I Became a Food Developer in Another World

Chapter 4: This is the real deal (1)

The party is on.

Our White Tower family and the alchemists were invited.

“I knew the coke was going to work from the start.”

Ciel said excitedly but in front of her were dozens of empty Coke bottles.

Even though Coke doesn’t have alcohol in it, her face is still a reminder.

She seemed to be intoxicated with a sense of accomplishment as the alchemist who created the original cola.

Ciel is not alone.

“Our Tower has finally gotten it right.”

Ranya, whose pride had been secretly bruised by being compared to the other towers, was genuinely pleased that the tower’s status had risen.

“Shall we remodel the magic tower? The exterior also looks very old… … ”

Ranya planned an unusually large flex.

Everyone else was busy envisioning their own rosy futures with faces full of reminiscence.

“You’ve made money, don’t you have anything you want to do?”

“Of course there is.”

“What is it?”

Ranya listened curiously.

“Development.”

“Development?”

“Yeah.”

“Develop Coke, right?”

“What are you talking about? I have to do other things.”

Coke isn’t the only processed food.

Ramen, sweets, cereal, pie, soda, fast food…….

The list is endless.

Coke is just one of those items.

I clapped to lighten the mood.

“I’m sorry to interrupt everyone’s excitement, but spending money can wait.”

“Eh?”

“What do you mean, hold off on spending money?”

“We need to develop a new product.”

“New product? Already?”

Everyone’s eyes widened at my suggestion to create a new product, even though we had only been working on Coke for a month.

Ranya asked with a hint of doubt.

“You don’t mean you’re going to spend all the money, do you?”

“I have to use it all.”

“How much money do you have?”

“You know how expensive food development is.”

The first month’s sales of cola certainly exceeded my expectations but there’s a lot more to food development than that.

For example, the amount of magic stones consumed in the first stage of product development, the imagination stage, alone exceeds hundreds of thousands of gold.

The money spent on alchemy is like water.

At least cola is cheap because it’s artificially carbonated, but everything else is likely to be a struggle from the start.

‘Coke isn’t even close to perfect yet.’

When you launch a product, it doesn’t end there. Sometimes problems are discovered after launch.

There were still a lot of things that needed to be improved, such as a crude container for the cola or carbonation leaks.

In the end, it came down to money.

“Senior, why don’t you leave some behind? Master, you had high expectations for the remodeling of the Magic Tower.”

“Hmm, do you think so?”

I was about to give in to Aria’s persuasion.

It’s not that I don’t like it, but our tower is a bit worn out, even for me.

I mean, it’s a historic building, built over three hundred years ago and it’s been around since the founding of the empire.

As old as it is, the interior of the White Horse Tower was in disrepair.

The stairs creaked with every step, and it was not uncommon to find rooms with blown-out doors from experiments.

Because the tower itself was so large, unused rooms and floors were left in disrepair.

The White Tower tried to pass it off as tradition, but to me, it was just old.

It wasn’t for nothing that Ranya brought up the whole remodeling thing.

‘If we spend sparingly, we might have some left over……’

I felt a little guilty about spending all the money on myself.

“It’s okay. It’s Yuri’s money, and he should spend it however he wants.”

“Really?”

“Sure.”

I scratched my head at Ranya’s unexpectedly submissive behavior.

It’s not like her to give in so easily.

Or rather, she was firmly mistaken about one thing.

“It’s a shame, but it is what it is. We’ll have to postpone the remodeling of the tower until next month.”

“What do you mean? We have to spend money next month.”

“Huh?”

“I didn’t tell you, I meant including the money I make every month.”

“What?!”

Ranya exclaimed, stunned.

“Well, that’s five hundred thousand gold……”

“That’s the startup money.”

“……….”

Aria, who was helping Ranya stumble backwards, gave me a stern look.

‘Hmm, I was being too casual.’

Of course, I didn’t say this with the intention of just spending the Magic Tower’s funds.

Cola’s development wasn’t a solo effort.

Without Ranya’s support, I wouldn’t have gotten off the ground,

Ciel, not me, is the one who created the stock that makes Coke what it is.

It was Aria, whose parents own a restaurant, who painstakingly added the ingredients that go into the stock.

In addition, Cola is the result that our Magic Tower family has achieved through hard work and I couldn’t imagine eating it raw.

I’m just confident.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get permission.”

I’m sure it would be impossible not to get permission.

“What are you going to make?”

“Well, I’ll tell you about that later.”

First, I need to fix the leaking carbonation in our Coke.

“You’re just setting me up for disappointment.”

“Don’t worry. You’ll love it.”

With this in mind, I shortlisted the next processed foods that I knew Ranya would prefer.

‘Even a sage can’t resist junk food.’

I’m sure Ranya will like it.

*

Man is a mass of desires.

If you sit down, you want to lie down, and if you lie down, you want to sleep.

