Another month passed by while Veronica finished preparing things for the tavern. Thankfully, she had saved stocking up on perishables like meat for the last week of preparations. Some things could be frozen or were shelf-stable, but it would have been pointless to stock fridges with vegetables and fruits that would only go bad, leading to her mana being wasted. Luckily, some things could be shared between one tavern and another if they got too low on any one ingredient. It wasn't like she could have multiple taverns open at the same time anyhow.
Part of the changes for the second floor tavern that Veronica made took into account just how low on staff she would be when she chose to open it instead of the first floor tavern. Elora and Eldrin could help on the first floor, but their contracts didn't require them to help on the upper floors, so she would have to depend purely on her brownies. That meant she'd have four of them to help out with two helping with things like dishes and food prep in the kitchen while the other two played the role of bartender and server. She'd still have to do most of the food preparation herself.
Of course, there would be inn guests who wanted to use the tavern every night on both floors, so it wasn't entirely realistic to always have only one tavern open each night. That meant that Veronica also had to create a second tavern menu for both floors that paired down the options to things that could easily be served without any additional cooking being done. Things like soups could be prepared by her ahead of time and left to the brownies to reheat while the ice cream dishes on the first floor didn't require any cooking at all. It was much easier to teach someone to assemble a dish than all of the nuances that went into cooking one, so that was the plan for the foreseeable future. Hopefully, she'd be able to come up with a better solution, eventually, but she'd have to make-do for now.
The research for the dessert and libations menus for the second floor tavern was just as costly as the light and hearty fare portions had been. However, that was also the hardest part of the preparations for them since most of the [Items] were ready-to-serve.
Would you like to spend 60 DP to research a box of cucumber ice pops using [Base Resources] cardboard, wax paper, cucumber, lime juice, honey, and water?
Yes
No
Would you like to spend 80 DP to research a large jar of geplak candies using [Base Resources] large jar, sugar, rice flour, coconut, salt, water, red dye, white dye, yellow, and green dye?
Yes
No
Would you like to spend 60 DP to research a large jar of grass jelly powder using [Base Resources] large jar, Chinese mesona, sugar, and pectin?
Yes
No
Would you like to spend 30 DP to research a large jar of anko red beans using [Base Resources] jar, sugar, and anko red beans?
Yes
No
Would you like to spend 30 DP to research a large jar of lychees using [Base Resources] large jar and lychees?
Yes
No
Would you like to spend 40 DP to research a bottle of sweetened condensed milk using [Base Resources] bottle, sugar, and milk?
Yes
No
Would you like to spend 100 DP to research a box of steamed flower cupcakes using [Base Resources] cardboard, wax, paper, vanilla, ground coffee, strawberries, sugar, water, coconut milk, flour, rice flour, wild yeast, red dye, and green dye?
Yes
No
Would you like to spend 60 DP to research a box of pineapple swiss roll using [Base Resources] cardboard, wax, paper, pineapple, sugar, cinnamon, cloves, flour, milk, butter, eggs, and yellow dye?
Yes
No
A lot of the names for the Indonesian dishes were actually simplified in their translation to English. Things like the ice pops were originally called names like 'es lilin' while the flower cupcakes were called 'kue mangkok'. However, Veronica wanted a lot of the dishes to sound less alien and for them to be more easily recognizable for herself when she read the order tickets in the future. Meanwhile, things like the geplak candy didn't really have a suitable English alternative to call them by and were a bit of a unique recipe, so she decided to just keep them the same.
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Unfortunately, there wasn't plastic to use for the cucumber popsicles, so she had to settle for paper wrapping using wax to keep the paper from sticking to the paper. So long as the popsicles weren't allowed to melt, it was unlikely to be much of a problem, but it was still not quite as effective of an option as the plastic wrappers used in the modern day.
That was hardly the only change she had to make either. The steamed flower cupcakes usually came in vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate flavors. However, when she was initially making the menu, she didn't have chocolate. Apparently, the chilate she had received in the meantime had cocoa in it, but by the time she realized that was the case, it was too late and she had already completed the research with coffee flavor as a replacement. As for the coloring, using green for chocolate flavor was a bit odd, but everything she had seen on the cupcakes suggested that pink, green, and white were the typical colors for the cupcake assortment.
