Chapter 9 — The Cheese Crisis
It happened on a Tuesday.
Tuesdays were usually slow — enough customers to keep the ovens warm, not enough to keep the waitstaff from gossiping in the corner.
Then Sun Peng burst in, waving a delivery slip like it was a ransom note.
"Boss! No cheese!"
I blinked. "What do you mean, no cheese? Did you forget it?"
"No," he said, panting. "Zhao's warehouse is out. They said… maybe next week."
The Panic
No cheese meant no pizza. No pizza meant customers walking out, muttering about 'this place used to be good'.
In other words — bad publicity, which I liked.
But it also meant no income, which the System might count as "failure to maintain operations." That part worried me.
I called Zhao. He didn't even sound apologetic.
"Big hotel chain came in yesterday. Bought everything. They pay on time. You? Small order. Low priority."
I wanted to throw money at the problem — burn cash like firewood. But Zhao had already been paid in full for my missing shipment.
The Temporary Fix That Wasn't Temporary
Liu Fang, ever the practical one, said:
"Why don't we just shred our own cheese?"
My brain stalled. "We… what?"
She explained:
Buy whole cheese wheels from another supplier.
Hire part-timers to grate it in the back room.
Store it in our cold unit until needed.
It sounded like an amateur solution. Which was perfect.
Except… the wheels were expensive. And grating by hand was slow. I approved the plan instantly.
The Kitchen in the Back
By Friday, the back room looked less like a restaurant storage area and more like a dairy crime scene.
Three college kids stood at tables, sweating as they cranked hand graters over giant bowls.
Cheese dust coated the air.
Sun Peng wore a bandana and kept shouting, "Careful! That's fifty yuan a kilo!"
It was beautiful. A noisy, inefficient, money-draining operation.
Then I Made a Mistake
The hand-graters broke. All three. Within two days.
Liu Fang suggested buying an industrial cheese shredder. I almost said no — it sounded too efficient — but she showed me the math: without it, we'd lose more in wasted labor and spoiled cheese.
The shredder cost more than both vans combined. I bought it, swiping the System card like a man swatting a fly.
When it arrived, it hummed like a gentle thunderstorm. Smooth, steady, reliable. Too reliable.
An Unexpected Offer
That's when a neighboring café owner came by. He sniffed the air, saw the bags of shredded cheese stacked neatly, and asked:
"Can I buy some from you? My supplier's unreliable."
My gut said No! — the whole point was to lose money.
But then I thought: if I sell at a loss… the more I sell, the more I lose.
And just like that, I was in the cheese supply business.
Foreshadowing the Loop
By Sunday, the shredder was running half the day. Not just for us — for two cafés and a small bakery. I told myself it was temporary. Just a way to "burn cash faster."
But as I watched the bags go out the door, I realized something dangerous:
Once you start making your own ingredients, you start controlling the chain.
I didn't want control. I wanted waste.
And yet… the idea was already in my head.
If I can shred cheese for others… what else can I produce?