Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Chicken and Chips

Everything proceeded smoothly.

Grandma Main readily lent the large sum of 30 shillings, and I handed 5 shillings of that to Mr. Thomas. I asked Mr. Thomas who works at the woodshop to get good wooden planks at a cheap price.

After that, I made the stall myself using borrowed woodworking tools. It wasn't complicated work. As long as there was space to place a chafing dish to heat the food and an alcohol lamp, it was enough.

I'm someone who even at the orphanage as a child cut wooden planks and made chairs myself. With just a saw, hammer, and nails, I could make anything.

With the remaining 25 shillings, I bought materials needed for business such as chicken and packaging envelopes. This alone was a large sum equivalent to ten days' wages of current laborers.

While selling newspapers and roaming London streets, I had many opportunities to talk with various people. Thanks to that, one fact I learned. Many laborers in London now live day by day without savings, so almost no one holds such a large sum of money.

That's also why I couldn't borrow money from Dad, Pierre Durand.

It's a poor household living in a boarding house that has trouble even properly paying for medicine. The reason our family could live without starving was because with the small money Dad alone earned, we only had to raise one only son. It was an era when contraception was extremely difficult, so most households had at least three or four children.

Due to hard labor, poor environment, and insufficient hygiene, the working age of early 20th-century London laborers wasn't very long. Countless laborers got sick with pneumonia, tetanus, syphilis, etc. and died before even reaching their 40s. So when they reached an age where they couldn't earn money, the children would inherit the head of household position and take responsibility for the family.

Raising children was a kind of investment and concept of old-age security.

Our house too, if Mom's body wasn't weak, there probably would have been younger siblings one after another. Emily's family too, if the aunt was alive, there would have been more siblings.

Anyway, because of that situation, even if a mid-teen boy set up a stall himself and did food business, people didn't see it as strange at all.

"Ahem, Jean. There's a strange smell here. What are these foods?"

"Ah, hello, Mr. Gregory. This is a food called fried chicken. I fried it with a special method."

"What's that long thin thing next to it? It looks like french fries."

"That's right, it's french fries. Would you like to try a piece? The plate in front here is a tasting sample."

"What? You're even letting me taste it? Thank you. Ho, hmm, oh! It's really savory! H-how much is this?"

"It's 3 pence, but since it's Mr. Gregory, I'll specially give it for 2.5 pence."

"Oh, thank you! Then give me two portions! Here, 5 pence."

"Thank you!"

[Satisfaction: ★★★★★]

【Acquired 5 Cooking Points.】

The thing I worried about most when setting up the food stall was the price. Buying one chicken at a London butcher cost roughly 16 pence (about 30,000 won when converted), and even if early 20th-century European chickens were larger than modern broilers, making more than 6 portions from one was difficult.

The problem was the London laborers who would be my main customers. No matter how full they ate, they were reluctant to spend more than 3 pence on one meal, so no matter how delicious the food, if I set a price higher than that it wouldn't sell.

So I roughly divided the chicken into 10 portions and decided to lower the price by adding a side. Since Londoners mainly enjoyed fish and chips sold with fried fish and french fries together, I named my food 'Chicken and Chips' and decided to sell it with french fries for 2 pence. Then what's the remaining 0.5 pence? Confidence, confidence. The confidence that even adding a premium will sell.

But no matter how delicious the chicken I made is, if the french fries as a side are ordinary chips commonly seen, the purchasing persuasiveness inevitably drops. Especially, my pride didn't allow selling the thick and dry British-style french fries with my chicken.

Special cooking needs a special side attached.

The idea I came up with after pondering was the seasoned fries commonly seen in modern hamburger franchises. It took some hand work to slice the potatoes thin, but for the seasoning I could just use what I brought from the point shop as is, and since I only needed to fry them together when making the chicken, looking at the result it was much more convenient.

Moreover, french fries were much more efficient as tasting samples. The giver can give without burden, and the receiver can lightly taste.

【Acquired 15 Cooking Points.】

Seeing cooking points accumulate at an unexpected timing, it seems Mr. Gregory successfully spread my Chicken and Chips to his family.

From my perspective, accumulating a lot of cooking points by selling to many people was more beneficial than selling the food expensively. So I recommended sample tastings to every passerby. People who found it unfamiliar and strange at first, as soon as they tasted a piece of seasoned french fries, their eyes widened and they immediately opened their wallets.

The amount prepared for the first day today was a total of 30 portions. Since I thought of switching to plan B if it didn't sell, this amount was appropriate.

