Princess of the 19th Century Department Store - Chapter 17

Chapter 17

In the kitchen, the stove was packed full of coal. White steam rose from the pot, where golden macaroni bubbled away with a soft gurgle.

Mary, wearing an indigo smock, busily stirred the pot with a wooden spoon.

Today’s lunch was a little more elaborate than usual: macaroni with green sauce.

A small pile of chopped bacon sat on the cutting board as well, bought by Mary early that morning from a nearby butcher’s shop with a basket over her arm.

She only had two children to look after today, so she had plenty of time. For lunch, she prepared a proper meal instead of tea snacks.

Leaning against the doorway, Daisy said, “We’ve already sold half of the six pounds of cookies. We can start making more.”

“Huh?” Mary turned around.

“It isn’t even noon yet, and we’ve sold that many already?”

For cookies this expensive, selling half of them meant a net profit of forty pence after costs.

That was already enough to pay her for two days of watching the neighbors’ children.

Mary immediately began to consider baking cookies full-time.

“So this really works. Then tomorrow I’ll turn down the jobs looking after those little ones.

“Baking cookies has to be easier than minding children, doesn’t it?”

Mary thought that, in any case, business looking after babies had been getting worse lately.

Daisy considered it. “It’s not impossible.

“Why don’t we simply do what Lobit Grocery does and start making prepared foods like pastries and the like?

“But there is some risk involved. The prepared-food business may not stay this good in the future, so we need to factor that in too.”

Daisy had thought it through. Once the shop was fully up and running, there was no way she could manage it all by herself.

They would definitely need many helpers to fill fixed positions, such as prepared-food workers, an accountant, and shop clerks.

Ideally, she would only need to focus on managing purchases, deciding what goods to stock, and setting sales strategies.

Given their current circumstances, the best choice was to hire family members as employees.

Mary rinsed the bowls and plates, dried them, fished out the macaroni, then took three ceramic plates down from the rack as she said,

“Of course. It’s business. Things can’t stay good forever.

“But if we don’t try, we won’t know whether it works. And if prepared foods stop selling well, I can use this chance to practice my skills. Later, I could even find work at a restaurant nearby.”

Although Mary had a blunt temper, she also possessed the practical simplicity of an ordinary townsfolk woman. She was not arrogant or unrealistic, and she understood how business worked. She was not blindly rushing in.

So Daisy agreed with relief.

She would never hire anyone full-time if they lacked the right temperament and maturity.

If Mary spent the whole day making food for retail sale, then many processed foods no longer needed to be purchased from outside.

Cookies, candy, jam-the same went for all of them. They could even add more categories.

For example, sausages, sandwiches, roast meat, and even fried instant noodles and puffed snacks.

As long as Daisy could work out the recipes.

As for the preparations needed to sell hot food, all they really had to do was go to the market and buy a batch of takeaway packaging.

Thick kraft paper boxes, thin oiled paper, soft paper bags, and plenty of Mason jars. At present, every grocery store and takeaway prepared-food shop in London packaged their goods this way.

Daisy sat behind the counter, head lowered as she recorded her to-do list in a small notebook.

She also needed to go to a stamp shop and have a stamp carved with the store name on it, then buy an adjustable rolling number stamp to mark production dates.

In the kitchen, Mary began sifting flour again, preparing to bake Diamond Cookies and bread.

The weather remained gloomy all day. A cold sleet drifted endlessly through the air, but Clark Alley was filled with a rich, fragrant aroma.

By the time it was nearly two o’clock, the restaurant chefs and small shop owners were on break.

Daisy drank another cup of Assam black tea and roused herself to receive this wave of customers.

Before long, four or five customers arrived one after another. Holding umbrellas, they crossed the long, narrow Clark Alley and stopped inside Nash Grocery.

A little while later, they walked back toward their own shops under their umbrellas, each carrying a paper bag in their arms.

Lobit Grocery was located at the entrance of the alley, so Mr. Lobit noticed this strange situation immediately.

His business today was ordinary enough-not good, not bad. It was raining, after all. Every household was the same in this weather.

However, he observed that all the people going into Clark Street under umbrellas came out holding paper bags, clearly having bought something.

Had they gone to Nash Grocery, or to Piero’s Grocery?

Why had they ignored his shop?

The more Mr. Lobit thought about it, the more puzzled he became. He was already selling household goods through discounts and promotions. Wasn’t that the same thing?

After thinking it over, he called George over and told him to find out what was going on, especially at the Nash family shop.

Hearing this, George had no choice but to put down the towel in his hand, put on his hat, and run out into the rain.

Mr. Lobit knew that the annoying old woman was ill now, and that the Nash family grocery was being managed by her granddaughter.

A red-haired little girl like that had merely attended a Girls’ School for a few days. She had never done business before. What kind of shop could she possibly run well? She was just barely holding on.

In his view, this was exactly the time to press his advantage and bring their shop down.

Before Nash Grocery had moved onto Clark Street, he had already driven away several batches of grocery stores inside Clark Street.

