Chapter 250: The TPDb Rating
Pei Qian was a little dizzy.
'Wait a second. I'm the one who owns this restaurant… and now I can't even get a reservation myself?'
Lin Canrong reminded him, "But don't worry, President Pei. According to your earlier instructions, we've reserved the entire restaurant on the 20th of every even-numbered month for company gatherings, and also kept the largest private room open on the first and third Sundays of each month."
"So next Sunday—September 5th—you can still come dine as usual."
Pei Qian: "…"
Right. He had made those arrangements earlier. On the 20th of even-numbered months, Mingyun Private Kitchen would be fully booked for company events; and on the first and third Sundays of each month, the biggest private room would be kept free for potential business banquets.
Now that he thought about it, that setup was a bit too conservative. He should've reserved a few more days.
After all, back then he'd never imagined Mingyun Private Kitchen would ever become this popular…
Pei Qian had originally figured that even if the restaurant managed to attract some regulars, it wouldn't matter much. There were so many private rooms, with two meal periods per day—surely at least one or two rooms would always be free, right?
Reality had just slapped him square in the face.
So… how on earth had this gotten out?
Could Lin Wan be behind this again?
Pei Qian thought it over. Most of his employees were talented nobodies he'd personally promoted—grassroots types with little background or influence. It shouldn't be possible for any of them to stir up this much attention.
The only one with that kind of reach would be Lin Wan.
But the Shenhua Corporation's influence in Jingzhou wasn't all that strong—their main business was in Pengcheng. How could they possibly have drawn this many people to dine at Mingyun Private Kitchen?
Or… had another enemy appeared?
Pei Qian stayed silent for a long time—partly because he was still recovering from the shock, and partly because he was desperately trying to figure out which part of the chain had gone wrong.
On the other end of the call, Lin Canrong mistook Pei Qian's silence for joy at the restaurant's booming success. Sensing an opportunity to offer some flattery—ah no, to speak the truth without exaggeration—he hurried to continue.
"President Pei, I have to say, your decision to have us focus solely on the private dining experience without any publicity—truly visionary and absolutely correct!"
"Your understanding of Jingzhou's upper-class mindset is simply masterful—each step precise and deliberate. It's admirable!"
Pei Qian: "???"
What the hell are you talking about? Why does none of this make sense to me?
He knew Lin Canrong was spouting rainbow-colored flattery, but Pei Qian hated that stuff—detested it, in fact.
It was like someone poking at an open wound!
Still, he had no choice but to listen carefully—because hidden in all that praise might be the key to discovering where things had gone wrong.
Unaware of Pei Qian's growing confusion, Lin Canrong continued speaking excitedly.
"Looking back now, I really underestimated the tight-knit nature of Jingzhou's wealthy circles. The local elite community isn't that large, and most of them know each other. Since our private kitchen targets this small circle, it makes perfect sense that you saw no need for publicity. That was absolutely the right call."
"Because in that circle, word spreads incredibly fast!"
"That customer named Xue Zhebin came after seeing Zhang Zuting's Weibo post. Then he brought over Mr. Wang Peng from AllReviews. Mr. Wang posted a review on the site, and right after that, Mingyun Private Kitchen just exploded in popularity!"
"I never would've guessed it would be that easy for such a low-key restaurant like ours to become famous!"
"Of course, your other strategic decisions played a big part too."
"For example, since the restaurant doesn't have a name, Mr. Wang's review on AllReviews also didn't list one. That instantly gave us an air of mystery and uniqueness, which sparked a huge amount of discussion!"
"Plus, because we don't have a name, any time people searched using vague or spaced-out keywords, our restaurant still came up—massively boosting our exposure!"
"The most critical point," Lin Canrong continued passionately, "is the set of rules you personally established for the restaurant—no photography allowed, changing tableware with each dish, service as gentle as a spring breeze… all of it fits perfectly with what our target clientele desires. It's been a huge hit among the wealthy elite!"
"And the good reputation among the rich, in turn, has influenced ordinary consumers. Even though our prices are on the higher side, most regular customers still feel it's worth the money once they experience it. That's entirely thanks to the trickle-down effect of the elite's word of mouth!"
Lin Canrong couldn't stop praising the success model of Mingyun Private Kitchen. It wasn't just flattery—he genuinely felt impressed.
He had witnessed the entire process firsthand. In the beginning, he'd had plenty of doubts about President Pei's decisions, even feeling pessimistic about the restaurant's prospects.
But now, all his confusion had vanished—every one of President Pei's seemingly strange decisions had worked together perfectly.
Pei Qian remained silent. He let all of Lin Canrong's rainbow-colored compliments go in one ear and out the other; none of that was worth remembering. But two names—he did remember clearly.
Xue Zhebin and Wang Peng—the two main culprits!
And since Xue Zhebin came because of Zhang Zuting's Weibo post, that meant Zhang Zuting was also an accomplice!
Pei Qian just wanted to say seven words: "This attack is impossible to guard against!"
There were enemies everywhere—truly a case of being besieged on all sides.
He sighed silently. Looks like three new names would have to be added to his little black notebook.