But somehow, people kept pouring in and lining up, and because of that all the stock sold out in an instant.

After hurriedly having Emily buy additional ingredients, the 20 portions I fried again in a rush also all sold out in just 30 minutes, whew.

###

In my previous life too, I started business as a stall vendor. Of course, back then it wasn't chicken but simple snacks like tteokbokki or fish-shaped bread.

In that regard, the tastes of modern Korea and early 20th-century London Britain were distinctly different. In Korea snacks were popular, but to sell well in Britain, you had to sell fried foods.

So my attempt of Korean-style fried chicken with seasoned french fries as a side can be said to have properly targeted the romance of the British. Especially, the seasoning was a special seasoning that couldn't be tasted anywhere in this period.

I mobilized marketing techniques that would work even in modern Korea such as tasting events, acquaintance discounts, and giving off a strong smell, focusing on appealing strongly from the first impression. Successfully selling 50 portions on the first day was probably thanks to these small techniques.

Since it was a business that couldn't fail from the start, I pushed forward without any worries.

But as the saying 'too much is as bad as too little' goes, the result of overusing small techniques without properly grasping the lifestyle of 1900s London came back to me like a boomerang.

The next morning, an unexpected situation woke me up.

“Jean! Jean! Get up quickly! There's a commotion in front of the house! Cough!”

“Umm, just 10 minutes, I'll sleep 10 more minutes...”

Tired from handling various things at once the previous day, I was planning to sleep in leisurely today of all days. There was the satisfaction of successfully finishing the first business, and I had gone to sleep late calculating a month's expected sales and risks all night.

But Mom didn't allow me to sleep in.

“Jean! Get up right now and look out the window! People are lined up to the end of the alley!”

“What? What did you say?”

It seems I had released a tremendous poison in London. Since the points suddenly shot up after selling the food, I thought people were sharing my chicken somewhere...

"This can't be."

Early morning before dawn had even fully come, already dozens of people were lined up and waiting outside the house. And that through the thick British morning fog. Even a passing policeman asked people what was going on. Fully awake, I hurriedly went out the back door of the first floor and pounded on the next door.

"Emily! Emily! Get up quickly!"

"Yaaawn... Jean, what's going on? So noisy from the morning..."

"You need to do a part-time job today. Do you have time?"

"Part-time? What's that?"

"Part-time means the work of you diligently helping me right now. If it ends well, I'll feed you lots of delicious things later. This is the advance payment for now, take it."

I handed her the factory-made bread I had taken out from the point shop in advance. And two butter cookie sets too.

"Wooow! Bread that looks delicious!"

"Here, eat this bread first and look after the people lined up in front of our house. Tell the customers that preparing the food takes some time, and share these cookies to make them feel good. Watch carefully so no one cuts in line, and accept simple questions too. Got it?"

"Yeah, okay!"

I immediately ran into the cellar under the house. In this era there's no refrigerator or freezer, so perishable ingredients were mainly stored in the basement like this. This cellar is a kind of modern-style refrigerator. I took out potatoes and ten chickens from there. The ones I bought again at the butcher after finishing business yesterday.

"It's selling too fast than expected? Should I increase the sales volume more?"

But with the state of the house's stove and cooking tools, 60 to 70 portions a day is the limit. It took quite some time just to boil the oil, and I couldn't get help from fryers or other auxiliary tools like in my previous life. There's no thermometer so I couldn't accurately measure the oil temperature either. Making 50 portions yesterday was in fact close to me, the cooking master, doing a one-man show.

"Should I order a simple fryer from the blacksmith? At this rate it's hopeless?"

My heart grew urgent. People naturally think it's a famous restaurant and line up if there's a long line in front of a restaurant. In my previous life too, there were many shady restaurants that deliberately created waiting outside aiming for this attraction effect.

But right now, attracting too much attention is rather a problem. If I accept more customers than the amount I can handle in a day, in the current situation it could rather be a loss. The priority was to sell all the prepared food as quickly as possible and disperse the people.

30 minutes later, I piled Chicken and Chips like a mountain, burst out the front door. In that time the lined-up people had doubled and Emily was struggling to respond. I stroked her head once and shouted toward the people.

"From today, we sell Chicken and Chips only in limited quantities until the prepared ingredients are exhausted! Business hours are from 7 a.m. to 8 a.m.! Please come a lot!"

In the end, the method I chose was time-limited sales.

But that day too the prepared quantity sold out in an instant, and I had no choice but to curse and make an additional 20 portions.