Chapter 15 Spice bundles
I knew her name already, as it was on the gigantic sign above her house/workplace. Intricately designed with many frills and flourishes, the sign read Olivia’s Crafts. “Well, Olivia, I’d like to see if you’d want to go into a business deal with me.” I pulled out the two assortments of spices, a test bottle of wine, and one of vinegar I had prepared.
The cheaper assortment was meant for common households. It would be expensive for items that would enhance foods eaten, but in my opinion, it was worth it, and I wasn’t willing to drop the price. The ‘family’ bundle was a gold. Salt, pepper, basil, rosemary and thyme, oregano, cilantro, red pepper, ginger, chili powder, tomato powder, and garlic powder.
The ‘luxury’ bundle was twice as much of each seasoning and also would come paired with the wine and vinegar, plus spices I wasn’t growing myself. I had an adventurer order for the following ingredients. Cumin, turmeric, nutmeg, cinnamon, bay leaves, vanilla, and tea leaves. I could grow those ingredients, but the time and effort were higher than the other ingredients.
The luxury bundle would also come with other preserved foods. Strawberry jelly, pickles, olives, pickled eggs, blueberry jam, and sauerkraut. I was going to do jerky and hardtack as well, but after thinking about it more, it didn’t really fit the luxury foodstuffs aesthetics. I decided to add them to the family assortment because of that. The moment one of the wives took a hardtack and used it to scoop some jelly up broke my mind. I always hated it but if you cover shit in sugar I bet I could scarf it down.
The plan was to get the people of the village addicted to the family bundles. That’s why I handed out the sample bundles to people so word of mouth would spread how good the products were. That got to the pricing, I was going to charge one gold for the family bundle and a platinum for the luxury bundle. Now, that may seem like crazy pricing, but the spices could last months. Months of better-tasting food, food you couldn’t get anywhere else because most people only grew one or two of the plants needed.
The way most farmers' skills worked pushed them towards monocropping. At least if someone was making the assortments, I had never seen them before. Half the cost of the products was on the glass jars of the spices; if I could recoup them, then I could lower the price, but until I built up a supply of regular customers, I needed to charge with the cost of them not being returned in mind.
She sampled each of the spices, I hadn’t done anything too fancy, just dried and ground most of them down. She went back and took another finger of the chili powder, then three more fingers of the pepper flakes as she asked. “And what do you need me to do?” It took me a second to realize that, of course, she would see completed products and wonder what she could do with them. “These are just the lesser version of the products, I was wondering if you made the spices, could we retain the quality?”
She looked at it again before mentioning it. “Yeah, but these are already common and uncommon quality.” I thought she’d ask this, so I pulled out a rare strawberry. The size gave it almost twice the normal quality as her eyes grew wider at the sight. All of the higher-ranking strawberries were purchased by Cherry and the sheriff. Most of the higher quality products were.
She took it from me and bit it in half; she unconsciously swore. “Aww, fuck that’s good.” Wiping the juice from the corner of her mouth, she licked it as she spoke. “So, judging by the rare ingredient, you’re losing an entire rank of quality in the processing? Hmmm… Alright, I think I can help, but this might fall under the prep cook or miller profession.”
I already checked for both of those classes. “We have neither of those in the village; transporting the products to have them done elsewhere would lose most of the quality they’d save.” She looked at the products again before getting another fingerful of the pepper flakes. “How much are you planning on selling these for?” I pointed at the smaller bundle. “A gold for the family bundle.” The smile on her face faded as I pointed at the other bundle. “And a platinum for the luxury bundle.”
She began coughing as the prices of both surprised her until she thought about it more. The luxury spices were for rich families. They might be willing to buy the product just because it was sold as a luxury. A platinum is as much as some people could make over an entire year, so if they sold two of them, they’d have made a year's worth of deals in the process… It was the most lucrative deal that was ever offered to Olivia.
I smiled as I explained further. “If we can retain the quality, uncommon for the family bundle and rare for the luxury, we can charge twice as much.” She reeled back again, shocked at the number before thinking about it. Once again, she was thinking of it for normal people, not the wealthy. The wealthy would pay more for the higher quality; most items increase by far more than double the price for each rank in quality. They could easily sell the epic quality goods for ten platinum if they ever made a bundle, because the effort was far more than making a rare bundle.
We agreed on a plan, as I would have to take the ingredients over for her to mill. We were also going to see if me drying them made a difference in the quality. She had a fifty percent chance of retaining the quality because of her class and skills, and twenty percent on top of that because of her job experience in crafting. Seventy percent chance to retain the higher quality spices, which meant that in just weeks, if they sold, I could be gaining much more money to keep expanding.
I was getting milk and eggs now. I didn’t see the point in raising animals for slaughter. The fact was that it was easier to get high-quality meat from dungeons than it was to get high-quality vegetables. The fact was that most people focused on quantity over quality because you could earn more money, so many people never had a vegetable over uncommon in their entire lives.
I bought some wood on my way home. If everything worked out, I wanted to soon I’d have bees for honey, flowers for the bees, and possibly stronger bees to help defend the farm even more. I needed to look more into quality crops people didn’t bother with, and more defenses for the field in case the dungeon decided to attack again.
Plans coming together, as I made my way back home, Tems came running up to me. “Problem! We got trouble at home!” She didn’t explain further as we went running home. I didn’t see any problems with the fields, there was nothing really out of place until we got closer to the house. I could hear someone inside grunt out in pain before cursing loudly. “Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!”
I gulped as I opened the door and looked in at Silk, who was covered in sweat as her eyes darted to me. “You did this to me!” I was now more scared than before, as I didn’t even know what she was talking about. She lunged at me, slamming her lips against mine as she pulled the door closed behind me.