Li Danchao, a reporter from the world's online business, | zhang Yuliang | photograph
"Three more four more in the middle of the night, to eat soup dumplings 'tank duck dog'." One bowl of belly is not willing to go, two bowls and three bowls are addictive. Don't touch the copper tin is not enough, take off the cloth shirt as a head. "This is a common saying that many old Ningbo people are familiar with.
On January 3, Jiulonghu Town, Zhenhai District, Ningbo City, tank duck dog production base. Nearly 400,000 tangyuan in 1,000 boxes per day are transported away by logistics cold chain trucks as soon as they leave the warehouse. Such a scene lasts from September to the end of the Lunar Lantern Festival of the next year, and during the entire Spring Festival, at least 6 million pieces are sold.
A dog, a duck, a tank, the brand logo of the tank duck dog once made people think that it was a hot pot restaurant, until these years, people outside Ningbo are familiar with the name and the long-established tangyuan brand with a very peculiar logo. Exactly how the fire, even the tank duck dog itself can not say clearly, the more direct confirmation is: in Tmall and Hema, its price is one-third higher than similar goods, but often in short supply.
Pictured: Tank duck dog shop
In the middle of the day around the factory, the reporter found the director of the workshop who managed the production, the worker in the water mill workshop, the girl who made the meat buns, the manager in charge of sales, and the manager of the Tmall store. They told me a lot, and what impressed me the most was these three things: a piece of pork plate oil, a pork bun, and a durian dumpling.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > a piece of lard that I've been looking for for two years</h1>
Each dish of food has its own "soul", the "soul" of the tank duck dog tangyuan, which is pork plate oil.
This thick layer of fat, which grows between the skin and the lean flesh, is boiled and mixed with glutinous rice and filling, creating the crystal smoothness of the tangyuan.
During the Lantern Festival in 2018, a group of pictures of Tang Dynasty ladies eating tangyuan swept through the circle of friends
The pot duck dog used to use xianju's earth pig plate oil. Every time the pork plate oil arrived, several skilled knife masters gathered around a table and raised their knives to cut the thin pig skin. But in the past few years, Xianju's pork plate oil was not enough, so the tank duck dog began a two-year-long road of "looking for oil".
Led by the boss's wife, the "oil-looking" people and soldiers are divided into three roads: Sichuan, Henan, and Shandong, which are thicker than the thickness, color, and output. After shopping around, I fell in love with Sichuan Gaojin.
"The thickness is at least two or three times higher than before, and the finished product is all peeled and frozen into 40 pounds of pork plate oil, and you don't have to peel yourself to avoid secondary pollution." Fang Guanghui, director of the production workshop, said that they went to investigate Gao Jin's strength and sanitary conditions, and looked at the earth pigs that were jumping around the mountains, and the "oil" was really good.
Pictured: Tank Duck Dog official website
Legend has it that tangyuan originated in Mingzhou (now Ningbo) in the Song Dynasty, when lard was included in the ingredients. When Jiang Dingfa, the founder of the tank duck dog, set up a stall at the entrance of the Ningbo City God Temple, the treasure of the town stall was also "lard tangyuan". For nearly a hundred years, its successors have continued to care for this delicacy.
This makes a very strong contrast in the production workshop of the tank duck dog: every process of tangyuan production has mechanized equipment, but the production efficiency is nearly two-thirds lower than that of competitors.
Shen Xiaozhen, 50, is the operator of the refining process and is responsible for the skin production of tangyuan. After working for seven or eight years, the machines in the workshop have changed, but her work process is still not moving: every day before 4 p.m., she needs to soak the rice she needs to use the next day with her co-workers, so that when the work starts at 7 o'clock in the morning, the soft glutinous rice can achieve the best color of the water mill.
The rice is turned from solid to liquid, and then the liquid is re-solidified by pressing and steaming, condensing the water milling process of the wisdom of the ancestors, ensuring the tenderness of the dumpling skin of the duck and dog, but this process takes more than an hour. Shen Xiaozhen said that compared with manufacturers who make skins with dry powder, people produce 30 boxes of tangyuan a day, and they can only produce 10 boxes.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > a pork bun that "sells more and loses more"</h1>
The fate of Tangyuan is the same as that of Zongzi, and the off-peak season has always been the "devil" that haunts it.
Before the machine enters the workshop, at this time of year, the neighbors of Jiulonghu Town will gather in the tank of ducks and dogs, and 100 people will gather together to do one thing: rub the rice balls. At the end of the year, the villagers went back to their homes, and the workshop returned to the coldness of the off-season.
