Huh?
This was a little unexpected.
That was the first thought that crossed my mind the moment I saw the five varieties of green coffee beans displayed in front of Gale’s Grocery Store.
‘Is this really the coffee I know?’
There was a good reason for my confusion. The coffee before me looked quite different from the image of coffee I had in my head. The shape and color, in particular, differed from what I was familiar with.
For now, I decided to try bringing up the green beans’ status window.
If I could view information about the displayed beans just as I had viewed Isaac’s status window, perhaps I could obtain more useful information.
[ Green Coffee Beans ]
Coffee beans that can be cultivated in regions with ‘specific conditions.’
Damn it.
Unfortunately, my little trick did not work.
‘Well, I suppose I have no choice but to trust my own judgment.’
There were several ways to distinguish good green coffee beans, but since the coffee in this world differed from what I knew in both shape and color, I thought it was important to establish a new set of standards of my own.
Ideally, the beans would come from a high-altitude region.
They would have few defects.
And their size would be relatively uniform.
It was difficult to determine whether coffee would be good based on the green beans alone, but I judged that sorting them according to those three criteria would minimize the chances of failure.
“Oh? Coffee from Krontea. You somehow managed to pick out the most expensive coffee in our store. Even most people who come here specifically looking for coffee usually ask me first before choosing....”
I was examining the middle variety among the five when a white-haired old man, apparently the owner of the shop, approached me with an intrigued expression.
“Impressive. Even most nobles have difficulty identifying the finest coffee at a glance. Do you happen to work for some merchant company, young man?”
“I am a noble myself, despite how I may look.”
“O-Oh dear! I must have phrased that poorly. W-What I meant was that unlike most noble gentlemen, Young Master, you possess a remarkably discerning eye! That was all I meant! Hahaha!”
The old man’s attitude changed instantly when I showed him the necklace bearing House Edwell’s crest.
This was exactly why I had asked Isaac whether I should buy myself some decent clothes instead of continuing to wear these shabby ones....
—Absolutely not. Buy clothes? The fact that your current clothes look shabby will not affect your graduation, Young Master. If we have money to spare on something like that, I believe it would be far better to build another shelf for the shop.
...Isaac had objected, so I had postponed buying clothes.
It was not as though he had been wrong, so I had accepted his reasoning.
Still, clothing was important for someone in business.
Appearance was not everything, but when dealing with people, how one appeared still mattered.
I could postpone buying clothes for now, but before the business properly opened, I would need to purchase something presentable.
“Anyway, how much is this?”
“Fifty gold per one hundred grams, Young Master. As far as I know, that particular variety from Krontea is the coffee most commonly enjoyed by the Imperial Family. Befitting the finest coffee, they say its rich body and acidity are exceptional.”
“Is that so?”
“Even His Grace the Duke of Arnia occasionally sends someone from his household to purchase it. I hear the Duchess is especially fond of that coffee.”
“Then what about this one beside it?”
“It is a different variety, but it is also premium coffee from Krontea. That one is ten gold per one hundred grams. According to someone from the merchant company that supplies my coffee, the lord of House Zeronis, which guards the western border, is particularly fond of that variety.”
The varieties from Krontea were the closest to the coffee I knew.
They were flattened and oval-shaped, with a curved center cut and relatively little space along the split. They also felt somewhat moist and smooth to the touch.
Furthermore, Krontea was a territory known for its agriculture and contained one of the continent’s few high-altitude regions.
If I had to compare its coffee to something from the modern world, it resembled Arabica.
Arabica varieties were sensitive to temperature and pests, making their cultivation conditions inevitably demanding.
Sure enough, the two Krontea varieties were the most expensive among the five.
‘Coffee costs its weight in gold here. The monthly rent for our shop is three hundred and fifty gold, yet one hundred grams costs this much....’
Considering these were unprocessed green coffee beans, they were undeniably expensive.
Still, the price was not completely beyond comprehension.
I had tasted Geisha coffees in my previous life that cost around this much.
But the price range was terrible for my purposes.
If I wanted to run a business, the price needed to be accessible to the public to some degree. Even a rough calculation of the ingredient cost made it obvious that these beans were far too expensive for that.
“How much are these?”
In that case, it was time to turn my attention to the other coffees.
Not the Krontea varieties that resembled Arabica, but the strange beans whose unfamiliar shapes and colors had confused me in the first place.
“All three varieties come from Seiron. The first one there costs one gold per one hundred grams. Occasionally, viscount or baronial households purchase it, but demand is much lower than for the coffees I mentioned earlier....”
“And the other two varieties?”
“For the same weight, fifty silver and ten silver. However, there is almost no demand for those. The Seiron varieties are exceptionally bitter, so servants mostly use them for practicing how to brew coffee before throwing them away. As for the cheapest variety, people say roasting it removes unpleasant odors from kitchens, so that is primarily what it is used for.”
“Hmm. Is that so?”
The Seiron beans were reddish, almost like coffee cherry husks.
They were shaped like pentagons or hexagons with blunt edges.
They looked far too different to classify as Robusta, and I could not find any familiar reference point for them.
‘This really is a class-based society. Even coffee seems to have its own hierarchy. I suppose I should at least be grateful that cheap coffee exists.’
Our café’s primary customers would be academy students.
The student body consisted of both nobles and commoners, and since they were still young, most of them had less money than adults.
Even with nobles among them, if I wanted to maximize profits, I needed to lower the price and appeal to the majority.
That meant the Krontea varieties were unsuitable.
