Lily’s eyes got wide.
Junior was looking completely frazzled!
Had something happened?
And then…
Distraction!
Chuck kissed Delilah, and she was blushing!
But then he gallantly swept off, leaving her behind!
She was gazing at his back passionately…
Young romance!
And then, Delilah noticed Lily, Abel, and Brandon.
“Oh, hi Miss Lily.”
Delilah was still glowing!
“Uh…”
Lily wasn’t sure what to say!
Enter Abel and Brandon, the class jokers!
“Chuck and Delilah, sitting in a tree…”
“K-I-S-S-I-N-G!” Brandon spelled!
And Delilah…
Merely put her hand on her cheek and sighed!
“You both will understand when you get your own girlfriends…”
Zing!
Oof!
Critical hit!
Abel and Brandon clutched at their chests and fell to their knees, playing it up.
“Abel, we’re done for!”
“Brandon… she’s too powerful…”
They were all good friends!
Lily…
Decided to ignore it!
More importantly…
Junior was looking super worn out!
What had happened?
“Hi Junior!”
“Huh? Oh, hi Miss Lily…”
“What’s wrong?! Did something happen?”
Junior put a hand over his face and sighed deeply.
“It was… so busy…”
That’s right!
The cart at the quarry had been busy.
And Lilyburgers #4 had been even busier!
Back in Three Creeks Village, the mayor and his wife had been like celebrities!
And once they bought some food and enjoyed it, it was like a celebrity endorsement!
Plus, some people had heard about the cart at the mine.
And Hazel’s friends had tried it and talked it up!
Word-of-mouth advertisement!
Here, it was even more powerful!
Junior was, himself, a celebrity in town as the son of the mayor!
That they looked so much alike only made the effect even more powerful!
That alone had attracted attention.
People liked Junior, and wanted to see what he was doing!
And on top of that, people had heard about the restaurants opening in the neighboring village.
They wanted to try the new food, too!
So the market was already more receptive.
And then…
The mayor and his wife had arrived!
You see…
They were so thankful they wouldn’t have to cook for themselves!
Another celebrity endorsement!
As Junior was explaining all this, Chuck came back carrying another load of ingredients!
They had bought enough for a hundred and twenty sets…
That should have been enough for the whole day!
But they had sold out!
The people of Stone Pit Village really liked Lilyburgers!
“Wow…”
Lily was stunned.
This was a triumph!
A huge success!
Having vented, Junior regained his composure and got professional again!
Everything had been beyond his wildest expectations…
Just what had his business school education been worth?
Clearly he still had a lot to learn about business!
Who would have thought fast food would be so popular…
Rich and Mac looked super smug, invisible ghosts though they were!
Junior paid Abel, Brandon, and Chuck, and the three boys went off to go do teen boy things somewhere.
And, although Lily was supposed to just be supervising…
She pitched in, too!
She made the lemonade!
Junior made the burgers, and Delilah focused solely on fries!
Odds were, dinner was going to be busy, too…
They cooked and cooked!
And…
Even before dinner time…
People started showing up!
With all the lemonade made, Delilah moved over to burgers, and Lily handled the fries!
Junior moved to take orders!
It started as a trickle, at first…
Then a line formed…
And by closing time for the market, they were flooded with customers!
It seemed like everyone in the village was desperate to try Lilyburgers and fries!
It was endless…
Except…
They only had so many ingredients!
And soon enough…
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
They ran out!
Another hundred and twenty full sets sold!
“Sorry everyone, but we’ve sold out! We’ll be open again tomorrow.”
“Aw, bummer.”
“We’ll be back tomorrow, Junior!”
A lot of the customers had been mothers bringing their daughters…
How unexpected!
Lily and Junior had thought that mothers and daughters would have been less interested, since they could just cook for themselves and their families…
But…
Junior was a catch!
An extremely eligible bachelor!
And now he was working at a restaurant in town!
He was a huge draw to the business…
But he had been so busy the day had been a blur!
No matter how much the girls tried to make their appeals, he was focused on sales!
It looked like Lilyburgers was going to stay busy in Stone Pit village for some time to come…
Junior and Lily worked to do the accounting, and Delilah cleaned everything up, then went to go put in orders for more ingredients.
“Two hundred and forty sets…” Junior said.
A hundred and eighty of those had been with cheese.
“And another seventy sets at the quarry, and everyone wanted cheese on theirs, there…” Lily added.
Three hundred and thirty sets!
Nearly a third of the village had been served!
Actually, it was even more, as a lot of the quarry workers had shared so everyone could try some!
Lilyburgers was taking Stone Pit Village by storm!
Junior and Lily did the accounting together.
For overhead costs, they had the cart hookup and the rent for Lilyburgers #4.
The cart hookup was five dollars for the day, and the daily rent at Lilyburgers #4 was thirty dollars a day.
For labor, there was Junior’s thirty dollars per day, and then ten dollars per half-shift for the four other workers, which meant all the labor for the day was seventy dollars.
All told, it was a hundred and five dollars a day, just to open up.
Then the ingredients cost the same.
They used the same suppliers as Three Creeks Village!
So a Lilyburger set with cheese cost two dollars, and ingredients for that set were forty-nine cents.
And a set without cheese cost a dollar and ninety cents, and ingredients were forty-seven cents.
So for the Lilyburger with cheese sets, they made a dollar and fifty-one cents in gross profit.
And for the sets without cheese, they made a dollar and forty-three cents in gross profit.
Lily did the math…
Four hundred, sixty-three dollars and thirty cents in gross profits.
Minus the hundred and five dollars in overhead costs…
Three hundred, fifty-eight dollars and thirty cents in net profits for the day!