Whenever there was no grocery store on Clark Street, most of the hundreds of people living there had to come to his shop to buy things.

This time, he thought, once he drove the Nash family away, he would simply rent that storefront himself and expand the number of shops he owned.
After pacing around the house for quite a while, he decided to go out in person.

Nash Grocery.

During the lull after noon, the cooks and shopkeepers of Dorothy Street came in by twos and threes and bought up all the Diamond Cookies.

By evening, when many people were getting off work, the neighbors had all come home as well.

Even though it was raining, quite a number of customers still came to Daisy’s shop.

Of every ten people who passed the door, three or four would come in for a look.

Most of them were customers who had gotten a bargain because of the discount campaign.

They knew that the Lobit family and the Nash family were secretly competing, each trying to outdo the other with promotional goods.

Now they visited both grocery stores every day to see whether anything good happened to be on sale.

Consumers at the bottom did not care whose reputation was better or whose storefront was smaller.

They only cared where the goods were cheap and useful. They were the most practical sort of people.

And the three farthings products Daisy had prepared today were extremely popular with them. Word spread from neighbor to neighbor until everyone nearby knew.

After the news got out, even some children and chimney-sweep apprentices ran over from the nearby streets and alleys.

Their purpose was to buy a bag of three farthings hard candy balls, which was practically the only snack they could afford.

There were also young girls who helped with chores at home and usually could only wash, starch, and iron laundry for others to supplement the family income. Today, they came with their small change to buy loose cocoa powder and lemon slices.

By night, the family members had returned one after another, ready for dinner.

Daisy also began the daily closing accounts.

Hundreds of pennies seemed to sprout wings as they flew into the counter drawer.

She made a rough calculation. From afternoon to evening, nearly fifty customers had come for the promotional goods and the three farthings products.

The whole day’s customer flow was over seventy people, with most of them concentrated in the afternoon.

Sales of promotional daily necessities, three farthings products, and homemade food were split evenly between the first two categories together and the homemade goods.

The profit on the first category was thin, but the profit on the latter two categories reached half the selling price.

Averaging the three together, the net profit was about one-third of the sales revenue, higher overall than the previous one-quarter.

Today’s average spending per customer was twelve pennies.

Total sales came to nine hundred pennies, which was close to four pounds.

Calculated according to the shop’s current net profit rate of thirty-five percent, her net profit today had exceeded one pound.

Compared with the actual profit of ten shillings over the past two days, it had fully doubled.

If they could maintain this level of sales every day from now on, then the next time she stocked up, she could prepare a budget of more than ten pounds.

If they could keep the current profit every day, that would be thirty or forty pounds in a month.

If they could earn that much, Daisy planned to call Fred and Mr. Nash back as well to help run errands and do odd jobs for the family.

The two of them were very familiar with the routes around Whitechapel, and it would be safer for them to run around outside than for the women.

For such a small slum grocery store, using family members as employees was already the most suitable operating model.

Daisy recorded the numbers with satisfaction, making plans in her heart.

Night completely swallowed the dark blue sky. After she finished recording everything, she moved the ladder out and took down the gas lamp hanging under the porch, signaling that business was over for the day.

Cold rain was still falling in the alley. Business at the tavern across the way was not good tonight. Through the half-window, she could vaguely see only one or two people drinking.

As for the regulars who usually haunted the tavern, not a single one was in sight.

That was how business worked for a little shop like that. When the wind blew, half the customers left; when it rained, they all ran off. London weather was unpredictable besides.

If a place had nothing special and was not worth someone walking out with an umbrella, then naturally it would seem deserted.

Fred finished putting away the iron milk cans, took some wooden boards down from the storage room, and fitted them over the windows.

Then he pushed the wooden door shut and locked it, and the family prepared to eat dinner.

In the kitchen, smoke and heat curled through the air. Tonight’s dinner was fairly simple, since Mary had spent most of her time baking cookies.

On the small square table were a few plates, bottles, and jars. There were only simple fried eggs and fried sausages, along with some slices of bread and dry cheese.

In the middle sat a plate of cookie scraps. That was all the food.

However, no one in the family was picky about the meal. After working all day and making do with a quick bite at noon, everyone was already ravenous. At that moment, they mainly kept their heads down and ate, only occasionally discussing what had happened to each of them that day.

Mary decided that she would make cooked foods and baked goods full-time, and not a single person thought there was anything unsuitable about it.

Daisy believed that when it came to preparing food, Mary truly had her own skill. As long as she was given an exact recipe and measurements, she could succeed after one try. Even with unconventional foods, she could reproduce them to ninety percent similarity.

As for Mr. Nash and Fred, they were shocked by the profit that cookies could bring.

If the two of them had not known that their hands were as clumsy as turnips, they would have been tempted to pack up and come home to make cookies themselves.

Now that the work had been divided, the only thing left was to plan which products they would produce.

On this matter, everyone was self-aware enough to keep quiet. They only listened silently as Daisy spoke in a clear and organized manner.

…