Official Launch

Before they knew it, a week had flown by.

Lu Weibin had been run off his feet at South Lake Farm all week. To ensure freshness during transportation, he had borrowed the relatives of the company's out-of-town employees, sending them free packages to conduct transportation tests for freshness.

Based on feedback from several dozen employees' relatives, deliveries within Lingnan Province all arrived the next day.

South of the Yangtze River, most also arrived the next day, with the occasional delivery taking three days.

Some cities with direct cargo flights could likewise receive deliveries the next day, such as provincial capitals or cities in economically developed areas.

Of course, this testing still had its limitations. After all, Hai Lu Feng Company's out-of-town employees generally came from the Lingnan Area and regions south of the Yangtze River.

To make up for the gaps in the testing, Lu Weibin specially applied to Jiang Miao for a separate budget and randomly selected fifty customers from those who had previously bought Eel Canned Food online.

Each of them was also sent a free one-kilogram box of strawberries.

After this round of testing, Lu Weibin had finally gathered sufficient reference information.

For example, in the northwest, as well as parts of the southwest and northeast, even SF Express still took around three days.

Although customers in those regions said the strawberries had not been affected and showed no signs of rot or spoilage after arrival, Lu Weibin still decided to have the Online Store Department specifically note the situation and advise customers in the northwest, northeast, and southwest to purchase cautiously.

Early in the morning on March 20th, the Online Store Department finally officially listed the three varieties of strawberries.

However, the quantities listed were extremely limited.

The main reason was that the farm's daily output was limited.

At present, Jasmine Strawberry had a daily output of roughly eighty to ninety kilograms, Cheese Strawberry produced fifty to sixty kilograms a day, and Vanilla Strawberry had an even lower daily output of only forty to fifty kilograms.

Considering that a large portion had to be reserved for pre-order customers, along with the amount needed for physical stores, only fifty portions of strawberries were listed on the first day, each portion weighing one kilogram.

The moment they went online, they sold out instantly.

Customers who could not buy them could only place advance orders, but the Online Store Department released only one hundred pre-order slots each day.

This led many customers to choose not to buy, or to purchase strawberries from other e-commerce sellers instead.

As for the first batch of pre-order customers, quite a few had already received their strawberries. In particular, customers within the province had basically received their deliveries by noon or afternoon on the 20th.

This was because Lu Weibin had personally supervised the loading of two hundred boxes of strawberries yesterday evening.

At the entrance of a residential complex in Panyu District, Guangzhou.

An SF Express courier was making a call. "Hello, delivery!"

"Leave it with security!"

"What name?"

"Wu Xiaoli."

The courier wrote down the name on the delivery slip, then reminded her, "This is a fresh product. Please pick it up as soon as possible. I'm leaving it with security."

"Okay, thank you."

At six o'clock, after getting off work and picking up her son from kindergarten, Wu Xiaoli had just gone upstairs when she remembered that she had not collected a package. She hurriedly took the elevator back down.

Inside the security office, Uncle Qin was smoking a water pipe.

"Uncle Qin, where are today's packages?"

"Phew..." Uncle Qin exhaled a puff of smoke, revealing a mouthful of yellow teeth. "Probably on the top shelf."

Wu Xiaoli quickly found her package on the storage rack. Then she went over to the surveillance camera, held up the side with the shipping label, and took a photo of herself holding the package beneath the camera.

She was quite helpless about it too. Mainly because people had stolen packages and food deliveries before, leaving the property management with no choice but to resort to this measure.

Wu Xiaoli carried the package home.

When she opened the door, she found that her husband, Yang Dong, was already back and lying on the sofa playing on his phone.

"Picking up another package? What did you buy?"

"Strawberries. Help me open it. I'm going to cook."

Yang Dong did not get up. He played another round of his game before taking a utility knife from the drawer, slicing through the tape on the box, and opening the outer packaging.

"What strawberries... Why do they smell so good?"

He brought over the fruit plate from the table and took the strawberries out of the foam slots one by one.

"Hubby, are any of them rotten? If there are, remember to take pictures." Wu Xiaoli called from the kitchen.

