Don't think Gong Mingxia paid low wages to the waitstaff; it's because they were all from out of town, so she renovated her house a bit, bought bunk beds, and turned it into a dormitory for the restaurant, one room for girls and one for boys.
In a strange city, if you have a place to stay and three meals a day provided, then taking home eight hundred yuan clean each month is indeed a decent job.
Gong Mingxia hired a total of eight waitstaff, kitchen helpers, and general workers, all of whom were quite young. With two bunk beds per bedroom and still plenty of space left over, there was enough room for them to move around, plus with a kitchen and bathrooms, the accommodations might even be better than their own homes, so everyone treasured this job greatly.
They would start work at four in the morning and finish around eight or nine in the evening, as there weren't many customers in the initial phase, so they didn't plan to stay open until midnight.
