stjorthotic Chapter 10: [Food Blogger]
Chapter 10: [Food Blogger]
"This body is still too weak."
The scorching hot iron plate gradually cooled down as it lost its vitality. A month after opening, Liu Zhuohao muttered to himself, breathing heavily through his nose.
It sounds a bit childish, but it's actually the truth.
There were four small pits on the hot plate, covered with pancake bits and egg crumbs. He scraped them clean with a spatula, then poured cold water on them. With a sizzle, white steam rose up. He rinsed them several times.
This is why his income is so much higher!
If he can only make one pancake at a time, Liu Zhuohao might really only earn a little over three thousand a month, just as he told some of his classmates.
However, if you make four pancakes at once and try your best to finish them, the result will be different.
However, this requires exceptional skill and adaptability, and only vendors who frequently set up stalls and are already familiar with cooking in front of customers can do it.
Similarly, this is extremely physically demanding!
With fewer people on the street in front of the school, Liu Zhuohao finally had a chance to catch his breath.
For nearly a month, his scallion pancake stall would be surrounded by customers as soon as it opened.
His reputation spread among the nearby students, and not only high school students, but also some junior high and elementary school students would come to buy from him.
In fact, because the ingredients are clean and the production process is recorded in real time, even some parents who strongly oppose their children eating at roadside stalls are willing to buy a scallion pancake from here for their children, or even for themselves.
In 25 years, it has become commonplace to proactively record one's cooking process in a "transparent" way, making it available for others to review at any time, and using it as a marketing strategy.
In 14, especially in this small coastal city, there were very few roadside stalls like mine, perhaps even... the only ones left!
Liu Zhuohao tidied up the food cart, plopped down on the steps in front of the bookstore, and rubbed his sore arms—his whole body was already soaked in sweat.
As for the other stalls nearby, they had already closed up shop long ago.
Although he possesses insights beyond his time and a maturity beyond his years.
Ultimately, this body is that of myself at eighteen.
It is healthy, but also very immature.
Like this, they would ride bicycles carrying goods back and forth between the two places, and then, with almost no rest, they would begin the high-intensity manual labor that lasted for more than two hours, from preparation to the next stage.
Although I'm young and healthy now, I still have the body of a student. I play ball occasionally and sit for long periods of time. It can't compare to the patience that life has truly toughened and honed in the years to come.
I haven't adapted yet.
But I'll get used to it eventually.
Liu Zhuohao tried to light a cigarette, but to his surprise, even his hand trembled as he took out the lighter.
A somewhat rough hand reached out from the side and lit his cigarette.
"You've worked hard, young man."
Previously, the bookstore owner, who had only observed from the sidelines, came over and sat down next to me.
Thank you.
Liu Zhuohao replied, exhaling a puff of smoke. The weakness that had gripped him seemed to have subsided somewhat.
"At first, I thought you wouldn't last long, but I didn't expect you to actually stick with it."
The boss's voice was flat, neither praising nor criticizing, as if stating a fact: "I've seen it before. Students set up stalls, but they usually only stay enthusiastic for a few days. Either they can't handle the hardship, or they feel ashamed, and in the end, it all falls apart."
He paused, turned his head, and looked Liu Zhuohao up and down. The scrutiny he had shown when they first met was gone, replaced by something else.
"I never expected you to actually make it work, and business is pretty good. Even though it's the holidays, students still come to patronize the store." He flicked his cigarette ash. "I've run a bookstore here for over ten years, and this is the first time I've seen someone pick it up so quickly."
"When you talk to your classmates, especially that girl," the boss said, his tone becoming complicated, his gaze drifting into the distance. "It reminds me of my son. He's about your age, studying at a university in the provincial capital. He's... a good person, but he's too concerned about saving face."
"You should let him go back to his old school, like you, and carry a small cart to his former teachers and classmates, hawking his wares."
He gave a wry smile and shook his head. "He definitely won't agree. He thinks that would be 'undignified'!"
"I heard you've been promoting it online and at school?"
The boss asked the question as if it were just a casual remark.
Liu Zhuohao flicked off his cigarette ash and, without hiding anything, nodded: "Yeah, we definitely need to promote it to get support. It's business to make money, there's no shame in that."
He paused, looked at the boss, and added, "Times have changed."
"From now on, it will only get harder and harder to earn money."
"Being thin-skinned and unable to lower oneself is truly shameful. It would be a real pity if you couldn't even open your hand to seize an opportunity when it was presented to you."
Upon hearing this, the boss's fingers, which were holding a cigarette, froze in mid-air, and he remained silent for a long time.
He simply gave Liu Zhuohao a deep look, then slowly nodded, exhaling a long puff of smoke that floated in the air.
"...That makes sense."
He only said those four words in the end, but it felt like he said a lot.
……
……
"This month's net income is..."
When Liu Zhuohao returned home, he closed the door and dumped the heavy tin money box from his schoolbag onto the table. Coins and banknotes piled up into a small mountain that smelled of cooking oil.
