The two people chatted and laugh as they walked along the street. The sun was bright overhead but the weather was mild so they didn’t bother with a carriage. However, neither of them knew that the scene of them walking and laughing together was seen by a certain pair of gloomy eyes.
Eventually, Su Tang and Luo Xingchen arrived at the Dessert Cafe. However, it was currently around the time when the students were on their lunch breaks so the front entrance was very crowded, which caused them to go around and use the back door instead.
“Only female customers are allowed to dine-in? Haha, what a strange idea. How did you think that up?” As they chatted on the road, Luo Xingchen was surprised to hear Su Tang explain how her shop was only open to female customers. She didn’t know why Su Tang would think of an idea like that.
Before they entered the courtyard itself, Luo Xingchen dismissed her followers and sent them to find an inn to stay at, then she followed Su Tang inside. Hearing her question, Su Tang smiled and replied, “I’m just afraid of trouble. The Qinghe Town Academy is right next to the shop I bought, so there are always groups of young students around. If I opened my doors to them, wouldn’t there be all sorts of trouble? Even if not, it would be very noisy at least.”
“Do you get many female guests?” Luo Xingchen asked curiously. In fact, this was the first time she had seen a shop that was picky about its customers.
After all, people opened shops to make money, right? If only one group could come in, that meant you would have to reject other groups of customers, so most businessmen would guess that such an operation wouldn’t be profitable at all. Luo Xingchen was more or less the same, so she was curious whether Su Tang could still make money like this or, rather, could she even get guests?
“En, we’re not doing too bad. Not many people came at first, but by now there will basically be two or three waves of people a day.” Su Tang hadn’t really thought much about the profitability of the inner part of the cafe. From the start, she made the choice to only accept female guests mostly because doing otherwise would make the shop too noisy for her tastes, and also because she saw it could make things a little easier for the women who shopped nearby. After all, she was also a girl, so she had a vague idea that she wanted to provide this small convenience for other girls.
However, she hadn’t expected that her cafe would actually become really popular this way. These days the weather was still cold, but it was warm in her cafe. Many people would come to the area to do their shopping and then come to her cafe to take a rest and have some desserts. Of course, the key draw was the fact that her desserts were all so delicious. Thus, like that, she slowly accumulated a group of regular customers.
Lu Wan’er also introduced a few people to come over, but she herself had never come again, only sending Qing Ju over to buy cakes from time to time. From Qing Ju, Su Tang heard that Lu Wan’er had apparently caught a cold after she went back that day, so she dared not leave home for now.
Luo Xingchen followed Su Tang inside and carefully looked around the courtyard. Knowing that Su Tang had bought this place, she couldn’t help but murmur, “It isn’t very big.”
“Well, I’m still in my mourning period.” Su Tang rolled her eyes. This Second Young Master Luo was at least from a wealthy family so, naturally, this place seemed a bit small in her eyes.
However, Su Tang felt fine with her purchase. On the one hand, she couldn’t have afforded a better one at the time and, on the other hand, it also wasn’t appropriate for her to buy a big house when she was in her mourning period and abstaining from meat anyway.
Luo Xingchen just nodded and then quickly changed the topic: “But what’s with your idea exactly? To only allow female guests in, doesn’t it drive away a lot of guests? I’m sure you didn’t make such a rule for nothing and there must be some concept behind it, but what exactly is it?”
They were both businesswomen, so Luo Xingchen definitely didn’t believe that Su Tang had created this rule just because of a bit of noise. She had known Su Tang for some time already, and if she knew one thing it was that Su Tang would never eat loses for no reason. The girl’s mind for making money was no worse than her own, so things couldn’t be so simple.
“Why don’t you guess? Guess it right and I’ll cook something delicious for you.” Facing this question, Su Tang just blinked innocently and told her to guess.
In fact, the truth was Su Tang had truly made the rule mainly to keep the shop clean and not noisy, however, it was also true that she was testing the market. And it wasn’t that her shop only served female customers, rather, it was that only female customers could sit inside. Male customers were still completely free to order food and take it away with them.
She was just curious what kind of market power the women in this era had. After all, in the modern era, ‘women’ as a group were regarded as a prime target for marketers and one of the easiest targets to make money off of.
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tl begging corner:
Thank you!