I’m Quitting Everything and Selling Cola

Chapter 152

Chapter 152. I Can Do It — If It's Me! (5)

The following morning, Y&P Trading Company office.

"Good morning, every—……"

Penelope stepped into the office with hollow, sunken eyes.

"Oh? Lady Penelope! You're back!"

Serena came running over with sparkling eyes. Brigitte, who had been sprawled on the sofa nibbling away at cookies, poked her head up with a face full of curiosity.

Both of them knew that Penelope had gone to attend The Golden Mermaid's opening, after all. The food and beverage industry had gained its very first competitor in history — of course they were curious.

"Jurgen, first of all, you need to see this."

Penelope set the menu she had brought back from the night before down in front of Jurgen, who was drinking coffee by the window.

"I was wondering about it, as it happens. Thank you for bringing it."

"How was it, Lady Penelope? I want to know too!"

Penelope let out a long sigh and said:

"To put it plainly……. It was far more impressive than I expected."

"Impressive, how?"

"It seems Countess Blanchard has been sharpening her blade. I'd written her off as a woman full of nothing but vanity all this time. I was surprised."

Penelope went through the menu and walked them through each course one by one. The Sea Bream Consommé that had come out as a starter, the Blue Lobster seared in butter, and so on.

"Did it really come out as a full course like that? I want to try it too."

Brigitte swallowed back her drool with a tschp at the corner of her lips, eyes wide with admiration.

"Hmm, more than half of it wasn't sourced from the North."

Jurgen, who was far more familiar with logistics than Brigitte, pinpointed the discrepancy at once.

"That's right, it would take at least a fortnight from that distance."

"That's impossible! Seafood that took a fortnight?! In the North, even after just one day, the fishiness—"

"It was fresh."

Penelope shook her head slowly.

"Fresh as if it had just been caught."

"Waaah……. I want to try it too."

"Was the cooking done properly?"

"The cooking was good too."

Penelope shared the impressions she had formed after tasting each dish.

No particular technique had gone into it, yet the flavour magnificently brought out the raw ingredients themselves.

"The Chef was from Albion, wasn't he?"

"That's right, Chef Gabriel."

Jurgen gave a satisfied nod.

"They say the winds of fine dining have been gradually blowing through the capital ever since the Royal Culinary Competition's Royal Warrant selection — I suppose that's true after all."

Indeed.

This too was one of the small snowballs Y&P Trading Company had set rolling.

Nobles who had participated in the Royal Culinary Competition began frequenting various restaurants out of curiosity. Chefs who plunged earnestly into culinary research with the sole aim of obtaining the Royal Warrant began to emerge.

One phenomenon leading to another, so it seemed the Bellua Republic — famed for its fine dining culture — was being actively embraced. Such was culture, flowing always from the top down.

"They brought in the most celebrated chef in the capital at the height of the fine dining craze. It makes sense that a quality of that level would emerge."

Jurgen nodded, wearing an expression of unmistakable satisfaction.

"……"

Serena, watching that expression, kept stealing furtive glances at Penelope. She sometimes thought Jurgen was obliviously unaware of the mood around him.

"Do you realise? Last night alone, I watched dozens of people buy Golden Mermaid memberships and book their next reservations. If even half of them ended up booking banquet engagements, Royal Kitchen would lose half its guests."

Just as Serena had predicted, Penelope's lip was jutting out a considerable distance.

Penelope's feelings were complicated. Of course she supported Jurgen's Culinary Revolution, but she was equally in a position where Y&P Trading Company's future needed her attention. And there was also the small, private desire to keep the title of 'Fine Dining is Y&P' firmly in hand.

From the standpoint of someone worrying about the company's growth right now, it was rather like…… A fire had landed on one's own doorstep, yet the very person who had lit the flame of the Culinary Revolution was standing there, arms folded, watching.

"U-um…… Lady Penelope!"

In the end, the sharp-eyed Serena gently intervened, in the spirit of dousing the fuse before it could ignite.

"S-still! How on earth were the raw ingredients so fresh? You said it took a fortnight."

Thankfully, the aggro diffused, and Penelope answered with a sullen expression, resting her chin in her hand.

"They just threw money at it."

Penelope tapped the menu with her finger. They would have used Mechanical Engineering to transport the ingredients fresh despite the distance. And the resulting shipping costs would have been beyond imagination.

"They bought freshness with money. While we were leaning on the advantage of Lord Keystone and the Northern Demon Realm — Marianne used money to break through the geographical limitations."

Jurgen's eyes narrowed. He had been watching Penelope in full CEO mode with a look of quiet satisfaction before he said:

"Well, let's watch a little longer."

***

A week passed from that day. Marianne was living every single day like a festival.

The moment she stepped into the Social Circles, praise for her restaurant could be heard from every direction.

"My, did you hear? About The Golden Mermaid's reservations. Apparently they're already fully booked through next month."

"Already? My, my, the prices aren't exactly cheap either……"

"They say even memberships can't be had for love or money. I failed to get one myself……"

The strategy Marianne had devised for The Golden Mermaid had struck with perfect precision.

Y&P Trading Company's Royal Kitchen had pursued the high-end market and was genuinely quite expensive, but it couldn't hold a candle to The Golden Mermaid's splendour.

"Royal Kitchen's food is wonderful too, but…… somehow it carries the image of a high-end restaurant for the common people."

"Honestly, even looking purely at the restaurant's quality, you can sense the difference in class, can't you?"

"Y&P's roots are in street stalls after all. Nothing to be done about it, really."

There was also the image of Cola and CCC as brands targeting mass audiences, making it difficult to escape the reputation of being 'popular and accessible.'

The Golden Mermaid, by contrast, had staked its claim to the image of an exclusive fine dining salon for the chosen few.

