Chapter 92: “The highlight of the show!”
I was thinking… I’m not saying that we’re moving to a different location to demonstrate the fast food that we’re planning to feature. We moved from the conference room to the cafeteria. We all rushed to the kitchen where Katharina had already finished preparing the food.
“I’ll actually make it first, and you guys can look at it, taste it, and give me your opinions.”
Using the ingredients I had already prepared to some extent, I began to bake the flour in a pan with milk and eggs in a thin layer. Soon the smell of deliciousness begins to waft around me. I think it looks good because I know what it’s made of and what it tastes like, but I wonder how everyone else who doesn’t know this feels about it. I glanced over at them…
“I smell something sweet…”
“Well…”
Hmm… You still think it smells a little sweet. But it’s thin and it cooks quickly. You have to cook it right so it doesn’t burn…
A thinly baked dough is topped with whipped cream and cut up fruit. I wish I had chocolate sauce, but unfortunately, I haven’t discovered chocolate yet in this world. I need some rubber and chocolate ASAP. Oh, and coffee and tea…
Anyway, now you know what I’m making. This is a Japanese crepe. But these crepes, which look like sweet pastries rolled with cream and fruit, were born in Japan in the late 70s and were not originally made like this.
Originally, crepes were a kind of side dish with salted ingredients rolled up. It was only introduced in Japan as a sweet snack with cream, chocolate, and fruit, and gradually became popular.
The first one is Japanese sweet crepe. Then I bake a different crepe dough from the sweet crepe dough. I put chopped cabbage and grilled meat in this crepe. I want to make the meat teriyaki style, but I can’t do that. I just put some of the local specialty meat on skewers that are sold at the street stalls.
The dough is baked in a round pan, not in a special rimless round baking machine like in Japan. I may need to work on the tools and baking method in the future, but for now it’s just a work in progress.
I’ve made some crepes and I’m going to give them to you to taste. I’ll ask Katharina and Helmut for their opinions.
“Please taste the food together. If you can, try a little of everything and tell me what you think. Katharina and Helmut, please.”
“What? May I have some of Flora-sama’s cooking too?”
Helmut asked me in surprise. Helmut had never tasted my cooking before? No? I don’t know. If he can’t remember, then he’s probably never or almost never. Katherina was eating my cooking to treat her malnutrition, and maybe Helmut was worried that he’d never or almost never eaten my cooking.
“Here you go. I’d like to hear what men and women have to say about it, so please tell me what you think.”
“Yes!”
Hey… Is this really the most important question you’ve ever had to answer? Never mind. I’ll bake a bunch of batter while you guys eat your crepes. Then I put a layer of cream between each crepe. Repeat, and you got mille crepes.
Mille Crepe requires more dough, so it’ll be more expensive… No, wait. Is melted flour worth the price? Then wouldn’t a regular Japanese sweet crepe with lots of cream be more expensive? By that logic, the cheapest crepe would be a side dish crepe.
It’s been quite a while since the sweet crepe became popular in Japan, but recently, crepes like side dish with tuna or chicken for men have been on the market. Well, it’s more like a return to the origin rather than a later development… In France, the original crepe was originally a side dish like crepe…
I wonder if sweet crepes for women and side dish crepes for men will be popular here too. It’s hard to make a cake, so it would be great if we could serve coffee or tea with mille crepe… Unfortunately, they don’t have coffee and tea.
Black tea, green tea, and Chinese tea are all the same, the only difference is how they are fermented. Of course, there must have been some differences in the fermentation process between the Chanaki and Assam teas, but they are all basically the same.
If we could grow the tea we import, we could make tea. But it would take years to plant and harvest. I don’t know if we can import the tea plant. And even if we could import it, would it grow in the climate of the Kingdom of Prussia?
Well, it probably comes from that area northwest of us, so if it can be grown at a higher latitude than ours, there’s a good chance we can do it too… Or we could import raw tea leaves and ferment them into tea. If we tell them how to make it and let them process it at their place of production… we’ll lose our profit. I’d like to process it as secretly as possible.
And then they often call it dandelion coffee as a substitute for coffee, but that’s no good… They think it tastes like coffee because it’s called “dandelion coffee”, so they made a coffee substitute for a world without coffee! But it tastes completely different.
It is true that it is roasted and fragrant, so you could say that it is similar to coffee in terms of its fragrance alone, but it tastes more like barley tea. It is not a substitute for coffee, but only a substitute for people who cannot drink coffee.
Even if we had coffee, we’d have to import all of it. Or can we grow it in greenhouses or plastic houses? It would be difficult to manage, and if we’re not careful, it would all die. If we have too many greenhouses, importing would be the safest option.
“I think the ladies will like this sweet one.”
I was thinking about it, and Leonor immediately started to share her thoughts. He’s in charge of product development, so he’s quick to respond to new ideas.
“I think I prefer this one with the meat on it.”
Hugo, who’d had a taste, joined in. Gradually, everyone starts talking to each other about what’s good and what’s not.
“I never thought our product would turn out to be such a delicious food.”
“Edward… You don’t know your farm’s products well enough. Chicken eggs, sugar, milk, cream, butter are all-purpose ingredients. With them, you can make anything from pastries to cookies.”
