Murim Franchise
Why had Hwiyeom, after raising his initial capital through cosmetics and then stretching his hands almost exclusively into heavy, large-scale industrial ventures—steelmaking, coal mining, waterworks construction—suddenly and inexplicably entered the restaurant franchise business?
There was a deep reason for it.
One sweltering summer night, Hwiyeom was panting like a heat-stricken dog while turning over business plans in his head.
“The waterworks are finished… but I’ll have to put the sewage works and the ironworks construction on hold for a while.”
It was a blistering midsummer heatwave. This was emphatically not the season for large-scale civil engineering.
Sichuan’s summers, in particular, were notorious for their merciless heat and humidity.
I’d kill for an air conditioner right now…
With his feet soaking in a basin of cold water and a paper fan flapping in his hand, Hwiyeom pondered what he ought to do until summer passed.
Preparations for developing gunpowder are proceeding smoothly enough…
Ever since he had discovered the material-transformation and generation abilities of the Nokryong Singong, the actual pace of black-powder research had slowed, yet the Innovation Hall was still pursuing the work in secret.
As for steelmaking… I don’t know any more about blast-furnace design, so the only things worth introducing would be lathes and press processes? Those can wait a little longer…
He had already built the basic rolling equipment needed for mass-producing rebar. Passing still-hot billets between a pair of giant rollers to produce wide plates, then dropping cutters from above like slicing knife-cut noodles to shear them into individual bars, had dramatically boosted the Dang family’s rebar output—enough to enable mass production of reinforced concrete.
The press process he was contemplating now was a further step: rolling plate even thinner and into more varied shapes. But…
Well, we aren’t exactly short of iron products other than rebar at the moment.
More importantly, he could always start after he had inserted the newly recruited Ma Jeonggu faction into the State-run Ironworks project. That project itself could serve as a bargaining chip with the Provincial Administration.
Hmm. Not this, not that…
While turning ideas over and over, Hwiyeom muttered without thinking.
“Ugh, it’s so hot I can’t get any work done. If only I could order a nice cold shaved-ice dessert through a delivery app…”
His eyes suddenly flashed.
“That’s it!”
At once he began scribbling a plan with glittering eyes.
Yes.
The reason he had so abruptly launched a restaurant franchise was simply that he missed the convenience of the food culture he had enjoyed back on Earth.
Delivery food ordered from home! Ice-cold Americano delivered in bulk to a sweltering construction site… well, we don’t have that, but cold tea! That’s money! That’s the item!
Unable to contain his excitement, he kept his brush flying through the night.
The next day he appeared at the Family Head’s residence with a properly polished proposal in hand.
When Hwiyeom walked in once more hugging a thick stack of documents, Dang Un-sang accepted it with a peculiar expression that mixed delight and headache in equal measure.
Reading the cover title, he cocked his head.
“‘Report on the Plan to Dominate Sichuan’s Foodservice Industry and Delivery Business Through Franchise Contracts’?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm… Dominating the foodservice industry across Sichuan. The words are grand enough, but what exactly is this ‘franchise contract’? How is it any different from the way our branch families already run various taverns and inns?”
“Yes. There’s a very big difference.”
“Oh-ho. Not just a difference, but a very big one? Let’s hear it.”
Hwiyeom explained the structure of a franchise business in terms even Dang Un-sang could grasp.
In general, the advantages of a franchise fall into three main categories:
1. Cost reduction on ingredients through economies of scale.
2. Elevation of quality across every outlet via shared know-how and training.
3. Easy securing of a steady customer base through brand image.
And if one were feeling a little less scrupulous, one could also demand periodic remodels to extract money, or collect recurring franchise fees to milk the store owners dry.
Of course, in the Central Plains’ martial world, still stuck at a medieval economic mindset, even that much might earn one the reputation of a living Buddha.
Dang Un-sang’s eyes gleamed.
“So after you reeled in the ironworks elders, you intend to pull in the foodservice elders as well?”
“That’s part of it, yes, but separately, foodservice looks like it will make money.”
Naturally the Sichuan Dang Family did not monopolize the entire provincial food industry. Even scraping together every tavern, inn, restaurant, and pleasure house run by the branch families would account for perhaps a tenth of the whole sector.
Foodservice was a business with low barriers to entry and ferocious competition. A large pie of which they held only a small slice also meant that the elders of the foodservice branch were not particularly powerful.
In reality there were more foodservice branch families than ironworks ones, yet their wealth and influence lagged far behind.
