Chapter 220 Profit Margin

Chapter 220 Profit Margin

After seeing off Doctor Jiang and his party, Xie Wanniang praised everyone at the pharmacy for a few words before taking Haitang back to her own home, where they ate dinner, washed up, and rested.

Seeing that their shop had business to do, the people in the pharmacy knew that their new, well-paid job was definitely going to happen, so they all changed their previous worries and became excited.

They took turns going to the restaurant to get their standard working meals, and then the manager left two people to keep watch at night, while the others closed the shop and went home to rest after cleaning it.

The next day, Doctor Jiang and the others first ate various breakfasts bought from outside at Chang Yao's residence. Then, taking advantage of the good weather, they took the goods-carrying carts and the soldiers responsible for driving and following the carts to Xie Wanniang's herbal medicine shop.

Xie Wanniang had all the remaining 30% of the medicinal herbs on his list, and in ample supply, which saved him a lot of trouble.

After loading all the medicinal herbs onto the cart, Doctor Jiang and the others, along with a bundle that Xie Wanniang had temporarily sent to them to deliver to Jiang Yuan, as well as pastries, dried meat, and other items that Xie Wanniang had the restaurant's cooks prepare for them by working overtime, set off in a grand procession back to Zijing Pass.

After watching them disappear from sight, Xie Wanniang turned back to the shopkeeper and accountant of her herbal medicine shop, "Where are the ledgers and shipping lists? Let me calculate how much money we made on this order."

The accountant she hired was very accurate in calculating accounts, but his speed was a little slow.

Especially when it comes to calculating the cost and profit sharing, he is even slower at doing the calculations than usual.

Having finally made such a big deal, Xie Wanniang was eager to know exactly how much money she had earned and was unwilling to wait for the other party to slowly calculate the figures.

The accountant had long admired his female employer's accounting skills, and upon hearing her say this, he readily gave up his tools of the trade.

Xie Wanniang sat at the table, quickly manipulating the abacus, and soon calculated the net profit of this deal.

"After deducting all the average costs, we made a total of 167 taels of silver on this deal."

Upon hearing this, everyone cheered.

Xie Wanniang put down her abacus. "Everyone has worked hard. I'll ask the restaurant to give you an extra serving of braised pork for lunch today."

She set the following meals for her staff and guards: in the morning, it was soy milk/porridge + steamed buns/twisted rolls/cornbread/flatbread made from a mixture of two kinds of flour + an egg for each person; for lunch and dinner, she only stipulated one meat dish and two vegetable dishes, with unlimited rice.

As for what constitutes "meat" and "vegetarian," Xie Wanniang rarely inquired about it. To avoid appearing wasteful to the host, the cooks not only added vegetables and bean products to their meat dishes but also occasionally used eggs as a substitute for meat.

Xie Wanniang felt that this approach was somewhat like passing off inferior goods as superior ones. Those who didn't know the truth would probably think that she was just talking a good game but was actually very stingy.

However, to her surprise, no one seemed to mind the cooks' little scheme.

Xie Wanniang asked Haitang privately and learned that, in the social environment she lived in, eggs were indeed classified as meat.

Regarding the issue that so-called "meat dishes" always have more vegetables than meat, Haitang said, "Who can afford to supply only meat?"

She reminded Xie Wanniang, "Whether it's in the village or Yi County, when people host banquets, they talk about four meat dishes and four vegetable dishes, six meat dishes and two vegetable dishes, or seven meat dishes and three vegetable dishes. Which family doesn't put any vegetables in their meat dishes?"

Xie Wanniang recalled for a moment and realized that among all the banquets she had attended, there really wasn't one where no vegetables were omitted.

As Haitang said, what people call "meat dishes" are basically dishes that combine meat and vegetables, such as chicken stew with mushrooms, braised pork ribs with green beans, stewed pork belly with sauerkraut, and stir-fried pork with wood ear mushrooms and onions.

On the contrary, dishes like braised pork hock, braised pork belly, and sweet and sour fish, which consist of only meat and no vegetables, are usually served only two or three times on each table.

She felt relieved and decided not to interfere with the chefs' creative freedom.

But occasionally, she would ask the chefs to prepare some real meat dishes with only meat and no vegetables for employees who performed well or worked overtime, like right now.

Upon hearing that there would be braised pork for lunch, the cheers of the crowd grew even louder. They were overjoyed and began to thank Xie Wanniang in unison.

Xie Wanniang waved her hand, signaling everyone to go about their own business.

After most people had turned and left, leaving only her, the shopkeeper, and the accountant, the shopkeeper cautiously asked, noticing Xie Wanniang's expression, "Boss, are you... not happy?"

Xie Wanniang shook her head, "I'm still happy, but I feel the profit margin isn't big enough, so I'm a little disappointed."

Nearly half of the medicinal herbs sold in her shop were wholesaled from herbal medicine shops in the prefectural city, and she could only earn a meager living from these herbs.

The remaining nearly half of the medicinal herbs were collected by Doctor Chen and Xiao Mei, who went to the countryside with their people, working tirelessly to bring them up for her.

Because there are no transportation costs from south to north and no middlemen taking a cut, she can actually earn a relatively high profit from this batch of medicinal herbs.

However, since these medicinal materials are all produced locally in Baoding Prefecture and are common and ordinary, their unit price is relatively low.

In other words, Xie Wanniang actually didn't earn much money.

She briefly explained the situation to the shopkeeper and accountant, then sighed and stood up, saying, "We still need to expand the scale of the herb garden."

Only by achieving a mature self-production and self-sales model, from large-scale planting to assembly line processing and then to unified sales, can her shop's procurement costs be truly reduced, and only then can she obtain huge profits.

Of course, this is something that is destined to take a long time and can be described as a long and arduous task.

Moreover, since the people in the pharmacy couldn't really help with this matter, Xie Wanniang didn't waste her breath and say much to the pharmacy manager and accountant.

After leaving the pharmacy and returning home, she quietly took stock of her and Jiang Yuan's available assets.

Unbeknownst to her, while she was planning how to expand her business empire, Jiang Yuan, who was diligently guarding the border at Zijing Pass, unexpectedly made another great contribution.

While leading his troops on a patrol, he unexpectedly captured a Tatar princess disguised as a man, who was attempting to infiltrate the interior of China as a merchant.

This Tatar princess was the only daughter of their new Khan, and her birth mother was one of the Tatar Khan's most beloved women.

Because she was pampered since childhood, her parents, brothers, and maternal grandparents always granted her every wish. This beautiful and spoiled Tatar princess had a rather naive personality that drove her close friends crazy.