He smoothed out each bill, stacked them up one by one, and pressed the calculator buttons repeatedly.
Finally, the pen tip traced a clear line of text on the ledger:
July net income: 7481 yuan.
After all, it's a hand-pulled pancake that sells for five yuan each. You have to add eggs, sausages, and other ingredients. The quantity varies, giving it a real, down-to-earth feel.
Today, the new figure added to the ledger is 114 yuan.
Liu Zhuohao's hand holding the pen paused.
This income is far less than any day in the past month.
At its peak, his daily income could approach three hundred.
Is there something wrong with his reputation?
not at all.
Actually, it's because it's a holiday.
Barring any unforeseen circumstances, my income will remain between 50 and 150 for the next month or so until school starts, at which point it will return to over 200.
He was already very satisfied.
Most of his fellow vendors who set up stalls near the school disappeared on the very first day of the holiday.
When students are on holiday, they are also on holiday. They either need to rest or find other odd jobs, otherwise setting up a stall early in the morning would be a complete loss.
This is the ironclad rule for businesses around campuses.
As for myself, being able to maintain my daily income during the holidays by relying on students who get up early to play ball and office workers passing by is already an anomaly.
On the entire street, apart from that rice noodle roll stall that has been rooted for more than ten years and has a reputation across regions, only his small food cart is still emitting smoke as usual.
"I thought I didn't have any ways to monetize it..."
Liu Zhuohao turned on his computer and looked at his backend.
In just one month, his account on Bilibili already had 587 followers.
Has the limit been reached?
No.
In my alma mater, there are one or two thousand students in all three grades.
Moreover, as its reputation spread, people from other schools in the vicinity also came specifically to buy it, whether it was junior high school, primary school, or even some working people.
The biggest reason why I can rival the king of this street—the rice noodle roll stall—is this place.
"Now, more than 90% of these 587 fans are my 'customers' first and foremost, and only then my 'viewers'."
Liu Zhuohao murmured to himself that they had tasted the pancakes first, found them delicious, and then paid attention to the person who made them.
Bilibili's pitiful amount of interest-based, manually pushed content results in a very small number of pure "content fans."
HO姆辣: "I recommend watching at 2x speed for a better experience."
Baparker: "Is this... an ASMR pancake version? (No offense intended)"
Headless Girl: "Every day is the same: preparing ingredients, making pancakes, packing them up. It's a bit repetitive. It's a breath of fresh air in the food court."
"While it's very realistic, it does get a bit boring after a while..."
"It's like a food documentary, but without Zhao Zhongxiang's voiceover."
"Well, it's very healthy, but I choose to watch those kinds of bizarre videos..."
……
My own videos hold no appeal for strangers watching on screen.
The content is so real—real ingredients, real pancakes, real accounts…
The video, which lasts for more than two hours, has no flashy skills, no humor, no good looks, and not even a carefully designed plot.
It's boring.
Liu Zhuohao leaned back in his chair, the light from the screen reflecting on his face.
They attract customers by setting up physical breakfast stalls, and then convert those customers into fans through online videos. Once they become fans, they are more willing to become their customers.
This path is certainly feasible.
Over the past 25 years, countless small street shops have thrived using this "private domain traffic" strategy.
But that's the problem. It's essentially a "local business based on personal connections," meaning it can only make you a local influencer.
Its ceiling is the number of customers it can reach.
It is absolutely impossible to reap the real, massive "Internet dividends" by relying on this kind of life record.
Unless, in the future, one can rely on "luck" to be "chosen" and become a figure like Chicken Cutlet Guy, Six-Piece Man, or Braised Goose Guy...
"If you want to get traffic from the website, you can't just film for 'customers' to see, you have to film for 'viewers' to see."
Liu Zhuohao pondered that the current Internet is not the future "big data era" based on video data streaming.
It is artificial.
In other words, a video needs to reach a certain level in terms of views, likes, and comments before it can be accessed by the operations team.
Afterwards, only by gaining the approval of the operations team in terms of video quality can a video be promoted and exposed on the website homepage and the homepage of various channels.
Those two-hour, unedited "labor records" of mine are probably not even considered content by the editors; they're just a bunch of unprocessed material.
"These two-hour videos are for fans who could become customers."
Liu Zhuohao has divided his currently released videos into parts, such as P1, P2, etc., on his personal social media page.
"Besides that, I also need to make some content for my internet fans."
Liu Zhuohao closed his eyes, and countless viral videos he had watched in his past life flashed through his mind—some were reviews, some were productions, and some were…
What are their characteristics?
"It makes people watching from behind a screen salivate and yearn for it!"
Yes, compared to the documentary videos I'm currently making, to truly be a "food blogger," my videos need to make people feel that the food looks delicious!
Online fans can't taste what you make!
How do you do that?
— Visualize "deliciousness" through cinematic language, color, sound, and rhythm.
While pondering, Liu Zhuohao sent a QQ message to Zhuang Zicong:
"Hey bro, have you thought about changing your major?"
"Are you... interested in 'movie making'? Or to put it bluntly, would you like to make videos with me?"