Weak footing meant they would be easy to bring under the wing.
“After analyzing our family’s elder factions, the strongest are Hong Ilgon’s textile faction and Gong Duchan’s banking faction. The third-ranked medical faction led by Jin Wol-sang of the Medicine Warehouse is essentially neutral.”
“That’s right.”
“Money is the core of any enterprise, so I found it a little odd that the banking faction wasn’t the absolute center…”
“Sichuan has always been famous for Shu brocade. Roughly forty percent of the province’s income comes from silk and textiles. Selling silk across the entire Central Plains for generations is simply on a different scale from moneylending confined inside Sichuan. Still, because they hold the purse strings so tightly, even a short-history, small-market banking faction can hold its own against the textile faction.”
“That does make sense.”
Even in his original world, finance only became the supreme industry once a nation reached advanced status; while a country was still developing, heavy industry—steel and textiles—remained the backbone. Recalling the days when countless textile mills ran nationwide and lines of female workers filed in and out, Hwiyeom nodded.
“In any case, my goal is to peel off and absorb the grassroots branch industries one by one. Through that process we will repay the loans the banking faction extended to them, thereby eroding the banking faction’s influence. I already have several methods prepared for bringing the banking faction down. After that, we finish by taking over the textile faction once it has lost all its limbs.”
“Truly music to my ears.”
Dang Un-sang grinned.
“Good. You’ve always done well; this plan will be no different. I’ll trust you.”
“Yes, Father.”
Receiving the proposal stamped with the Family Head’s seal, Hwiyeom immediately summoned Elder Bak Chang-eon and Elder Ma Jeonggu.
“Elder Bak, I intend to start a foodservice business. With this budget, first acquire the butcher shops and produce stalls of Seongdo’s market district.”
“Understood. Do you plan to choke off competitors’ ingredient supply?”
“No. We can’t have the Dang family earning a bad reputation. This is simply to prevent cornered competitors from trying that very trick on us first.”
“I understand. Once the butcher shops and produce stalls are secured, shall I begin acquiring restaurants in sequence?”
“Yes, but with conditions. Acquire only ordinary restaurants and inns—exclude pleasure houses and pure drinking establishments. And keep them at least half an hour’s walk apart. Proceed that way for now.”
“As you command… though may I ask the reason?”
“You’ll understand soon enough.”
“Very well.”
Once Elder Bak Chang-eon had bowed and withdrawn, Hwiyeom smiled at Elder Ma Jeonggu.
“Elder Ma, I have a little side job for you.”
“If this old man’s guess is correct… you’re targeting the foodservice branch families?”
Remembering the bitter experience of receiving no support when the ironworks branch had been cornered, Ma Jeonggu seemed thoroughly pleased by the coming storm that would soon hit the foodservice sector; a sly smile spread across his face.
Hwiyeom gave a rough nod.
“Prepare blacksmiths and carpenters who can move without the Elder Council’s knowledge. There will soon be a great deal of construction work inside Seongdo.”
Ironworks meant forges that hammered iron implements, yet the nature of the work inevitably fostered close ties with carpenters; expansion into construction was therefore common. Was it not precisely such a construction firm—Jinpyeong Construction—run by the son-in-law of Elder Jong Ri-hyeok that had been caught trying to steal the puddling process and reinforced-concrete techniques to build a furnace, only to be melted down in the river?
Ma Jeonggu nodded vigorously.
“Leave it to me!”
About two months later, Elder Bak Chang-eon came to report.
“It proved impossible to acquire every produce stall and butcher shop in the market district.”
“Of course. So how much did you manage?”
“About forty percent.”
“Excellent enough. Begin acquiring inns and restaurants now.”
“Yes. Any priority conditions for the acquisitions?”
“Location first—stores on good roads with easy access, places where people naturally stop to rest. Second, business performance: avoid thriving shops and take the poorly performing ones. Ah, I forgot the zero priority. Any store connected to a branch family or its blood relatives must be acquired if at all possible. However, in those cases the original owners must be removed.”
“So for branch-family stores we replace both owner and manager; for the rest we change only the owner and leave the manager in place?”
“Exactly. Even if it costs a little extra, do it that way, and recommend the silkworm-cocoon business to them.”
“Silkworm cocoons… Understood. So you’re beginning to administer medicine to the textile branch’s side businesses?”
“We can’t do it from the start. At first it will look as though we’re helping them; later it will merely be a seed of future conflict—that is enough.”
“I understand perfectly. Young Master, you truly are a terrifying man.”