"The New Year's gathering should naturally be at The Golden Mermaid."

"Tell the Viscounts and their lot to gather at Royal Kitchen."

When the old-money, established nobility began flocking to it as well, that image only solidified further. One could reasonably call it a kind of virtuous cycle.

"Huhuhuh, this genius of mine……"

As Marianne sat in her office, swirling a champagne glass and toasting herself —

"Countess!"

Butler Bernard came in bearing a tray piled high with letters.

"All of these are reservation letters, Countess!"

"My, is this all? I thought there'd be twice this many."

Marianne crossed her legs and reclined with arrogant ease. Bernard, who had tried so hard at first to dissuade her — it'll fail, it won't work — could no longer bring himself to say a single word in her presence.

Because she had shown and proved it, after all.

"There is, Countess…… one issue I need to raise."

"What?"

Bernard wiped away the sweat trickling freely with his handkerchief and spoke.

"As you instructed, all four weeks of reservations have been filled……"

"And?"

"We have received word from the Black Sail Guild."

Marianne did not even glance at the letter Bernard extended to her.

"Haa, those tiresome merchants. What is it? Are they asking for more money?"

"Yes……. The price of Blue Lobster and Almas Caviar is set to rise to three times the original……"

"Three times?!"

"Being such rare goods to begin with……. With demand spiking so suddenly, the market traders are inflating the prices, apparently."

"Ha! The fraudulent scoundrels!"

Marianne's brow furrowed — but only for a moment.

"Tell them we'll pay. Tell them to simply ensure the supply doesn't fall short."

"Pardon?"

"C-Countess! That would be madness!"

Bernard was aghast. The cost-to-ingredient ratio was already at astronomical levels. Without the membership sales revenue and investment funds, they would have lacked even the money to settle a single month's bills.

"If we raise ingredients that are already ruinously expensive by three times…… no matter how much food we sell, nothing will be left as profit!"

"Bernard, do you still think The Golden Mermaid is a place that sells food?"

"Pardon?"

"The Golden Mermaid's goal is not to be the North's finest restaurant. It is to be the North's finest community."

Marianne patiently explained things to Bernard, still trapped as he was in an outdated business framework.

"How many celebrated figures of the Social Circles will come to our restaurant from here on? The business conversations, weddings, alliances, investments that pass through there……. The role that used to belong to The Richfield Hotel — The Golden Mermaid will come to replace it."

It was a dream Marianne had long harboured.

"And at the centre of it all stands I, Countess Marianne Blanchard."

Bernard was left without words. He swallowed down even the urge to say that only recently she had been going on about the fine dining business.

Had Marianne not proven herself in actual fact? There was nothing left for Bernard to add.

The higher Marianne's spirits soared, the deeper Penelope's dark circles descended. The law of the diagonal.

***

Y&P Trading Company office.

"Ugh……. I don't want to lose to someone like Marianne…… what do I do……"

Penelope laid out the newspapers that had been heralding The Golden Mermaid day after day and stared them down with hollow eyes.

Every manner of thought passed through her mind. One cannot always be at the top. Y&P Trading Company cannot always be the one praised in the newspapers.

But of all the times. Why did it have to be right after Royal Kitchen's opening!

"I never expected seventy percent of Royal Kitchen's reservations to be gone……"

Such things happen from time to time.

In a market sharing the same pie, when concepts overlap — demand gets cleanly siphoned off toward the higher-quality establishment.

In a simple battle of taste, she had the confidence that Royal Kitchen held the advantage, but…… For special occasions like New Year's banquets, people naturally gravitated toward the visually impressive Golden Mermaid.

Should Royal Kitchen try putting out extraordinarily expensive dishes as well? A top-grade steak smothered in gold leaf, perhaps?

"What am I supposed to do!!!"

At the very moment Penelope clutched her head in her hands —

Serena, who had been watching quietly, trotted over to Jurgen and quietly informed him of the situation.

"To report — Lady Penelope's nervous breakdown is accelerating……"

Jurgen was deep in thought of his own.

"Hmm, Penelope has entered 'what do I do' mode."

His air, however, was considerably lighter by comparison.

"I-is it really something to take so lightly?"

"……"

Jurgen read Penelope's anxiety with perfect precision. Looked at on the surface, her worry was reasonable. Marianne was pressing Y&P in a fairly tactical manner, and it was producing real results.

Of late, she was even going so far as to package The Golden Mermaid as the North's finest community, the new main salon.

"But…… it's hard to dismiss it as mere packaging. In the Social Circles, having luncheons and dinners at The Golden Mermaid has already become fashionable……"

Serena, connoisseur of the Social Circles that she was, added her piece.

"Countess Blanchard is rowing hard too, packaging it as the North's finest community, the new salon and all that……"

It seemed the anxiety Penelope was carrying had gradually infected even Serena, who ordinarily trusted Hanbin without question.

Well, it did look convincing on the surface, to be fair.

Yet in Jurgen's eyes, The Golden Mermaid's trajectory bore a strangely familiar resemblance to a certain kind of business he'd seen on modern-day Earth. More precisely — something like a low-grade membership scheme.

Marianne had poured astronomical sums into opening the restaurant and securing ingredients, and would surely still be pouring them in.

Those losses were being patched over with fresh investment funds and membership sales revenue. In other words, using money as it came in to cover yesterday's deficit.

At its core — wasn't it just passing the bomb around?

Inevitably, the moment would come when investment and membership revenues could no longer keep pace with the deficit. It was plain to see that self-destruction was not far off.

"There's no need to worry too much."

"Is that……right?"

"But it does seem like it's about time to start preparing."

After all, he couldn't very well abandon a fellow comrade of the Culinary Revolution, now that one had finally come along.