Chapter 259: Competitors

When Tang Qiu heard President Chen’s words, a flicker of confusion crossed her face.

Blue Film Studio…

Bad film?

Those two sound way too similar.

But she quickly shook her head. There’s no way President Chen would curse his own company.

“Blue” as in “blue sky”—vast and boundless. It symbolized President Chen’s grand ambitions for the film industry.

How could she let her imagination run wild like that?

Tang Qiu silently scolded herself, then looked up at President Chen.

“I understand, President Chen. I’ll get the company registered as soon as possible.”

“And about the Elderly Song and Dance Troupe—you can definitely place it under the performing arts division of Blue Film Studio. There’s no need to create a separate company.”

“Good. Then I’ll leave this to you.”

Chen Mo nodded. Consolidating everything made it easier to manage later anyway. It was all going to lose money regardless.

Whether it was under one company or two made no real difference.

After giving his instructions, Chen Mo didn’t linger. He left the coffee shop straight away.

But instead of heading back, he had Yang Dahai drive him to several other coffee shops. Since this was a field study, the more places he visited, the more accurate the picture he’d get.

After half a day,

The coffee shop inspection finally came to an end.

In total, he visited twelve coffee shops. Of those, ten were still running at a loss, according to the store managers—aside from a slight uptick in customers during the Lunar New Year period.

Knowing this, Chen Mo finally felt at ease.

There were already twenty coffee shops in Jiang City. The market was saturated.

Even Starbucks didn’t have that many. For the last few locations, they couldn’t find any areas with existing Starbucks, so they had to settle for places without one.

After this round of inspections, it was clear that Nanhe Coffee had reached saturation. That meant he could confidently begin expanding Nanhe Coffee to other cities.

Of course, among all these loss-making coffee shops, there were two exceptions.

The Maid Café and the Cat Café.

When he dropped by earlier, the Maid Café was already fully booked for the next five days.

As for the Cat Café, it was so packed that people were lining up outside to get in.

In the dead of winter, people were actually queuing outdoors just to pet cats. Chen Mo couldn’t wrap his head around it.

And they weren’t even worried about freezing their hands—some were just standing there taking selfies with their phones.

Still, even if those two shops were booming, there were limits to customer flow and operating hours. The number of customers they could serve in a day was capped.

So no matter how well they did, their combined revenue would top out at maybe a little over one million.

That one million meant nothing against the overall losses of the coffee chain.

Besides, he’d already set a rule: each major city could have at most one Maid Café and one Cat Café.

That way, even if they were profitable, they wouldn’t make a dent in Nanhe Coffee’s overall losses.

At best, they’d reduce the deficit by a million or so.

Sitting in the car, satisfied that Nanhe Coffee was still under his control, Chen Mo instructed Yang Dahai to drive him back.

………

At Nanhe Coffee,

Song Xia and Su Dan returned to the shop, both deep in thought.

They had just taken a seat when the store manager walked over.

“Manager, President Chen came by this morning.”

“Did he say what for?” Song Xia asked, startled, glancing quickly at the manager.

“He just asked where you two had gone, then didn’t say much else. Oh! He also asked about the shop’s performance.”

“Lawyer Tang was with him. Looked like they were discussing something.”

At this point, the manager looked a little anxious.

“Manager, do you think President Chen is thinking of giving up on Nanhe Coffee because it’s been losing money? Is that what he was talking to Lawyer Tang about?”

Hearing the manager’s concern, Song Xia and Su Dan exchanged a glance.

It wasn’t impossible.

“You go ahead and get back to work. I’ll speak with President Chen about this. Until we have concrete information, don’t spread any rumors,” Su Dan said calmly.

Once the manager left, Su Dan turned to Song Xia, her tone grave.

“If President Chen finds out what’s coming next, he might really decide to pull the plug on Nanhe Coffee.”

“I don’t know,” Song Xia replied, shaking her head and letting out a long sigh. “I’ll talk to him tomorrow. He needs to know what’s going on.”

She had only gone home for three days over the Spring Festival before returning.

Since then, she and Teacher Su hadn’t been idle. They had started the fieldwork they’d planned before the holiday.

These past few days, they’d mostly just stopped by the shop to give instructions or hold quick meetings before heading out to inspect other coffee shops around Jiang City.

At first, everything seemed fine. They even picked up some useful insights.

But recently, they stumbled upon something troubling—several new coffee shops were under construction in Jiang City. Not open yet, but the renovations were underway.

And judging by the interior designs, these weren’t traditional coffee shops—they were Cat Cafés.

After all, what regular coffee shop installs cat trees and scratching posts?

There was only one explanation: after seeing how popular the Cat Café had become, others were jumping on the bandwagon.

Once they noticed this trend, they started paying closer attention.

And the more they looked, the worse it got. There were five new Cat Cafés in the works across Jiang City. Two of them were nearly finished and might open within days.

On top of that, a new Maid Café was also being renovated.

Once those Cat Cafés opened, they would definitely siphon off a huge chunk of Nanhe Coffee’s Cat Café customer base.

Right now, Nanhe Coffee is relying on just two specialty coffee shops to generate any revenue. If the income from those two shops starts to decline, it would undoubtedly be a major blow to the company.

Who knows how President Chen will react when he hears the news?

Will he decide to give up on Nanhe Coffee altogether?

Although President Chen has always said that it’s normal for coffee shops to lose money in the early stages, it’s already been almost six months, and Nanhe Coffee is still operating at a loss. Now, even the two specialty shops that were supposed to be profitable might see their income shrink due to new competition.

Taking all these factors into account, it’s hard to say whether President Chen will continue to hold on or start thinking about pulling out.

“I’ll leave this matter to you, then. I’ll try to come up with some ideas—see if there’s a way to turn a profit for Nanhe Coffee.”

“After these past few days of research, I think I might be onto something.”

Su Dan spoke calmly. No matter what, as long as President Chen hadn’t explicitly said he was giving up on Nanhe Coffee, she wouldn’t give up either.

Even though the company didn’t manage to turn a profit during the New Year period, overall, Nanhe Coffee still managed to attract a good number of customers.