Repeat Business,

is the mainstay of many establishments,

the restaurant trade being one of them, but how to lure your customers back time after time? photograph Schematic/recaptured from Weibo, the easy answer just add that little 'something' that the competition does not, it apparently seemed like a good idea to a man surnamed Yang, who ran a restaurant in China’s Guangxi Province, but here is the problem, his little 'something'  was opium that he added to the noodles he served, to get patrons addicted and increase the chances of them coming back for more, all went well, until someone who ate at his local in Sanjiang Dong Automonous County restaurant tested positive for morphine, the active component in opium, during a police inspection. The shocked man insisted that he had not willingly taken drugs, and told investigators that the only thing he had ingested that he couldn’t vouch for was a bowl of noodles at a local restaurant. That’s how police ended up making a surprise visit to the noodle shop in question, where they took a packet of snail powder which tested positive for morphine, after making the initial finding police handed the case over to the Sanjiang County Administration for Market Supervision, which subsequently visited the noodle restaurant again and discovered 76 grams of poppy seed powder, he was arrested and admitted the offence, one would have thought this was an isolated incident, but it is not so, the practice of lacing noodles with opium to get people addicted and increase business is not new in China. One of the first reported cases dates back to 2014, when a restaurant owner in Yan’an, Shaanxi province, admitted to lacing his noodles with opium. He was exposed after a customer tested positive for morphine. At the beginning of 2016, it was confirmed that the Yan’an case was not an isolated one, as Chinese media outlets reported that three dozen other restaurants were investigated for lacing their food with addictive opium, of which some had already been prosecuted, note to self, if I get a craving for noodles, have a drugs test!