"Fine then," he said weakly. "Book me a private room for next Sunday. Just make sure the menu is different from last time."
…
After hanging up, Pei Qian felt a heavy weight on his shoulders. His mood was thoroughly ruined.
At this rate of popularity, Mingyun Private Kitchen was bound to make money.
But—at least it wouldn't make too much.
After all, the restaurant's capacity was limited. It was only so big—even if every lunch and dinner slot was fully booked, they could only serve so many customers.
Its daily operating costs were also enormous: several top-tier chefs, a well-trained service team, and staff constantly rearranging the dining setup. The labor costs alone were sky-high.
And while the dishes were priced high, they weren't exorbitant—that's why Wang Peng had thought it was "worth it."
So yes, Mingyun Private Kitchen would make money, but recovering the entire investment anytime soon? That was unlikely.
A small blessing amid disaster.
Pei Qian had spent over six million yuan on buying that mixed-use villa. At 10% counted as system funds, that meant six hundred thousand.
In other words, as long as the restaurant didn't earn back 5.4 million, Pei Qian would still come out ahead.
But… that was only a matter of time.
He could already feel the pressure closing in. September was almost here—half the settlement period was already gone. Time was running out for him.
Two things were now top priority:
First, Blood War Anthem: Enhanced Edition needed to go online and flop miserably—that would give him some peace of mind.
Second, the performance bonus system based on customer ratings had to be implemented immediately.
Ever since Pei Qian came up with the "bonuses tied to reputation" idea, he had been working on a set of detailed rules. After multiple discussions, the plan was nearly finalized.
Each project would have a base bonus determined by its initial investment.
Then, a multiplier based on reputation ratings would adjust that base amount—the result would be distributed to team members according to their role and contribution level.
The most crucial question, though, was: how exactly should reputation be determined?
If they relied on external rating sites, it would be easy to manipulate—and highly unreliable.
Take a game, for example—some review sites might give it a high score, others a low one. Which one should count as the standard?
Relying on user reviews wasn't trustworthy either—ratings could be artificially boosted, or tanked by competitors with organized one-star attacks.
If they combined the opinions of media critics, players, and internal company evaluations into a unified score, however…
So what difference would that make from just setting his own rating standard?
After some thought, Pei Qian concluded that if bonuses were to be tied to reputation, there was no avoiding the need for a complete and reliable internal scoring system.
In general, the accuracy of an evaluation depended on two key points:
First, filtering out malicious or biased ratings—things like review bombing, paid bots, or brainless haters.
Second, broadening the pool of evaluators as much as possible while still focusing on the target user group for each project.
He'd noticed a common phenomenon with movie and game ratings—the more niche something was, the easier it was to end up with inflated scores.
That happened because diehard fans would eagerly give high ratings, while people uninterested in that niche wouldn't bother to watch or rate it.
As a result, the early average score would be unrealistically high.
But once those niche titles "went mainstream," their ratings almost always dropped.
Taking all that into account, Pei Qian finally finalized a new Tengda internal reputation evaluation system, giving it a fancy English name: TPDb, short for Tengda Project Database.
This database would collect all of Tengda's projects and assign each one a comprehensive score based on multiple factors:
Ratings from Tengda's senior management
Ratings from ordinary Tengda employees
Professional media reviews
Consumer feedback
Online user ratings
Each of these categories would be given a different weight in the final calculation.
Internal staff evaluations would carry more weight than those from random internet users. Every employee's rating would be tied to their real name, visible only to a handful of top executives (like Pei Qian himself).
Of course, even internal staff might still give biased or "friendship" scores, but at least they would be more cautious—since every score could be traced back to them.
If anyone inflated their own project's score just to earn more bonuses, or deliberately lowballed other projects out of spite, President Pei would know.
As for public feedback, consumer reviews and general user reviews would also have different weights.
For instance, with a game project, the opinions of actual buyers would count more than those who hadn't purchased it.
Of course, no matter how well-designed the system was, there would always be people who felt the scores were inaccurate.
If Pei Qian were to manipulate everything himself—deliberately awarding higher bonuses to loss-making projects—he could indeed make losses faster.
But that would look suspiciously unfair, and the other employees would surely start to doubt the whole process.
That was why Pei Qian came up with TPDb—a relatively comprehensive and transparent scoring database.
With a balanced evaluation system like this, distributing bonuses based on its ratings and each project's investment baseline would seem fair to everyone.
At the same time, different types of projects would have different bonus schedules.
The longer a project was in operation, the more frequently bonuses would be distributed.
For example, with Against the Wind Logistics, which he intended to keep running "until the end of time," they could issue bonuses quarterly, based on its ongoing reputation.
For one-time projects like Turn Back Before It's Too Late, two or three rounds of bonuses would suffice.
If DLCs were later released, bonuses could be awarded again based on those expansions' reputation.
Of course, Pei Qian also had to maintain balance between projects.
Even though he personally preferred long-term money-burning operations like Against the Wind Logistics, he couldn't make that bias too obvious.
Once everything was settled, Pei Qian reviewed the plan one last time and handed it to Assistant Xin with satisfaction.
"Starting next month," he instructed, "all project bonuses will follow this standard."
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