“You’re the guy buying over my eating house?”
Quincy nodded, surprised at how fast it took for the Guild to get things done. Apparently the guilds had a network of folks on speed dial, using the newly invented pinging machines. It only worked within the city, and is isolated from the rest of the Empire, but good enough.
“I see.” The owner was an old man, Mister Robert, as the shop called itself. He didn’t remember seeing him in the restaurant.
“How’s your wife? I heard she was sick.”
Robert nodded. “She’s fine now. That magical rare herb did the trick, and she’s recovering. But that damned herb and the healer’s treatment was expensive, so I’m down by 20 gold coins. Even with all my savings, I didn’t have that kind of money.”
“You borrowed, then?”
“Yes. I borrowed 10 gold, but I had to pay back 12 gold.” Robert sat. “I suppose I’ll have to start a smaller business, once I let my restaurant go.”
Quincy thought for a moment, and smiled. “Actually, I have a proposal.”
“Huh?”
“Would you mind staying in the business for a bit, as an external consultant or advisor? I’ll pay you a service fee, I’ll need you to stay on to keep the staff, maybe for a few months, and help me deal with the authorities, while I learn the ropes. We can agree on the payment once I look through your financial records.”
The old mister Robert sat and sipped his water. “You’d do that?”
“I’m not here to raid your business, Mister Robert. I’m here to make money, and I’ll make more money if I keep people working hard for me.” Quincy said frankly. “Don’t worry, though, I’ll work you to the bone.”
Mister Robert stared, and then laughed. “You seem like a spirited young man. Are you sure you're up for this?”
“Yes. The question is, are you?”
He grinned. “Well, I suppose my old ways are a little rigid, but so be it.”
Despite his age, he walked fine and went to one of the cabinets in his living room. “These are my summarized financial records for the past few years. The detailed one’s are in the restaurant.”
“Great. I’ll have a look at them.”
***
Quincy returned to the mansion just in time, as the [Magical Maid Core] suddenly clicked and notified him of the completion.
[Magical Maid Core Mission 2 - Command the linked maid to clean all the rooms while wearing the maid uniform. Completed]
[Magical Maid Core ability unlocked - Defensive Measures. The mansion’s automated defensive measures are now under your control.]
[Next mission locked until Mission 3 is completed]
“Oh okay.” Quincy thought to himself, as he reached the gates, and opened the door to find a really dirty Sara. Her apron was almost all stained brown from dust, soot and dirt, but she smiled when she saw her master return.
“Master Quinn, you returned. I’m pleased to tell you that you were right! I gained six levels in the [magical knight-maid] class, and I now have additional abilities. I thought I should demonstrate it to you now!”
Quincy paused. “Are you sure this is a good time? You look like you need to wash up.”
“I have two new skills! [Clean Outfit!]” A brief flash of white light, and she was clean from head to toe. Her apron was sparkling white, and her uniform was clean again.
The young master was impressed. “Amazing. This means you never have to wash your uniform.”
Sara nodded, somehow she had gotten used to the maid outfit in a single day. "Not just that! I'd never have to deal with dirty outfits while traveling!"
“What’s the other one?”
“Oh, it’s [First Maid]. I can heal you for any injuries or light damages, and prevent you from dying.”
“That’s useful! I guess this was fruitful!”
She nodded. “But it’s likely I’ll only gain levels when there are things to clean. If the mansion is already clean, I won’t gain levels from mopping again. I noticed that I only gained levels after I was done with a dirty room.”
“Great.” Quincy said, and then felt his stomach growl. “Actually, Let’s talk more over dinner. Are you hungry?”
She nodded, and she touched her belly. “Yeah. Very.”
***
“We’ll run a restaurant business.” Sara paused, and looked at the file Quincy brought home. Quincy had bought some additional paper on the way home, for his notes and calculations.
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“Yeah. Come, sit next to me. I’ll walk you through it and you can tell me if you spot any flaws in my idea.”
“Alright, so, before we buy any business, the first thing we need to do, naturally, is to know exactly what we are buying, and from there, calculate how to arrive at a fair price. There are many ways of doing this, but since we are buying a restaurant, it’s important to look at their profits.”
Sara nodded, she still wore the maid costume and sat next to her lord. Quincy had to admit it took a bit of willpower to control where to look. “So, look here. This is revenue. This is how much money they receive from their customers.”
Quincy took out a piece of paper.
“First, we need to set up some expectations.”
The young master began writing.
“So, they’re open six days a week, so that means they operate for a total of 300 days. They have fifteen tables in that restaurant, for a total of 50 seats, and each meal, approximately, 30 to 40 bronze coins. Let’s say each seat gets used twice a day, once for lunch, once for dinner, for 40 bronze per meal. Based on this, they are at 300 days, times 50 seats, times 40 bronze, times two.”
“That’s 240 gold.”
