increase profits. Similarly, some larger restaurants pay less attention to these small, profitable details. The profit from a single dish is naturally much higher than that from a bowl of braised pork rice or spicy pork noodles. At the door, customers queue up to wait, while on the other side, orders are slow to come and dishes are served slowly. Sometimes, it's actually the customers who get impatient, ordering cold dishes first and reducing their own dining time to help the owner make more money. Here, let us use an old saying to put it into perspective: "Don't do small things because they seem insignificant." Small efforts can accumulate into great achievements, just like sand piling into a tower. Otherwise, if small holes are not patched, big holes will cause trouble. Beyond this thought, another point is that the economist was very famous, and countless people had attended his lectures and read his books. But how many of them actually applied what they learned to their own situations and put it into practice, turning it into their own wealth?! P10-11