"No... not for now." Yang Dong hurriedly added, because after he removed the top foam board, he exclaimed, "Huh? They smell even better! They didn't add artificial flavoring, did they?"

With some suspicion, he removed the strawberries from that layer as well. There were no issues like rot or spoilage among them either.

After removing the second foam board, "White strawberries?"

He carried the white strawberries over to the fruit plate as well.

A kilogram of strawberries piled together filled the plate to the brim.

Yang Dong carried the fruit plate into the kitchen.

Wu Xiaoli, who was chopping vegetables, saw the large plate of strawberries. "Are any of them rotten?"

Yang Dong shook his head. "No, but the strawberries in the middle layer smell incredibly fragrant. Did they add flavoring or something?"

"No way! Huh? They really do smell amazing." Wu Xiaoli hurriedly washed one, wiped it on her clothes, and took a big bite.

"Mmm... so sweet and fragrant..." She popped the rest into her mouth, the distinctive fragrance and sweetness of Vanilla Strawberries flooding her entire mouth.

"I'm not buying it." Yang Dong washed a large one too, dried it with a paper towel, and took a bite. "...It's not that sweet, though? But it does have a faint jasmine scent? That's weird!"

Only then did Wu Xiaoli realize. "Honey, the one you ate was a Jasmine Strawberry. The smaller ones are Vanilla Strawberries."

"Huh? They're different varieties?"

"Yeah! Try this one. This is a Vanilla Strawberry."

Yang Dong took a bite, and his eyes immediately lit up. "Wow! This is really sweet and fragrant. Not that cloying kind of sweetness—it's sweet in a way that's full of strawberry flavor. This is the first time I've had strawberries this good. How much are they per kilogram?"

"Vanilla Strawberries are 99 per kilogram, but when I bought them, there were discounts and coupons. The mixed three-pack, one kilogram total, seemed to be 56."

"That's a little expensive!"

"It's not expensive. Dandong Strawberries cost eighty or ninety per kilogram."

Yang Dong thought it was a little pricey, but when he considered how much he had made in the stock market over the past few months, it didn't hurt quite so much.

Thinking about the stock market, he hesitantly asked his wife, "Honey, the stocks I bought earlier have not only recovered their losses—they've made over five hundred thousand in profit. Do you think I should sell? Or keep waiting a little longer?"

The moment Wu Xiaoli heard about the stocks, she bristled. "Don't wait. Sell them right away. You were trapped in them for over three years before—haven't you learned your lesson?"

"Are you sure?"

Wu Xiaoli's gaze looked sharp enough to stab someone. "Sure! Absolutely! Without question! Sell them tomorrow, then hurry up and pay off the mortgage. I don't want to keep living with monthly loan payments of over ten thousand."

"Okay, okay. I'll sell tomorrow." Yang Dong was persuaded by his wife as well.

Both husband and wife worked, yet their combined monthly income was only around twenty-eight thousand. After paying over ten thousand on the mortgage, deducting fixed expenses like water, electricity, gas, phone bills, and internet, and with their son needing to attend school, they could only barely make ends meet.

If not for his father-in-law giving the couple over two thousand yuan every month, forget eating strawberries—they might have ended up eating grass.

That was why Wu Xiaoli reacted so strongly whenever she heard about stocks.

If Yang Dong hadn't gotten into stocks years ago and been trapped with losses of over two million, she wouldn't have needed to work at all.

After Yang Dong washed the strawberries, he called his son out to eat. Father and son watched TV while eating strawberries.

"Dad! These strawberries are so good!"

"They're 99 per kilogram. How could they not be good? Don't eat them all—save some for your mom."

"Dad, one of my classmates has a birthday in a few days. Can you buy me a box of strawberries? I want to give them to my classmate."

An auntie smile suddenly appeared on Yang Dong's face. "Son, it's a girl classmate, isn't it?"

"Uh..."

Seeing his son's expression, Yang Dong knew he had guessed right, but he still reminded him, "It's fine to give gifts, but don't do anything else. You're still young, understand?"

"Uh, Dad! What are you thinking? We're just good friends."

"I know, I know. The same goes for good friends."