“They’re nowhere near that.” Quincy answered. “But I assume that’s their peak capacity, if they sold out every day. But looking at it, they have total revenues per year of about 60 gold, and of that, they spent 24 gold to pay for materials and kitchen supplies. Then, Mister Robert takes a salary of 5 gold, and five maids and chefs take a total of 4 gold each, for a total 20 gold. They spend another 7 gold on various things like rent, repairs, paper, reports and stuff.”
“That leaves a final profit of 4 gold.”
“After tax, 2 gold. In truth, I made money out of his desperation to sell and pay back the debt, because if we cut out his salary, and replace with another waitress, for 4 gold, the profit would improve to 2.5 gold. Not just that, if we discover that we don’t actually need to pay Mister Robert his 5 gold, we could instantly recover my cost within two years. Wait. Maybe slightly longer once we pay taxes on that higher profit.”
Sara paused. She was a knight, and all this financial stuff made her mind spin. “Master, the numbers are making me dizzy.”
Quincy laughed, and slung his hand over her shoulder like she was his best buddy. “Sara, we’ll be dealing with this alot.”
She blushed at how close her master was. “Did you drink, master?”
“No. I just had tea.”
Maybe it was how close her master was that made her heart beat so fast.
“So, there are two main upsides in this arrangement. One, we figure out how to make more customers come to our restaurant. Increase revenues. Two, we find ways to cut our expenses. We’ll need to go through and examine that 7 gold for what it is, and also, the purchases for materials of 24 gold. Three, we find ways to make the restaurant make money other than from the sale of food and beverages.”
Sara nodded. That part sounded sensible.
“If we could get some discounts on materials, we’d be able to improve profits.”
Sara flipped through the file, and then noticed there was a line called rental.
“Eh. They pay 4 gold per year for the restaurant as rent.”
“Ah!” Quincy nodded, as he immediately had some thoughts about property costs. “Who’s their landlord?”
Sara flipped through the ledgers to the page with the header, 'rent'. “The Han family’s property investment arm.”
Quincy thought for a moment. Would it be worth it to buy over the property from the Han Family? It was a fairly small place, and they’d have to pay 4 gold? If they got a 5 year return period, that valued the property at 20 gold.
***
"12 gold." Quincy, as it turned out, had the wrong idea about the state of the market.
The threat of looming war or some nasty disaster meant most property owners didn’t expect to really hold their property, and many owners often just sold it for its initial construction cost plus one or two years profit. The concept of rate of return had not spread to large segments of the market, and many just hoped to recover cost plus some profit for holding it.
Naturally, the construction cost of a shop plus its land cost fluctuated from time to time, primarily driven by volatilities in material cost. Construction of simple single-story wooden shops, with some brick foundations didn’t cost more than 10 gold, and the land itself was cheap, at 1 to 2 gold. That also placed a damper on the selling prices of old shops, since most new shop owners would prefer to just buy or build a brand new shop, to their specifications.
“Is that expensive or not?” Sara didn’t seem sure.
“No. Not at all, actually.” Quincy said, as he realized that most normal shops were essentially priced at ‘replacement cost’, instead of any specific future value.
Undesirable properties, such as his mansion, were pretty much sold at a loss. He wondered whether this was partly because the Bridgehill’s Trades Guild also seemed to handle sale of properties, instead of the typical merchant guilds, or whether the rich people in this town was not as familiar with the common investment and business theories known to the Great Families.
“It sounds pretty expensive to me.” Sara whined. “If I’m paid 4 gold a year and after my own food and spending, I’ll barely save 1 gold. Maybe less. I’ll take a decade to pay it back.”
Sara was already paid more than that. In fact, his father ensured her family was well taken care of.
“Not for a business.” Quincy countered. “Do you have the list of all the properties on sale?”
“We sort of have a list here, but it’s not complete. There’s some where the owners have not informed us of their intention to sell.”
“Do they have to?”
“No, but we help them sort out the paperwork with the Town Hall, so most of them do.” The guild member responded.
Quincy stewed on the statement for a moment, and then back at the map. His objective was to make a lot of money, and establish himself as one of the financial players in this city. He’d naturally need security to go along with it, but at the current level, the threats he faced should be easy for the powered-up Sara.
Large plots of land on the outskirts of Bridgehill were not yet developed, as were some scattered patches of land.
“What sort of building do you guys do? What sort of projects do you get?”
The guild member smiled. “We get a lot of outfittings work, where we need to decorate a place or rearrange. We also get some construction work here and there, for single homes.”
“Nothing large scale?”
“Nah. No one has that kind of financial backing. Our banks are conservative.”
The young lord smiled and thanked the guild member for his explanations, and walked away. Quincy briefly filed the idea of creating large housing projects for rent. Property rentals as a landlord was one of the great ways of ensuring an army of willing workers, where one worked for accommodations or lodging.
“Where should we go?” Sara asked.
“Back to Mister Robert. He needs to introduce me as the new owner. We’ve got a restaurant to run.”
“We?” Sara looked at Quincy as if she had a part in this.
“Yes, you’ll help.”
***