Chapter 7 — Spoiled Shipments
If there's a poetic law for entrepreneurs, it's this: when your business is finally working, someone will invent a new, creative way to ruin it.
This week's innovation was called "mystery rotten potatoes."
It started at 6 a.m. with a phone call from Liu Fang, my fast-food manager, voice like a kettle about to blow.
"Boss—truck at Gate 3. The sacks of potatoes… they smell like the river. Rotten. We can't use them."
I shuffled over to the kitchen. The delivery truck was indeed parked outside, the driver looking like he'd seen a ghost. We ripped open the burlap sacks. The potatoes looked fine at first — then, like an insulted handshake, they collapsed under pressure and started exhaling a scent that would make a goat cry.
[System Alert]: Operational disruption detected. Projected loss will reduce burn potential long-term. Recommendation: Secure supply lines.]
Secure supply lines? I wanted burn lines. My whole life was one long attempt to spend money and be punished for it. Now the System wanted me to secure things so the business could keep bleeding? The irony nearly made me spit my tea.
Someone called sabotage obvious. Huaxin — our charming rival who sold "family recipes" and had the market like a leash — had motive and friends in logistics. He'd whispered to a driver once; we'd heard. Was this his work? Probably. Would that be poetic? Absolutely.
I should have celebrated. Rotting potatoes matched the art of losing money. Trash the batch, pay disposal fees, buy more expensive spuds from the market, pay overtime. Perfect loss spiral.
Instead the System nagged again:
[Warning]: Continuous supply disruption will lower future spending allowances to prevent runaway profit. Secure alternative sourcing.]
"Fine," I said to no one in particular, and to the System that had the bedside manner of a sleep-deprived auditor. "I'll secure supply lines." I said it loud and proud, imagining myself signing invoices with a quill dipped in cash.
Phase One: Panic-Buying
I ordered two things immediately: refrigerated vans (one with gold trim because of course) and a portable cold storage container that could be parked behind the restaurant like a tiny, smug igloo. I negotiated with a wholesaler in the next county and paid double the normal deposit for same-day delivery. I hired a driver who insisted on wearing sunglasses indoors.
All of it was approved. The System loved receipts. The System drooled over invoices. I splurged on refrigerated panels with LED lighting so bright they could read Shakespeare off a potato at midnight.
[Expenditure Approved]: Logistics upgrade. Category: Emergency mitigation.
Perfect. I was hemorrhaging cash and feeling very responsible.
Phase Two: The Consultant Who Loved Flowcharts
Because I was already spending like a maniac, I hired a supply-chain consultant whose business card read: "Yan—Flow Optimization Specialist." He had a PhD from some place with many vowels and proposed a plan so layered and expensive that it could hide a small island within its Gantt chart.
"Vertical integration," he said, eyes shining, as if announcing a new religion. "We'll buy cold storage, contract a noodle mill, lease a small farm for produce rotation, and—most importantly—register your logistics as an independent company. That way we control every node."
I struck gold. Or rather, I struck molten cash. The proposal called for a cold warehouse, two branded trucks, a contract with a local noodle maker (who still used hand rollers), and a "supply redundancy fund." He included a mandatory weekend team-building retreat in a lakeside resort that promised "supply synergy" through trust falls.
He quoted numbers. I signed. The System cheered. My accountant muttered something civil about "capital expenditures." I grinned like a man who'd found a volcano to dump his wallet into.
Phase Three: The First Tiny Victory—and a Seed
We still lost a day. We still paid for spoiled potatoes, disposal, and emergency replacements. The villagers who sold us the emergency batch asked if we could buy every week; apparently word-of-mouth was that our place paid cash and never quibbled about smell.
But by the end of week one, the vans were ours, the portable cold box hummed like an obedient fridge, and the noodle mill owner—an old woman named Aunt Mei—had agreed to try making a special batch of hand-pulled noodles for our shops, at a price that made me faint on the phone.
As I signed the contract, hands shaky, the System pinged:
[Status Update]: Risk mitigated. Long-term burn potential reduced. Suggest exploring supply ownership for sustainable scale.]
I stared at that sentence until the letters blurred. Supply ownership for sustainable scale. (Translation: buy the supplier, you idiot.)
Buy the supplier. Buy the trucks. Buy the warehouse. Buy the farm. Every step that sounded like a money pit also sounded, faintly, like the scaffolding of an empire.
I went home that night and lay on my old couch with a branded van brochure under my face like a blanket. For the first time, the idea that owning the supply chain could cost me a fortune felt less like a certainty and more like an opportunity — the kind that circles back to your own pockets.
I didn't want opportunity. I wanted loss. But even as I rubbed my temples, I admitted one truth: if I was going to get sabotaged once every other Tuesday, I might as well own the sabotager's delivery route.