【029】90s cook 29

Over the course of the week, she traversed H city, especially within a ten-kilometer radius around West Lake, where the presence of small vendors was evident.

However, their arrangement was not haphazard—they were required to have various hygiene permits and designated locations.

In other words, setting up a stall was permitted, but one had to obtain the necessary credentials first. After all, the areas where stalls were set up were disorganized and dirty, which was not conducive to the development of a tourist city; however, in consideration of the people's livelihood, providing such convenient locations for stalls was quite humane.

Thus, these days, she observed that near densely populated office buildings, a small road would be designated as a convenient venue.

On this street, there was a variety of food from all over, offering a complete range of delicacies.

This gathering spot was precisely what helped boost the local economy.

You sell stinky tofu, I sell hot dry noodles, you sell vegetable-stuffed flatbreads, I sell Cold Rice Noodles, rice noodles, and noodle skin—there was a plethora of snacks benefitting the locals.

Gong Mingxia was lucky to rent a stall location that wasn't the best. The Urban Management required uniform carts, which they built to uniform standards, even the signage was standardized—as long as you paid the fee, they took care of everything efficiently. She said she would sell boxed lunches, and they issued her a ticket for one thousand yuan.

This meant that the one thousand yuan was for preparing your pushcart stall, and if you decided to quit later, you simply had to push it away.

As for pots, pans, and ladles, those had to be prepared by oneself. The stall had access to water and a sewer connection, slop buckets, and the dining tables behind the stalls were also uniformly made with restaurant-specific stainless steel tops, durable and easy to clean.

The cost of using these seats was included in the stall fee, which was not low—five hundred yuan a month, but it excluded water charges and slop cleaning fees.

This meant that without having started anything yet, 1,500 yuan had already been spent.

In the next few days, they informed her to go to a designated place to apply for a health certificate and a vending permit. Once the documents were ready, and the stall was nearly completed, the rent would start to be charged from that point, which slightly settled Gong Mingxia's mind.

Afterward, Gong Mingxia took her daughter to a second-hand market and swapped for a trike that was 50% new for two hundred yuan.

A large rice cooker, three hundred yuan, of the Triangle brand.

Essential stainless steel plates, spoons, and chopsticks for the boxed lunches—fifty sets at ten yuan each, totaling another five hundred yuan.

Disposable lunch boxes, since people would definitely take them away—this was cheap; she spent one hundred yuan for a large quantity, including disposable chopsticks and plastic bags, all for one hundred yuan.

She acknowledged this was white pollution, but it was just the current situation, unavoidable.

Later, she bought rice, flour, oil, seasonings, and a pasta rolling machine in batches, spending another eight hundred yuan, with just the pasta rolling machine costing three hundred yuan.

Rice, flour, and oil were major expenses, stocked up for nearly two months.

As for the vegetables, she would buy and cook them the same day.

At this point, the rent was 1,500 (a quarter plus deposit), the stall 1,500 (stall plus stall fee), trike and rice cooker 500, pasta machine 300, rice, flour, oil, and seasonings 500, utensils 600, and finally 100 yuan was needed for handling the documents, totaling exactly five thousand yuan, which meant the salary from Zhang Tiejun had been spent in less than ten days after arriving in H city.

With an initial 13,000 yuan in savings, considering the cost of returning to her hometown and the travel expenses to this place, and 1,000 yuan given to her parents, she was now left with just over six thousand yuan.

Indeed, earning money was extremely difficult, but spending it was unbelievably simple.