They are indispensable in Japanese sweets and cooking. They are even indispensable for a rich dining table.
“I think I’d probably sell more meat and veggies here.”
What makes you say that?
Before I knew it, Katharina and Leonor were arguing. Katharina is a woman, but would she prefer a side dish crepe?
“I’d rather eat sweets myself. But this meat and vegetables can be put on the table. It’s a matter of price, but if you can buy them at a reasonable price, I think many housewives will buy them for dinner tonight.”
I see… You mean you don’t just eat it on the spot, but you take it home with you and make it into a side dish for today. I guess it’s the same idea as Japanese delicatessen.
“I would like to sell them not only at the stall, but also inside the store, to both the customers who eat slowly while drinking and the customers who eat outside. It would also be a good way to advertise the Kanza Shokai products to the general public while eating and drinking inside.”
I’ll join in the discussion and give my thoughts. I’ll draw a picture on a piece of paper as I explain. I’ll prepare a window for baking and selling crepes, one for inside the store and one for outside, so that people can either eat outside or eat slowly inside the store.
If we partition the store and make it like a crepe café on one side, and put the products of the general sales department of Kanza on the next side, the customers who eat crepes in the store can see the products of Kanza. What if we put prices and samples of the products so that interested customers can enter the store directly from the café?
“I see. But if there’s no partition, this crepe? I’m sorry? Wouldn’t this food fly in and contaminate the merchant’s goods? Or maybe the customers on the eating and drinking side will accidentally damage the merchant’s goods…”
I agree. If we just set up a low partition, there’s a chance that a crepe you accidentally tossed will fly into the Chamber of Commerce side, or if that’s too extreme, you might drop a crepe on the Chamber of Commerce side while walking on the edge of the partition.
However, if you set up a high partition, it would be difficult for customers to see the products and be interested in them even though they are connected to the store. The strategy of luring customers with the café and showing them the products of the shop would be pointless.
“Glass… Use plate glass from the Khanate. Transparent plate glass will allow us to see the goods and keep food scraps from entering the market. And the transparent plate glass is also good for advertising. However, if it is just plate glass, it may break in an accident, so it would be better to use mesh plate glass or laminated glass with cellulose in between.”
“Flat glass… I see… That would be good advertising.
Everyone was coming up with ideas for the layout and partitions. Then I decided to serve Mille Crepe, which I had almost forgotten about.
“Here, have a taste of this too. This one’s good for eating and drinking inside, don’t you think?”
Crepes are good for walking around because they’re wrapped in a cone. But if you want mille crepe, you’ll want to eat it sitting down in a restaurant. If Mille Crepe becomes famous, there will be more customers who want to eat inside. And once you’re inside, you can see the store next door through the glass. If people are interested in the products, they can move between shops. This is not a bad idea.
“Delicious. It’s got a strange texture.”
“This will ensure that there will be enough customers to eat and drink inside.”
It seems everyone thought that crepes would be more likely to be taken out. So if we have mille crepes for in-store eating and drinking, it will be easier to lead people to the store.
We’ve all been talking a lot since then and we’ve come to a consensus. We’ve almost decided to open the second Kanza Shokai store in downtown Wangdu. All we need to do now is find a building that fits the criteria and furnish it…
We need to train the bakers and the lineup of crepes. We also need to decide on the prices of the various ingredients we’ll buy from the ranch. We can’t decide on the price of the product until we know the cost of the ingredients.
And I baked them in a pan today, but I wonder if I should have that round, rimless baking machine. And maybe you should also have a little dragonfly thingy to spread it out. I spread them out with the back of a ladle, but they were all different thicknesses and too thick. It was okay for a tasting, but not for a product.
Well, that’s for Hugo and Edward to figure out. I’ll give you my opinion, but I’m not going to do all the groundwork. The rest of the work will be done by the people in charge.
“I have some ideas for tools that could be used to bake the crepes, and I’ll try to get some samples of those later. Also, I’d like to bring this to the attention of both Hugo and the Kanza Trading Company and Edward and the other employees at the ranch…”
Everyone is quiet and listening to my serious voice. I have to say this.
“I have many enemies. People who want to kill me, people who are jealous of the Kanza Trading Company, people who want to ruin my ranch, and I don’t know when they’ll come after us. If it’s a ranch, it could be a competitor or a rival. If it’s the Kanza Trading Company, they may be resented by the nobles and others.”
I cut him off and looked around and everyone nodded seriously. I guess that’s happened before.
“In such a situation, the Chamber of Commerce and the ranch must make sure that the employees don’t give in to the threats. But they may be targeted for not giving in. Make sure they are safe. And don’t tell them anything too deep. It’s not that I don’t trust them, it’s just that the more you know, the more danger you put them in. Please be careful.”
The Marquise de Valtec was so brazen in declaring her intention to destroy the Kanza Trading Company that you can never be too careful.
“”””Yes, sir.””””””
They all nodded seriously, so I’ll leave you to deal with the rest. If they need a budget, they’ll get one, like they always do. We’re all professionals here. Not the kind of people I have to take in and set up everything like I do with my kids.
We’ve finished our business for the day and decided to take the carriage home. Helmut and Katharina seemed to be in a good mood on the way back, but I guess it was because they ate something sweet…
