Volume 1, 16: I prepare to open the shop.

Volume 1, Chapter 16: I prepare to open the shop.

“Wow. Food and tea and cookies, was it? A shop where you can eat those, eh?”

I dropped by the store, “Silas’s Magic Tool Store,” neighboring the prime location for my shop and started talking to the clerk girl, Angelica. When I told her about opening a shop, she replied that “you can only eat food at inns or taverns outside of home. There’s no such shop as the one you’re trying to open.” She’s right, I hadn’t seen any cafés or coffee shops around like the ones in Japan.

It seems the prime location used to be a tavern managed by an old couple, but the husband’s health took a turn for the worse and they closed it down.

“Hey hey, if you’re going to sell food, you’ll need magic tools for the kitchen, right?”

“You’re right, I do.”

“Then it’d be great if you ordered from us! We take custom orders too.”

Angelica leaned over the counter, her eyes glistening with anticipation.

Custom orders, huh…oh!

“How much can I customize?”

“Hmm…you’ll have to talk to the artisan for the specifics on size and function, but most things should be down for customization. You’ll need this, though.”

She made a circle with her thumb and index finger. It seems this was a gesture that signified money. Well, it’s understandable that custom orders would be more expensive than ready-made products. If they can make what I want, though, I’m all for it.

“Then I’d like to ask for some things.”

“Sure, sure! What would you like?”

Angelica took out a notepad from under the counter and listened.

I would like three things. First, a stove with adjustable heat. I’d been using the stoves in the Claude mansion a lot, but the stoves in this world only had on and off switches. They were very hard to use when I couldn’t adjust the heat. For example, if I wanted to switch from high to low heat, I had to move the pot from the high heat burner to the low heat burner. I couldn’t do this alone if I were cooking with a bigger pot. For a person who came from a world where the stove has adjustable heat, this was very inconvenient for me.

Second, a bread rising box. This was a box-like container that could control the humidity and temperature inside it, perfect for rising. I imagine the main seller of the shop when it opens would be bread, so this box would be indispensable for all the breadmaking.

Last, a commercial stand mixer. This was necessary for making butter. The butter used in the tea party Tasia hosted was made by taking milk with higher fatty content from a ripe milkfruit and whipping it with Basil’s power and physical labor. There were around thirty guests and the amount used by the household wasn’t that much, so Basil helped both times, but it wouldn’t do to have her do all the work for the shop.

After discussing with Alex, there was also the option to mass produce it, but production would not start on time as he still needed to build the factory and hire workers. That’s why I thought I would make the butter for the shop myself.

While Angelica understood the stove easily, she couldn’t really understand the rising box and the mixer. For now, I asked her to tell the artisan to make a box-shaped magic tool that could retain high humidity and maintain body temperature, and a magic tool that could mix things in a container with a stick that branched out at the end. Although I would meet directly with the artisan to discuss the orders on another day, it seems Angelica would pass on the orders beforehand.

I was happy at the thought that the cookware I wanted was just in my reach. On the other side of the counter, Angelica was chuckling to herself for obtaining some orders.

I felt bad staying too long, so I excused myself and left.

I returned to the Ashley Company and told Alex of the location I wanted, who said he would help speed the process along and asked me to sign a few papers. When I told him about Silas’s Magic Tool Store, apparently the store was quite famous among its kind.

The Ashley Company also deals in magic tools, but the wares are either cheap, mass produced magic tools or luxury items too expensive for the general public. Silas’s Magic Tool Store not only makes custom orders, but they also do repairs and remodeling, so they have always had many clients. It seems they also have many good artisans.

I was relieved to hear Alex say that you couldn’t go wrong with a custom order from Silas’s Magic Tool Store.

After taking care of the papers at the Ashley Company, I went home and began to think of the shop menu. First, I would like to sell bread. Of course, this was to spread leavened bread. Then I would like to slowly add variation to the bread. Food that wasn’t possible to make with the rock hard bread here, like sandwiches or sweet breads like cream-filled rolls. Croissants would be nice too.

However, since I would be doing everything by myself, I would need to select an efficient menu very carefully. First, the round bread that is now the staple of the Claude family. Then loaf bread and sandwiches, perhaps. Oh, I would need a bread pan made for loaf bread. Square and round cake rings would be nice, too. The rings are for baking sponge cakes or setting the shape of mousses.

I’d really love to make cake someday. Well, maybe I would gradually move towards sweets. At the moment, I guess I’ll make a lunch menu centered around bread. A daily or weekly rotation of two or three types would be ideal.

Now, there are so many things I need to do. Preparing cookware, trying out the menu, renovating the store. Stocking up on ingredients and material budgeting, etc.

Even if I didn’t understand the turnover rate at first, I would still like to profit to some degree. There is also the royalties from the Ashley Company for their sales of the technologies and recipes, so it might be different from other shops as well.

I smiled warmly at Basil, who was peeking curiously at the paper scribbled full of words I wrote with an unaccustomed feather pen, and deliberated over the future.

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The next day, I went to Silas’s Magic Tool Store for the meeting about the magic tools.

“Welcome!”

Angelica was watching over the shop today too.

“Risa, welcome! Wait a sec, I’ll go call my father.”

She said and ran into the back behind the counter. Soon after, a man with honey colored hair followed her back out. His face was also speckled with familiar freckles.

“Thank you for waiting! Risa, let me introduce you. This is my father and a magic tool artisan.”

“I’m Gunt, the owner of Silas’s Magic Tool Store. Nice to meet you.”

Angelica brought her father over. It seems she takes after her father. I introduced myself and shook Mister Gunt’s hand. His hand was rugged and rough, the hand of an artisan. They led me to a meeting space next to the counter. There was a wooden table and some chairs, with ore and blocks of wood messily placed on the shelves.

“I’ve heard the general idea from this young’un.”

In Mister Gunt’s hands was the note Angelica wrote yesterday and some blueprint-looking designs drawn on parchment.

“This heat adjustable stove seems doable. I never thought of that before. It would probably be quite convenient to use one burner and adjust the heat as you see fit, but there was never any need for it up until now.”

I had talked to Angelica about the stove in detail yesterday, and it seemed Mister Gunt had also understood it without any difficulty.

The problem was the other two, the bread rising box and the mixer. Angelica looked at me with astonishment when I told her about it yesterday. In a world where the concept of fermentation doesn’t exist, it’s only natural to not understand why there would be a need to make a rising box that needs to maintain body temperature, and not an oven or refrigerator.

As for the mixer, I suspect they probably could not even imagine what it looked like.

I explained the size and function of these two things while drawing diagrams. The two couldn’t wrap their head around how these were cookware, but that would have to wait until I could give them a demonstration. Although it would be difficult to make something unimaginable, for now Mister Gunt agreed to make some prototypes.

I had nothing to lose, so I tried asking for bread pans, cake rings and a whisk. Mister Gunt said these looked easy enough, and agreed to take the orders.

They would all be completed in five days, and I agreed to come back then. I asked them to write up the bill for me, as the items were all custom orders. The stove was 400 ril, the rising box 600 ril, and the mixer 1000 ril.

The currency here is called ril. Generally one ril can buy one loaf of bread, so one ril is around 100 yen (~1 USD).

Although everything was relatively expensive when compared to Japanese home electronics, they were all custom made and necessary for opening the shop. Besides, maintenance and repair was free, so it might turn out to be cheap in the long run.

I left Silas’s Magic Tool Store after paying.