The store of the tank duck dog still insists on making tangyuan by hand
As a result, the tank duck dog opened a pastry shop to maintain the brand sales of tangyuan in the off-season. Compared with today's Tangyuan workshop machine combat, the newly opened bun workshop has become the most densely populated production line.
Xiao Chen, after the 80s, can pack more than 100 buns an hour, with a monthly salary of more than 6,000 yuan. The long time of hand labor made her and seven or eight co-workers' hands sore for many years. Moreover, because it is a manual package, the production speed has not been able to keep up with the market situation; coupled with the high price of meat this year, the tank duck dog uses the higher price of local pork, and the meat bun will "sell more and lose more".
As soon as he heard that the order for meat bags was coming, Fang Guanghui couldn't help but frown. He suggested to his boss that he "buy a machine to increase production", but the boss Chen Kaihe replied: How much can be done, word of mouth is the most important, and it is not important to make money or not.
Every step of the way in the production of tangyuan has been mechanized
90 years ago, an old show even ate a few bowls of tangyuan but had no money to pay the bill, the boss only let him help the store to take the name "tank duck dog", which is the founder Jiang Dingfa; 10 years ago, the total area of the tank duck dog store was reduced from more than 1300 square meters to 100 square meters, the performance plummeted, there was a boss who gave up the profiteering real estate industry to take over the old brand, which is Chen Kaihe.
Fang Guanghui, who has been here for 4 years, has become accustomed to the boss's Buddhist operation and obsession in his heart.
"Most of the machines we use are not regular rice ball production machines. For example, the dumplings are made of stuffing machines, because the water milled powder balls are very sticky, and they will all be glued to the tangyuan machine. Fang Guanghui said that they chose the machine according to their own process and imitated the manual effect as much as possible.
Hangzhou 19th floor has done blind tests on tangyuan for several consecutive years, dozens of brands, and tank ducks and dogs have taken the first place every time.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > a durian dumpling that "transports thunder"</h1>
Tang Botao, an old Ningbo native and the person in charge of the sales of ducks and dogs in the tank, recalled that on the first morning of the New Year's Day, he had to eat tangyuan and burn the tangyuan to the elders of the family; the old Jiaxing people Quanying remembered that when he was a child, every household had to pound rice to make tangyuan, and the glutinous rice was hot all over the body.
Southerners eat tangyuan regardless of the day, and they never mind a bowl of quick-frozen tangyuan.
In the tank duck dog workshop, the freshly formed rice balls are frozen at a rapid speed before they can enter the packaging process. After 2016, the tank duck dog settled in Hema, not only followed the box horse to the north and south, but also developed new flavors such as durian tangyuan and matcha tangyuan, which was jokingly called the "treasure boy" of the tangyuan industry by netizens.
The old brand is trying to turn itself into an internet celebrity
However, although the quick-frozen tangyuan has allowed the tank duck dog to go out of the original sales radius, it has also given Shao Binjie, the manager of the Tmall store, a new problem.
"Although we have been doing e-commerce for more than 3 years, we can directly understand the needs of consumers, but on the whole, it is not particularly mature, especially the problem of express logistics." Shao Binjie said that durian tangyuan, for example, because of the process and raw materials of the product itself, is extremely sensitive to temperature and requires ice cream-grade cold chain transportation. "Choosing ordinary express delivery cannot guarantee the timeliness and service quality, the price of choosing SF freight is higher than the price of the product, and it is currently communicating and cooperating with Cainiao's Danniao Logistics."
Just like the explosive model grandmother and fitness grandfather on Douyin, the tank duck dog stands at the top of the industry traffic, accepts the attention of the crowd, and has to break through layers of prejudice and shackles.
Fang Guanghui said that in 2017, the tank ducks and dogs were shipped to supermarkets in Canada to sell, and the price more than doubled because of the logistics cost, but the things were robbed as soon as they were on the shelves.
Tang Botao said that they are promoting tasting in more than 200 stores across the country, and intend to fine-tune the recipe of tangyuan according to the eating habits of different places in the future, develop different fillings and different skins for different seasons, and break the inherent stereotype of "tangyuan is difficult to digest".
At noon on January 3, at the Tank Duck Dog Store in Ningbo Tianyi Square, Uncle Tong was entertaining his high school classmates from Ninghai. Crab yellow soup buns, sour and spicy wontons and tangyuan are must-order, five or six meals, 159 yuan, less than an hour, the two successfully achieved the disc. Uncle Tong said that the first time was when his daughter brought herself to eat, and later every time she gathered with friends, she liked to come to the tank duck and dog.
Chinese eating to emphasize the meaning, because of the round, chubby shape, tangyuan is placed on the good will of "reunion". It's the New Year, so let's eat bowls of rice balls with your family.