Elder Bak Chang-eon grinned; Hwiyeom grinned back.
“Also, recruit master chefs—chicken dishes, noodle dishes, dumplings, meat dishes, fish dishes will do.”
Even Elder Bak Chang-eon, who rarely objected, voiced mild concern at this.
“Will that be all right? Even if we hire master chefs, they cannot work at so many restaurants. If they rotate daily, the taste will change every day…”
“Haha, that won’t be the case. They won’t be cooking.”
“…Pardon?”
In the end Elder Bak Chang-eon nodded with a dubious expression.
“As you command.”
Time passed again.
Elder Bak Chang-eon faithfully carried out Hwiyeom’s will. He aggressively acquired the foodservice establishments—pleasure houses and inns alike—that the branch families had been running.
Thus began Baekga-jaengsik—“Hundred Families Competing for Food”—a specialist franchise company.
“We were able to acquire more stores than expected.”
Even when a branch family ran a shop, the owners were not pouring their lives into it out of some grand sense of duty to the Sichuan Dang Family. They had simply registered as branch-family kin to bask in the Dang name; in practice most of their revenue came from the meal tabs of the outer-hall martial artists who came and went daily.
Consequently, more than a few owners found the offer of a large lump sum to close up shop and try some other business extremely tempting.
Silkworm farming—raising silkworms on mulberry leaves to produce the cocoons that became silk—required skill only at the stage of reeling thread and weaving cloth. Simply raising the worms was not difficult, which was why it had been widely encouraged even among commoners in Joseon times.
At first the foodservice branch owners had tilted their heads—“Doesn’t that cost a lot of money and require difficult techniques?”—but the lure of “Just produce the cocoons and sell them to other cocoon dealers; it’ll make far more money than clinging to a fly-blown restaurant with no customers” proved irresistible.
Hearing the report, Hwiyeom smiled thinly.
“The seeds of conflict have been well sown.”
It was also a gift for Hong Ilgon.
Meanwhile, once the branch-family shops and the outsider-owned shops had all been converted into Baekga-jaengsik franchise outlets, craftsmen and carpenters obtained through Elder Ma Jeonggu’s network were brought in to gut and rebuild the interiors from the ground up.
The floor plans were made cleanly rectangular so that waiters’ paths would not cross and table counts would be easy to manage—a simple change whose effect was enormous.
Operating principles were completely overhauled as well.
Though Hwiyeom had no personal experience in the restaurant trade, he clearly remembered the maxim a certain famous culinary researcher and franchise-group chairman had always hammered home on variety shows:
Keep the menu as simple as possible! Concentrate on one or two flagship items and raise the related capabilities to the maximum.
Until now, Central Plains inns and restaurants had maintained extremely complicated menus. Essentially “we’ll cook anything we have ingredients for that day,” so the waiter had to know every dish the chef could make plus remaining stock—hence the specialized profession of “waiter.”
Switching from stocking every possible ingredient to stocking only the ingredients needed for a few dishes made inventory management effortless. Spoilage vanished, and bulk purchasing lowered ingredient costs still further.
Hiring specialist chefs for specific dishes and converting the shops into specialty restaurants made the food dramatically better. The “specialty shop” differentiation strategy itself proved a powerful magnet for customers.
Was it not far more delicious to eat hand-pulled noodles at a shop run by a Shandong noodle king, or kung-pao chicken at a shop whose chef had once been personal cook to the Guangdong Provincial Governor, than to order the same dishes from a general restaurant that tried to do everything?
Moreover, by giving each inn a different menu focus, they protected one another’s market territories. That was precisely why the acquisition process had deliberately spaced Baekga-jaengsik outlets half an hour’s walk apart.
As a result, inns and taverns that continued operating in the old style could not hold out. Pleasure houses that still boasted beautiful courtesans of some renown weathered the storm, but pure food-and-drink establishments all saw their sales plummet.
Those struggling inns and taverns then fell into Hwiyeom’s hands in turn.
After acquiring them, he did not reopen the shops; he simply closed them permanently. With fewer restaurants in the vicinity, sales at the existing Baekga-jaengsik outlets rose sharply.
A few competitors tried to copy the Baekga-jaengsik system and slip into the niche market, but they could not compete on price against an organization that already controlled forty percent of Seongdo’s produce stalls and butcher shops and realized true economies of scale through bulk purchasing.
And it did not end there.
The finishing blow that finally snuffed out the barely surviving competitors crashed over Sichuan’s commercial world:
the coupon system and the delivery system.