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 very true." The economist thought the owner was just being polite, but after hearing his words, he felt the owner was genuinely not just flattering him. 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, the shop's tables turned over more than eight times on average. 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 premise of constant time, the only way to improve was to shorten customers' dining time. However, the customers had the ultimate control over how long they ate, as the speed depended entirely on their chopsticks, teeth, and tongue movement. The shop wasn't a military canteen, and outsiders couldn't control the eating speed. The only thing the owner could control was shortening the waiting time for customers. The owner implemented a reform: he installed a microphone at the checkout counter. After customers ordered their food but hadn't yet sat down, the cashier used the microphone to relay their orders to the kitchen. This fulfilled the owner's requirement for speed: from ordering to serving, it was completed within one minute. After this reform, the number of table turnovers increased by two. This allowed the shop to increase its revenue by 25% without adding staff or raising wages, meaning the cost remained unchanged. 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 observation, most of these shops that valued speed were snack and tea shops. This was because the profit margin on individual products was low, and they needed to increase profits through high turnover. Similarly, in the restaurant business, some large stores didn't pay much attention to these small, profitable details. The profit from one dish was, of course, much higher than that from one serving of braised pork rice or a bowl of spicy pork noodles. At the door, customers queued to wait, but on the other side, orders were still slow to come and food was still slow to arrive. Sometimes, it was the customers themselves who grew impatient, ordering cold dishes first and shortening their own dining time to help the owner make more money. Here, let us use an old saying to put it: "Don't do small favors for small gains." Small efforts can accumulate into great achievements. Otherwise, if small holes aren't 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 had applied what they learned to their own situations and put it into practice, turning it into their own wealth?! P10-11