Unsurprisingly, Know Me's combination of online and offline services succeeded in providing local lifestyle services in 2001, an era when internet software, hardware, and services were still underdeveloped.
On the second day, there were more than two hundred orders. On the third, that rose to over six hundred. On the fourth, it broke a thousand. By the tenth day, which happened to be a Saturday, consumer orders for the day surpassed five thousand.
Compared with Know Me's several hundred thousand active users in Jingcheng, five thousand was not a large number. But spread across the first five hundred offline stores to offer the service, it averaged ten tables of customers per restaurant. Even split between lunch and dinner, that was five tables each, and during mealtimes, the added bustle was plainly noticeable.
Especially since these five hundred restaurants were relatively poorly located places with less-than-stellar business to begin with. Even two extra tables were enough to make them feel busy.
And the distribution was far from even. Some restaurants might get twenty extra tables during dinner. Since reservations were made online, their contracts with Know Me stipulated that online customers had priority. Walk-in customers who wanted to dine there often could not even get a table and had to take a number.
Yet the more this happened, the more people were willing to take a number. There was no other reason—they simply wanted to see what made such a packed restaurant so special.
That naturally made the restaurant even more popular. Seeing all the cars outside and all the people waiting, passersby became curious about why it was so lively. A couple of days later, when they thought of it again, they would come check out the restaurant themselves.
Even the restaurants that performed poorly had received at least five