I could reduce costs if I eventually arranged direct transactions with farms or merchant companies, but that was impossible for the moment. Even then, the base price itself was simply too high.
More importantly, the price was excessive compared to the actual quality of the coffee.
‘There is probably a considerable premium attached simply because it comes from Krontea. From the nobles’ perspective, they would naturally prefer coffee from an outwardly prosperous territory.’
The three Seiron coffees, on the other hand, were undeniably cheap.
The difference in coffee prices alone was enough to make me feel the severity of the wealth gap in this class-based society.
‘Judging by price alone, using these three would be much better. I will have to taste them to know for certain, but by my standards, I doubt their flavor is inferior by anything close to the difference in price.’
After considering the matter repeatedly, I reached an easy conclusion.
Taking both price and quality into account, I was dissatisfied with all five varieties from Krontea and Seiron.
‘In that case....’
Ultimately, there was only one solution.
“I will take five hundred grams of each Krontea variety and one kilogram of each of the three Seiron varieties.”
“You mean to purchase all five varieties?”
Exactly.
The coffee I wanted did not exist here.
So I would simply have to make it myself.
***
On the way back, I stopped at a general store and purchased some equipment needed to prepare coffee.
Coffee might still be a culture enjoyed only by a small number of nobles, but I was grateful that there were at least enough people drinking it for ready-made equipment to exist.
“Young Master, may I inspect your spending record?”
“What spending record?”
“It is not because I distrust you, Young Master. If you intend to lead a business from now on, I simply believe it would be wise to manage the funds systematically.”
That was what Isaac said, but his eyes were filled with suspicion.
Did he really think I might have used the business funds for something else?
“Fine. Who can I blame? I should blame myself for living like a wastrel.”
Resigned, I pulled out a sheet of paper and handed it to Isaac.
“Here. I already organized everything because I knew you would complain otherwise.”
“Thank y—Eeeeeek!”
“Why are you so surprised?”
“Th-These tools cost this much?!”
I took out the items I had purchased one by one and explained them.
First, I showed him the equipment I would use for hand-drip coffee.
Then I introduced the handheld roaster, French press, and manual grinder in turn, explaining what each one was used for.
“All of these are used to make coffee?”
“What did you think? That coffee simply appears through magic?”
“N-No, not exactly.”
“Then what is with that look? Why are you staring at me like that?”
“...You do know how to use these tools before buying them, correct?”
Of course I did.
If anything, they were simple enough to be easy.
The names used in this world were slightly different, but their functions were ultimately the same.
The only problem was that everything was manual, so they required considerably more labor than the equipment I had used in the modern world.
‘I only need to manage with these for a while. When the time comes, even if I cannot reproduce modern equipment exactly, I should be able to create something much more convenient.’
There was already someone I had in mind.
About a week before the academy reopened, Griffin’s Workshop would open early to take advantage of the coming rush, and many of the Empire’s talented magical engineers would gather there as well.
‘If I commission something there, I might not be able to build fully automatic equipment, but at the very least, semiautomatic equipment should be possible.’
Thinking about that made the money I had spent feel a little wasteful.
Everything I had purchased was manual equipment, yet the prices were absurdly high.
Frankly, things like this handheld roaster and French press would not even have cost that much on Coupang....
‘Still, what choice do I have? Coffee is considered a nobleman’s culture here.’
Perhaps that was why the equipment was unnecessarily ornate and luxurious in appearance.
It still felt wasteful, but I consoled myself with the thought that it should at least be durable.
“Even so, I think you have spent far too much. We still need more money to finish the interior, but if you squander funds like this....”
“I only bought essential equipment. And I already set aside the money needed for the interior, so you do not need to worry.”
“Hmm. These all appear to be coffee beans.”
“Yes. The one at the front costs fifty gold per one hundred grams.”
“Ah. Fifty gold per one hundred gra—W-What? How much?”
“Fifty gold.”
“Y-Young Master! H-Have you lost your mind?! Even if it is excellent coffee, for that much money we could have several dozen sheets of plywood made and still have money left!”
“It was expensive.”
“This is far beyond merely expensive! Surely you were not planning to make coffee from something this costly and sell it? Good heavens! Come to your senses, Young Master! If the ingredient cost alone is this high, almost no one will even consider buying it!”
“Do you think I am an idiot?”
“Considering your previous behavior!”
“Oh, come on. I told you to forget the old me. I only bought that because they said it was the finest coffee available. I need it as a standard for comparing flavors.”
“Then?”
“The coffee I actually intend to use and sell is made from the three varieties at the back. Those were quite cheap.”
“...Whew.”
Isaac finally calmed down and let out a sigh.
Perhaps because he believed my graduation depended on this business, he had become especially sensitive lately whenever anything involved the shop or our finances.
“But if the coffee is cheap, does that not mean it tastes correspondingly worse?”
“Usually, yes.”
“Then are you saying you intend to sell bad coffee?”
“No. That is why I bought several different kinds.”
“I do not understand what you mean.”
Isaac, who had spent his entire life training with a sword, would naturally have difficulty understanding.
In fact, the same was probably true for nearly everyone in this world.
Judging by how dramatically the prices differed between coffee varieties, almost as much as the wealth gap between social classes, even the nobles who supposedly enjoyed coffee culture appeared to insist on drinking only one variety at a time.
In other words, they drank nothing but straight coffee.
That was actually fortunate for me.
The fact that this world had yet to develop diverse methods, systems, or concepts for enjoying coffee meant there was a gap I could exploit.
“Isaac. Have you ever heard of coffee blending?”