If you eat something delicious, you want something more delicious.

We are an amazing animal that finds dissatisfaction in satisfaction.

If you want to know what this is about…….

[Coke tastes weird, I want my money back]

[I’m here at the border, but when I got back, it’s watery and doesn’t taste like the one I had in the capital]

[Why is my coke not carbonated?]

When I introduced carbonation to these otherworldly people who didn’t know it was carbonated, they started claiming it wasn’t carbonated.

“They’re complaining because they drank it late, and it’s natural for carbonation to leak out.”

Ciel’s attitude was that it wasn’t worth responding.

In this world, it was “common knowledge” that carbonation leaks.

It’s like asking why hot coffee gets cold.

Since there was no carbonated beverage in the first place, the technology to contain it hadn’t evolved.

As a result, the carbonation would leak out easily.

Most of the otherworldly lids were corkscrews.

The cork, with its tiny holes, was the perfect structure for carbonation to escape.

The solution, of course, was not difficult.

‘Just invent a bottle cap.’

I sketched a cap on a blank sheet of paper.

It was sharp, with a row of teeth along the circumference.

Ciel, who’d been studying my sketch, cocked her head.

“What is this?”

“It’s a bottle cap.”

“This is a bottle cap?”

“Yes.”

“It just looks like a crown to me?”

“That’s right, that’s why it’s called a crown cap.”

A lid that is opened with a bottle opener in foreign countries, but a spoon in some parts of the Orient.

It was named crown cap because it looks like a crown when turned upside down.

‘When it comes to coke, it’s Crown Cap.’

When you open the cap, the carbonation pops. I can’t stand that.

“So you’re going to use this thing called a crown cap instead of a cork?”

“That’s right.”

I nod at Ciel’s guess.

“This will be the new cap for Coke.”

*

The crown cap was designed to prevent carbonation from leaking out.

These caps were simple in appearance, but not in principle.

The number of teeth on the rim determines the difficulty of opening the cap.

If there were fewer, the cap would be easier to remove, and if there were more, it would be harder to open.

So the modern crown cap was experimented with a lot, and the world settled on 21 teeth.

“That’s amazing,” she said, “I don’t have to worry about the carbonation leaking out.”

Ciel’s eyes lit up when she heard my explanation. She can’t wait to make one.

The otherworldly alchemist was a jack-of-all-trades who was also a blacksmith.

There was a reason they were so expensive.

I drew a crown cap and a set of bottle openers and showed them to Ciel.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a bottle opener.”

“Oh, so it’s an opener.”

“That’s right, you put the teeth of the cap in the groove of this bottle opener to open it.”

“I think you’re amazing, Yuri, and so is Coke, and this crown cap or bottle opener thing….How do you come up with such clever ideas every time?”

“I guess I was born with it.”

If remembering my past life is natural, then I guess it’s natural.

“How long do you think it will take to build?”

“The structure is simple, so it shouldn’t take long. The prototype should be ready tomorrow.”

“Please do me a favor.”

“You’re in good hands.”

Ciel exuded confidence and the next day, Coke’s new lid was born.

“This is called a crown cap, right?”

“Yeah, I like it because it doesn’t leak carbonation.”

“I agree, the last ones I bought were dull and tasteless.”

“This is amazing. How did they come up with this lid?”

“Whoever invented Coke must be a genius.”

The response to the new Coke lids was overwhelmingly positive.

Coke was selling like hotcakes because the corks didn’t keep the carbonation long enough.

There were even collectors of Coke caps.

While the world’s reaction to the revamped Coke continued.

“Let’s make a new product.”

In front of the entire White Tower family, I announced the development of a new processed food product.

“Do you know what you’re going to make?”

“Yes. I’ve decided.”

“What are you going to make?”

“We’re going to make snacks.”

“Snacks?”

“We need something to go with the cola.”

One of the frustrating things about developing Coke was that there was nothing to go with it.

But why snacks?

‘Because nothing is more popular than snacks.’

Snacks existed in this otherworld and they were even quite popular, especially among those who spent all day in their rooms, like wizards.

When they were bored, they could eat a piece or two and go on forever.

Of course, it’s unfair to compare otherworldly sweets to modern nitrogen-packed snacks.

At best, otherworldly sweets were dried crops sprinkled with salt, especially those giant salt bombs.

‘Alas, that was a real pain.’

Whenever I saw the members of the Tower family eating those things as if they were delicious, I would writhe in agony.

For me, it was an otherworldly snack that I was forced to eat to survive.

As I recalled the horrific past, I heard the sound of salivation.

At the word snacks, everyone swallowed hard, waiting for my next words.

Impatiently, Aria asked.

“So, what are these snacks?”

“Pringles,” I said leisurely.

The king of potato chips that took America by storm in the 20th century, this is a real snack.