Chapter 11 – The Bread Blunder
Li Ming was in the middle of a blissful afternoon nap when his office phone rang.
"Boss, we have a problem," Manager Zhao's voice crackled through the receiver.
"Of course we do," Li Ming muttered, sitting up. "Which disaster is it this time?"
"It's… bread."
Li Ming frowned. "We don't sell bread."
"We do now," Zhao said nervously. "The restaurant started offering complimentary bread baskets with the pasta last month. It was your idea."
"Oh right," Li Ming said. "That was just to keep customers distracted while we stalled their main courses."
"Well, our bakery supplier shut down."
Li Ming rubbed his face. "Why is everyone going bankrupt around me? Are we cursed?"
By that evening, Zhao had dragged him to a dingy old bakery that smelled faintly of yeast and despair.
The owner, an elderly man with flour in his hair, shook his head. "I can't keep up with the orders. My ovens are thirty years old, my nephew quit last week, and the rent's going up. I'm done."
Li Ming's eyes narrowed. Old ovens… rising rent… minimal staff… perfect money pit.
"How much to buy the place?"
The man blinked. "Buy? You want to buy this?"
"Do I look like I'm here for the croissants?" Li Ming said, pulling out a chequebook.
Two days later, the bakery was his. The first thing he did was order brand-new, imported ovens that cost more than most people's apartments.
"Boss," Zhao said cautiously, "why do we need five ovens when we only use one for the restaurant?"
"Because the other four will be for… uh… diversification."
"What's diversification?"
"It's when you waste more money in more places at the same time."
Within a month, the bakery was supplying bread not only to his Italian restaurant but also to a handful of cafés and diners across the province—at prices that, theoretically, should have lost money.
But thanks to his overpriced equipment and surprisingly efficient staff, the bakery somehow broke even.
The real trouble started when the sauce customers began ordering bread too.
"Boss," Zhao said one morning, "we can load the bread and sauce into the same refrigerated trucks. Saves time."
Li Ming froze. This was exactly what he didn't want—a convenient, streamlined operation.
He'd just connected another link in the chain, and the loop was starting to close.