This Restaurant Is So Good It Doesn’t Need A Sign

Whenever I’m in Jincheng and need some food I try to head over to this dumpling joint by the bus station. The first time I stumbled in there was in 2012. I made friends with the lady who runs the place and she let me help her make dumplings. The place is always packed. The food here actually has flavor — an oddity in China. 

When I first showed up on Kinmen this time around, I went over to that restaurant and found that it was missing its sign and the front of it was all fucked up — probably happened in some typhoon or other. 

“Have they closed down?”

The place looked like a shack. But upon opening time the door was open and the owner was in there making dumplings. In a matter of moments the place was just as packed as it’s always been. 

They didn’t close down, they just never bothered to fix their sign. They simply had no real reason to: they had their clientele, they maxed out their potential, they shipped tons of dumplings whether they had a sign or not. 

There is something to learn from this. It is those who are unestablished, who are shipping an inferior product who need the fancy signs. Marketing is a little more than a sad attempt at compensating for inadequate quality. If you need a sign, go back to the drawing board. If you are good people will know it. 

Let your product speak for itself.