A Treacherous Courtier Manages the Empire Well

25 – The Butterfly Effect

Sebastian was talented. Not just talented, but extremely talented.

“Fast food! hahahaha! Fast food, huh? Foods that commoners can easily buy and eat on the go!”

“When customers come to the store and choose the menu they want, we quickly assemble and serve the pre-made dishes from the cooking station. In doing so, we can reduce the cost of serving staff and simplify the cooking process by streamlining the ingredients!”

“It seems like a good choice from the perspective of operation! Even commoners could easily adapt with just a little training!”

As soon as we finished talking, Sebastian spent the whole day in the building, grinding, grilling, frying, and researching daily with meat and vegetables.

“We need to create dishes that are easy to cook, delicious, and can be quickly made even by untrained cooks through division of labor.”

Not only did I order some dishes, but it seemed like Sebastian found this work interesting. He tirelessly researched day and night, selecting dishes from the fast food menu I proposed that could be commercialized and appeal to the tastes of commoners.

“There were my fellow chefs in the capital. Can I bring them in to collaborate?”

“hahahaha! Of course! Bring them all! I’ll employ them! Tell them that I’ll pay them twice their current salary if they come!”

“Thank you!”

There was a lot of money. I spared no expense when it came to employing people. Soon, trained chefs came down from the capital and they continued to research cooking with Sebastian.

“We’re going to revolutionize the food that commoners eat!! Revolution!”

“hahahaha! The idea is really interesting! By reducing table service and simplifying ingredients, we can easily create dishes with simple training, right?”

“That would be wonderful! Let’s discuss it together!”

With the addition of experts in the field such as restaurant operations, cooking, and service, the research progressed even faster.

Has it been almost 3 months like this?

“Sir Landor, we brought the prototypes.”

“Ohohoho! Where should we take a look?”

I hurriedly ran to Sebastian’s laboratory, and there I witnessed three dishes emitting steam and stopped in awe.

Hamburger.

Pizza.

And boneless fried chicken.

“Among the menu items you mentioned, we have selected three dishes with the greatest feasibility, commercial potential, and ease of education. Based on street taste tests, it is presumed that these dishes suit the commoners’ taste the most.”

“Can I try them?”

“Of course!”

I ran and picked up the hamburger. It had a well-cooked patty with a fragrant seasoning, and various vegetables were combined. Of course, the variety of vegetables was not as diverse as the Earth, but the form looked delicious enough.

I took a bite of the hamburger.

And the pleasant taste spreading in my mouth made me burst into laughter involuntarily.

“What kind of meat did you use?”

“We used a type of lamb meat that is most commonly imported from the Caramba continent. We removed the gamey taste and seasoned it with spices.”

“Excellent!! What about the vegetables?”

“They are from the Golden Plains.”

“Pass!!”

I burst into laughter and put down the hamburger. And immediately approached the pizza.

“Without the help of the Western continent, this would have been an impossible dish. It’s made with goat cheese, sauce made from crushed tomatoes, and simple ham on top.”

“Where did this come from……….mmm!!”

The pizza was also delicious. The sauce had just the right amount of various spices, boasting an amazing taste. The dough, cheese, and meat were also perfectly made.

The pizza also passed.

“Finally, let’s try this one too. How was it cooked?”

“We removed the bones from the chicken brought from the Empire’s southern poultry farm, leaving only the meat. We marinated it with various spices and salt, and then coated it in a batter and fried it.”

“Where……….ah, f*ck.”

As soon as I take a bite, curses unknowingly escape my mouth. Of course, the chefs were chuckling, hearing my profanity. It was because I realized that curses coming from the mouths of those hastily eating could not hold any meaning of condemnation.

“…….It’s so delicious.”

“These are the three dishes that received the best response among all the foods you suggested. They are also well-suited for the concept of fast food.”

“Excellent!! Excellent, Sebastian!! Let’s try spreading this in the market now!!!!”

I gathered Carl Hanson and several specialized distributors from the Merchant Guild for a meeting.

“A tremendous amount of chicken will be consumed. I will go to the Southern Poultry Farm and place a large order. I can establish a new distribution route. Lord Landor.”

“Very good. Keep the supply of cheese and meat from the West constant. And this is how the operation of the fast food chain will be. We will mass-produce various ingredients, including sauce and meat, in advance. And then deliver those ingredients to each fast food branch.”

The chefs were in awe of my words.

“If the sauce and ingredients are prepared in advance, the cooking time will dramatically decrease!! That’s amazing!! Bravo!! Bravo, Lord Landor!!”

“We’ll need to build a factory. Let’s mainly employ women with cooking experience. It’s job creation!”

“I will find a suitable site to build the new factory. Lord Landor.”

“Alright, Carl Hanson, find out. And issue a massive job posting. Understood?”

Once again, busy and chaotic times passed. But I didn’t feel burdened by those times at all.

Chicken pizza hamburger eaten in this world.

How can I resist it?

While pioneering the distribution route and establishing franchise headquarters buildings and factories responsible for ingredient preparation and production, I called the owners of the restaurants in the commercial city of Porto and the dining district of Elond and started training.

“Pizza, chicken, hamburger. These are new foods! Created by Lord Landor! I will teach you how to combine and cook these when the ingredients are ready!!!”

The training was not difficult. Since the most difficult and high-quality ingredients had all been prepared in advance, the restaurant owners only had to combine and cook them in the correct way. Even commoners who had never received cooking education could easily do this.

