The dinner party ended.
Chen Jianjun and Peng Ying stayed in Capital City for five more days before going back home.
This trip was not only about visiting their son but also about touring around Capital City thoroughly.
Back in the village, they had plenty of stories to boast about to the elderly folks.
As for his younger sister, Chen Qi, Chen Pingsheng did not let her work as a store attendant in the fruit shop but sent her to study finance instead.
Going forward, she would at least have a skill to earn a living.
Frankly speaking, the fruit business isn't quite suitable for girls.
It's mainly just too hard.
After his parents left, Chen Pingsheng resumed his usual work.
At that time, he still owed Tengsheng Fruits two million in funds.
Stores three, four, and five simultaneously ran a recharge promotion for just one week.
They took in one million six hundred thousand, of which he personally earned eight hundred and twenty thousand.
"Ding, congratulations to the host, accumulated income of eight hundred and twenty thousand, would you like to activate the random multiplier?"
"Activate."
Chen Pingsheng watched the two golden dice with anticipation, unexpectedly needing only a triple to completely pay off the two million he owed on his house.
The first die stopped at two.
The second die surprisingly turned up the smallest number, one.
Unexpectedly, it was indeed unexpected.
[Congratulations to the host, obtained a random triple increase.]
[Ding, your Alipay account received two million four hundred sixty thousand, balance two million eight hundred ten thousand.]
The time his parents were here, not only did Song Yanxi spend quite a bit of money, but he did as well.
The previous five hundred thousand had dwindled down to three hundred fifty thousand.
"Yanxi, come here for a moment."
The vast company headquarters, just sparsely filled with seven or eight people.
Song Yanxi's office was right next to hers, a message sent, and she arrived in less than five seconds.
Suspected she was slacking off at work.
"Honey, what's up?"
"It's good news, of course. Remember how I transferred two million from the company account to buy the house? Now I can put it right back."
"That fast?"
Song Yanxi didn't know where he had suddenly gotten another two million; her private stash was so big she had become numb to it.
But however you put it, it was good news. With this two million going back, the house would be completely debt-free.
"Honey, there's something I've been wanting to talk to you about."
Song Yanxi opened her computer, half sitting on the desk with one hip cocked, pointing at some data:
"Look, we started the store in February, got onto the delivery platforms in March, sales were very low the first month but increased more than 300% each following month. Now, just through the delivery platform alone we're making tens of thousands daily, ranking number one in sales among fruit stores in Shijing District."
The growth rate was truly beyond imagination.
Song Yanxi continued, "Honey, I feel like delivery will sooner or later become as popular as online shopping across the country; it could potentially be a major trend."
Chen Pingsheng stroked his chin; initially, his main goal in getting onto the delivery platform was to reduce fruit waste.
Some fruits that weren't too fresh were directly packed for delivery.
Not only did it reduce waste, but there was also this unexpected joy.
"Currently, there are quite a few delivery platforms, everyone is doing subsidies, and they're frequently raising hundreds of millions in funding."
Chen Pingsheng looked at her and asked, "Yanxi, surely you don't think I can play this kind of capital game, do you?"
"Of course not."
Song Yanxi explained, "I just think delivery might become really popular in the future; otherwise, the current BAT big three wouldn't be fighting tooth and nail over it."
"That is true."
Speaking of delivery platforms, the three most famous ones are well-known.
Now everyone knows Meituan, Ele.me, and the latecomer Baidu Nuomi.
Meituan was actually supported by Alibaba.
They held the majority of shares, but during later rounds of financing, Alibaba introduced the infamous pick-one policy.
That is, if you take their money, you can't accept money from Penguin.
In the era of mobile internet, these two companies essentially represented two extremes.
One in e-commerce, the other in social media.
Penguin, dominant in the social media sector, had tried countless times to leverage its massive user base to penetrate Alibaba's stronghold, the e-commerce sector.
And Alibaba, not to be outdone, had launched several attacks on the social media sector as well.
Eventually, Penguin was utterly defeated by Alibaba in the e-commerce sector.
Alibaba was also ruthlessly dominated by Penguin in the social media sector.
After repeated failures, Penguin then shifted its business and investment strategy.
That is, using its massive social media traffic to support its invested companies.
This led to the birth of a series of well-known Penguin Group companies.
Such as JD.com, Meituan, followed by Pinduoduo, and others.
Alibaba's core business is e-commerce, where traffic is bought with money.
Its primary goal in investing was to further consolidate its core e-commerce sphere.
Thus, it aimed to control its subsidiaries to absorb more traffic.
This was also the main reason why Meituan defected from the Alibaba group and moved to Penguin.
Of course, a dominant internet company like Alibaba was not idle either.
It quickly supported another food delivery platform, Ele.me.
This marked the storm within the internet food delivery industry, as for Baidu's investment of twenty billion in Nuomi.
It started with momentum, but ended up as a joke.
Chen Pingsheng was very interested in these internet battles, always feeling that there were lessons to be learned everywhere.
Just like the fierce battles between Alibaba and Penguin.
At certain points, they would even cooperate with each other.
To say they both love and hate each other would not be an exaggeration.
"Honey, last month the second store brought in over four million, and if we only keep three hundred thousand as a contingency fund, then last month's profit for the second store would be nearly two million. Isn't this way of splitting too risky?"
Song Yanxi was somewhat worried, as those two million couldn't be considered profit but rather, money that clients had advanced to them.
If it were all distributed, there could easily be a loss when it came time to redeem those funds.
"It should be okay; earning future money is like this, we owe the clients' money, and isn't it the same that we can owe the wholesaler? This way, they offset each other, and keeping three hundred thousand as a contingency reserve, plus another two weeks as a buffer, shouldn't pose too much risk."
Now, their stock purchases were settled monthly, and the cash flow involved was substantial.
It's no exaggeration to say that if Capital City did not implement purchase restrictions, using the company's name to speculate in real estate with this working capital would yield higher profits than the total from all the fruit stores combined in just a few years.
It's only that he was not inclined to engage in such activities.
With a few days left before the distribution of profits, earning over two million in profits in a month from the second store on East Street was indeed staggering.
It was equivalent to recouping the investment in just one month.
On the 15th, when it was time to distribute the profits, Song Yanxi's personal account received a one-time payment of one point three million.
She was so thrilled she almost shouted, "This round is on me!"
Now it wasn't just Chen Pingsheng making money; she too had amassed over two million from all the fruit store profits up to now.
Selling fruit with such results was beyond everyone's expectations.
But everyone soon cooled down.
Looking at the current fruit market in Beixin'an, they were unable to find any competitors even if they searched with a lantern.
The next step would only be to invade other territories.
Otherwise, after the recharge promotion for the third, fourth, and fifth stores, all five stores would simultaneously enter a prolonged bottleneck period of living off their card revenue.
Having already enjoyed the massive profits from card recharges, how could they be content with just earning tens of thousands per month?
If the five stores didn't recharge cards, together they wouldn't make more than four hundred thousand a month in profits.
Compared to the current profits of one to two million per store, the difference was too great.
Even the usually calm Song Yanxi was now signaling to step out of Beixin'an and advance further towards Shijingshan.
They were no longer the same as a few months ago; now they had both money and personnel.
In such circumstances, they must intensify efforts to expand new stores.
If Beixin'an were considered as a village, then the Shijing District would be its town.
Now, as the village chieftains, they wanted to invade the town and seize others' markets.
This was nothing short of a life-or-death battle to breach enemy lines.