That nearly covered the entire cost of setting up the cart and restaurant!
Even the ghosts were stunned.
“That’s incredible…” Ray said.
“W-well, it won’t be like that every day… will it?” Mac stammered.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves…” Rich cautioned.
“Yeah, today was great, but it was the opening day!” Lily declared.
Junior turned to look at his eight-year-old boss.
“In Three Creeks Village, our opening day had a little boost!” she explained. “After that, things settled down a bit!”
Junior breathed a sigh of relief.
“Oh thank the Gods… I can’t imagine working so hard every day…”
It had been really hard!
There hadn’t been a moment to take a break!
“W-well, if it does stay busy, I guess we’ll have to hire more workers!” Lily said.
That’s right!
She didn’t want to overwork her employees!
Working hard wasn’t bad.
But wearing out was!
And with more workers, they could serve more customers!
Hiring more workers wasn’t a bad thing!
“Junior, let me know if things are too busy and you need to hire another worker! I’ll leave it up to you to pick someone out.”
Delegation!
Lily didn’t live in Stone Pit Village, and Junior did!
He’d have more insight into who would be a good fit, and he’d be supervising them anyway!
“Now, let’s thank the Gods and Goddesses for their help today!”
Lily and Junior said their prayers…
And their Piety Points rose!
Eventually, Delilah came back carrying bags of ingredients for tomorrow’s business.
She bought extras!
But…
“Uh, Miss Lily… the suppliers said they could only sell us so much…”
The butcher, the baker, and the cheesemonger had all put a cap on how much they would sell Lilyburgers!
The potato seller, the ketchup maker, and the pickle stand, they all had plenty of supplies that would keep for a long time…
No problems there!
But Lilyburgers had blasted through all the normal supplies for the entire village!
They couldn’t just buy up all the beef and bread and cheese…
That wouldn’t be fair!
So the other shops had put a cap on how much they would sell to Lilyburgers.
“Hmmm…” Lily hummed.
What a conundrum!
Lily was suffering from success!
While she thought, Delilah was standing there, anxiously…
“Uh, could I get paid now…?”
“Oh, of course! Sorry, Delilah…”
Lily handed her the ten dollars she was owed.
“No, no, it’s okay, it’s just, I have a date with Chuck and I don’t want to be late…”
Teen romance!
“Oh! Well, have fun, Delilah!”
Lily smiled and waved as Delilah left.
Lily and Junior looked at all the ingredients Delilah had brought.
It was enough for two hundred sets, total.
Junior…
Put on his business thinking cap!
He had studied business in college!
He knew what a business was supposed to do in times like this!
He would explain it to Lily!
She was only eight years old, after all.
She probably didn’t know this!
(Actually, she had invisible advisors sent by the God of Death, but Junior didn’t know that!)
“Ahem, Lily, do you know about supply and demand?”
“Huh?”
Lily hadn’t heard of those words before!
“I studied this in business school,” Junior asserted. “You see, we have a limit on our supply, and an excess of demand. So the correct thing to do is raise prices!”
Yes!
The laws of supply and demand!
Lily’s world had some understanding of the concept!
Consider a pitcher of lemonade!
If there’s five servings, but ten people want to buy lemonade at a price of fifty cents, only half the people will get to have lemonade!
In fact, no matter what, only five people can ever have a full serving of lemonade from that pitcher!
But the number of people who want to buy lemonade depends on the price!
If lemonade only cost one cent per serving, almost everyone would want to buy it.
The price was right!
But what if lemonade cost a dollar per serving?
Then, only really thirsty people would want to buy lemonade!
That’s how price affects demand!
When demand is high, and supply is low, prices go up!
That was what Junior had been taught!
And when prices go up, sellers make more money!
So, it was a good thing!
Right?
Lily’s face paled, and her ghosts cried out behind her.
“Noooo!”
But Junior couldn’t hear them!
“Junior… we can’t do that!” Lily said. “If we raise our prices too much, people will think we’re being unfair! And then they won’t come back again!”
That’s right!
If prices got too high…
People would get used to going somewhere else!
Of course, Lilyburgers was the only restaurant in town…
But they always had to consider home cooking!
If people decided that Lilyburgers was a scam, or thought Lilyburgers was ripping them off, they’d just cook at home!
“Junior… I want people to be happy when they buy Lilyburgers… Fast food is supposed to be fast and affordable… We can’t raise prices!”
Lily put her foot down!
Lilyburgers would stay affordable!
Junior rubbed his chin as he considered this.
This was not your average, everyday business.
This was...
Advanced business!
His little boss wasn’t just thinking about the basics he had learned in business school.
She was thinking beyond that!
He was massively impressed!
He didn’t know she had three experienced ghosts telling her the right answer!
But…
“But, Miss Lily, what do we do? We won’t be able to serve all the customers…”
Lily tilted her head, as though she was thinking.
She was listening to the ghosts!
“You could bring over more ingredients from Three Creeks Village,” Mac said.
“That would work temporarily, but in the long term if demand stays high in Stone Pit, it’s not a good solution,” Rich said.
“The best answer is to work with the suppliers, and see if you can get a large standing order with them,” said Ray.
Lily nodded to herself.
“Okay!” she said. “Here’s what we’ll do…”
She explained the plan to Junior, and he agreed.
For now, they would bring some extra ingredients from Three Creeks Village.
And Junior might also pick up even more from Lumberville and Grassy Hill.
And tomorrow morning, they would talk to their suppliers and see if they could put in a large, advanced order.
As Lily and Junior talked, Mr. Cat watched them and yawned.
He was feeling overworked and under french fried…
