If you fry your own shallots, you are not going to spend the better part of NT$7,000 on a pesticide residue test. It is simply too much money.
Our approach is to sample and test before we buy, and only then take delivery — plus unannounced spot tests through the year. Not once or twice, but many times over. That costs more in a year than a small restaurant spends on stock.
Some customers will say, if you raise the price, we stop buying. To stay alive, a supplier facing that will often lower its standards or quietly give up on something. What do you think happens next? Adulteration: blending in cheap imported fried shallots, or cheap shallots from another brand. That is the clever-by-half way to run a business.
And yes, that is how many suppliers survive. Cheng Chi would rather a customer walked away calling us expensive than blend or adulterate to hold the cost down and lie to keep an unreasonable customer happy. So the purity of what you buy is not something you need to think about.
Because we hold that line, you can buy genuinely aromatic, high-quality shallot products all year round. Your food smells the same every time, and the queue outside stays long.
Skimp on ingredients, though, and your customers will taste it. By the time you switch back, their confidence has gone — and that loss is invisible until it is too late.
Costs have to be passed on, and any reasonable customer understands that. We would like everyone to hold the line on quality, and to win back Taiwan’s reputation as a country that takes its food seriously — honestly, and with a clear head.