The geplak candies were actually similarly colored as well. Generally, they came in pink, green, yellow, and white. Veronica wasn't sure what the significance of the color scheme was. The Indonesian flag she knew of was rather simple with a red top half and a white bottom half. There was no way to find out the answer now either since she was no longer in her old world and that information wasn't likely to exist in this new world.
Then there was the grass jelly dessert, which didn't have a specific way it was typically made. Sure, the basic idea was the same as it used a gelatin substance made from Chinese mesona, but the toppings and preparation could vary a great deal. Veronica had decided to prepare it with cubes of grass jelly, sweetened condensed milk, lychees, and anko red beans. It was a rather simple preparation method, but one that she hoped wouldn't be too alien to the people of this world that it wouldn't be able to sell. Plenty of the ingredients were similar to the ones she had used on the first floor anyway, so she hoped it would work out.
The drinks were even more simple as all of them came in bottles or could be added to alcohol taps. Most of the options were types of wines, but there were also some non-alcoholic options as well.
Would you like to spend 40 DP to research a large jar of jasmine tea using [Base Resources] large jar, tea leaves, and jasmine flowers?
Yes
No
Would you like to spend 30 DP to research a bottle of happy soda using [Base Resources] glass, cork, paper, white dye, black dye, red dye, sparkling water, sweetened condensed milk, and strawberries?
Yes
No
Would you like to spend 30 DP to research a bottle of aloe vera drink using [Base Resources] glass, cork, paper, white dye, black dye, green dye, aloe vera, coconut water, lime juice, and sugar?
Yes
No
Would you like to spend 20 DP to research a bottle of rosella wine using [Base Resources] bottle, cork, paper, white dye, black dye, red dye, green dye, grapes, water, hibiscus flowers, and wild yeast?
Yes
No
Would you like to spend 20 DP to research a bottle of dragon fruit wine using [Base Resources] bottle, cork, paper, white dye, black dye, red dye, green dye, grapes, water, dragon fruit, and wild yeast?
Yes
No
Would you like to spend 20 DP to research a bottle of tuak manis using [Base Resources] bottle, cork, paper, white dye, black dye, palm tree sap, wild yeast, sugar, and water?
Yes
No
Would you like to spend 20 DP to research a bottle of kecombrang using [Base Resources] bottle, cork, paper, white dye, black dye, red dye, kecombrang flowers, wild yeast, sugar, and water?
Yes
No
Would you like to spend 20 DP to research a bottle of arak bali using [Base Resources] bottle, cork, paper, white dye, black dye, rice, palm tree sap, wild yeast, sugar, and water?
Yes
No
After finishing the research for all of the menu ingredients, Veronica had ended up spending a total of 1,964 dungeon points. That would normally mean she'd have 256,146 DP left, but another month passing also meant that she had earned more dungeon points during that time. So, she was actually now sitting at 331,035 dungeon points.
The tavern itself was pretty small with only two tables and a small handful of barstools. She had still added a single-toilet bathroom just to ensure customers wouldn't have to leave earlier than necessary. The longer they stuck around, the better chances of them buying the plentiful alcohol and the more money she could make, after all. Even the kitchen was pretty small with only a few magic ice boxes, magic sinks, magic wood stoves, and some shelving for storage. The [Staff Elevator] was also directly in the kitchen, which had resulted in the space being cut down even further.
Still, it should work well enough for the smaller customer base that would visit the second floor tavern. Unawakended individuals would have a hard time making it past the first floor boss in order to unlock access to the second floor. Maybe some of them could pay the adventurers to safely escort them once and forever unlock the stairs between the first and second floor, but most people weren't likely to be brave enough or rich enough for such a thing.
As for the adventurers themselves, the second floor was hardly enough of a challenge for them to be bothered with it, nor did it have as many valuable resources as the first floor. That meant that the only ones who would visit would be doing so exclusively for the privacy and variety the second floor would offer. Hopefully, things would be different in the future, but there was no point in pretending things were better than they actually were right now.