After seeing and tasting the easily and quickly completed dishes, the restaurant owners willingly decided to work under me, and I made supply contracts with all of them.

Another four months flew by like bullets.

And finally.

When winter arrived.

“A newly opened fast food restaurant! Please come and taste our food!!!!!”

The first remarkable restaurant in Porto and Elond started opening its doors.

“Fast food? What’s that?”

When people who had ended their tiresome and busy lives in the city were returning home, they would see the circus clowns I hired clamoring and advertising while roaming the city, beating drums.

Fast food, a food they had never heard of.

It seemed that they sold hamburgers, a food with a strange name that has meat sandwiched between bread, and pizza and chicken.

“A newly opened store in the dining district, they say?”

At first, their brows furrowed.

Despite being peasants who had boiled tree roots to eat due to lack of food, they were gradually getting tired of the tasteless dishes in the village restaurant.

However, the clown’s advertisement had a magical last line.

“These are menus personally developed by Lord Randor! They are tear-inducingly delicious! Come and try them!!!”

As my popularity reached its peak, freezing people began to visit the restaurants one by one.

There, they encountered a very unique establishment.

A restaurant where customers had to go and place their orders themselves, receive the food, sit at the table, eat, and clean up afterwards.

People who were only used to the traditional style of ordering and being served expressed slight discomfort with this unfamiliar system.

But the moment they took a bite of the food.

All of their complaints vanished into the distant universe, leaving no trace.

“What, what is this?”

“Oh my god!! Such a taste exists!!!!!!!”

It was on a completely different level from the dishes at the previous restaurants, where the spices were mishandled without proper training.

A perfect combination of sauce that professional chefs who had studied and trained in the capital for months had researched and created, along with perfectly baked bread and excellently aged meat, delightfully pleased their palates.

They couldn’t escape after just one bite.

Moreover, the price was shockingly cheap.

“You mean I only have to pay 5 copper for all of this?”

“5 copper? Is that even possible?”

Customers began to flock.

It was only natural that the restaurant offered the finest products and delicious food at such low prices.

The three dishes ignited explosive reactions.

It was so popular that even Western continent traders who could barely speak proper words came to eat.

It took less than a week for the popularity to grow to the point where crowds could cause injuries, and the Steelblood Legion soldiers had to be dispatched to maintain order.

“Lord Randor.”

“What?”

“Look at this… these.”

Naturally, the merchant guild that was responsible for distributing and operating all of these dishes was accumulating an astronomical amount of gold coins.

Within just a week, they had amassed several times more gold coins than what they had invested.

“Build more restaurants!”

The number of establishments began to increase rapidly, and accordingly, the building that housed Sebastian, who supervised and managed the ingredient processing factory and everything else, began to bustle with people coming in and out everyday.

“Let’s name the chain headquarters building.”

The building where Sebastian and the chefs gathered soon became the headquarters of a company called Knife & Fork and became responsible for overseeing all fast food restaurants in the commercial city of Porto and the Elond Viscount’s territory.

“Do not stop here.”

And naturally, I had no intention of stopping here.

I had told Sebastian to research more diverse dishes and expand the variety of dishes, and Sebastian was actively studying various dishes from different regions and accelerating menu research to develop new restaurants.

When chicken, burgers, and pizza were beginning to lose their appeal, new restaurants appeared and captured people’s tastes.

“Lord Landor.”

“Why?”

“It is said that the number of peasants flocking from all over the continent has doubled.”

And this food service business brought about unexpected butterfly effects.

One could eat delicious food at a cheap price to their heart’s content.

To the majority of the imperial citizens who were not extremely poor, this was like a dream come true.

As fast food became famous, rumors spread naturally that it was a land where one would never go hungry, and even more peasants risked their lives to escape their territories and come to the commercial city of Porto and the Elond Viscount’s territory.

The Porto Commercial District and the Elond Viscount’s territory bustled with even more peasants, and there were even more jobs welcoming them in those cities.

The population began to skyrocket, and I actively relocated them to the golden plains, hastening development of the territories.

This phenomenon of absorbing people like a sponge could not be stopped, and even if one wanted to stop it, legally, as regional lords, they were helpless.

And as you can imagine, the territory that suffered the biggest blow from this unexpected fast food syndrome was…

“Lord Fellings.”

“……..”

“We don’t have enough people to work on the fields. Winter is coming…and our grain in the warehouse is running out.”

It was a barren estate party.

Lord Fellings received the steward’s report and raised his exhausted face.

“Landor… Landor. This bastard. Does he really want to go all the way?”

Power, force, capital, technology.

In every aspect, Landor had the upper hand over the barren estate party. The peasants continued to leave, and if he couldn’t overturn this situation in some way, he, who once aimed for the emperor’s throne, would end up bankrupt and ruined in an absurd manner.

He absolutely couldn’t let that happen.

If he couldn’t win in a full-frontal battle, then he had to take a dangerous gamble. And he knew one gambling move that was appropriate for the current situation.

“The leader of the rebels, Seoric, won’t be staying in the rabbit prison for much longer, right?”

Lord Fellings said with a gloomy voice.

“Send someone to the prison. We have a request to make to that man.”

Leader of the Empire’s greatest rebellion.

Those who rebelled against the noble plunderers and were sentenced to 10 years in the San Togo Rabbit Detention Center for their crimes.

They were the most suitable beings to bring about the destruction of the commercial city of Porto and the downfall of the Count of Elond.