Discussion

"Let's talk in my office. You can bring your friend too." The owner, named Greg, knew about Ray's girlfriend and has seen her some time ago. Greg felt that it's weird that Ray brought another girl when the said girl was much more beautiful than Nadia.

"Thank you. Let's go, teacher." Ray and Artoria followed to Greg's office. The office needs to pass the kitchen first and since all of the staff were there, they saw Ray walking with Artoria.

"Yo, Ray. Did you cheat with your girlfriend?" said one of the chefs, Adrian.

"No no, this is my teacher. Her name is Artoria."

"Good evening, everyone. I'm Artoria Pendragon and I'm Ray's teacher."

All of the staff in the kitchen, including Greg, were bewildered by how she brings herself. It was like they were staring at an authoritative figure.

They were not wrong since Artoria was once a King.

If it was not because of Ray "clearing his throat", they won't come out of their stupor.

"Ahh... Let's go, Ray," said Greg and he continued walking.

The staff misunderstood. They thought that Greg wanted to dismiss Ray. They begged Greg to not fire him.

Ray has been a great help and mentor for them. Because of him, the chefs can now prepare better meals and brew more delicious coffee. He also assisted them with their finance sometimes. Unfortunately, their development was after the cafe has little to no traffic.

"Huh? I'm not going to fire Ray. Are you out of your mind?! What kind of person I am to dismiss such a valuable employee?!" Greg said. He knew that Ray helped raise the performance of all of the staff.

Deep in his heart, when Ray wanted to talk about his cafe's future, he hoped that Ray can bring them back from the brink of ruin. Greg will do anything, even giving this cafe's ownership to Ray if he can bring this cafe back.

The reason Greg build this cafe was that he desired to help to create jobs. So if this cafe can be better in Ray's hands, he will give this cafe to Ray with no questions asked.

Fortunately for Greg, Ray already had a plan in mind. Though it will cost a lot of money, Ray was confident he can bring this cafe back and even improve it. His assurance came from when he received Hana. Ray believed that with Hana, he can do everything.

The three of them entered the room. It was a simple room adorned with paintings from Greg's house. The room also has a wooden table, an office chair for Greg to sit on and 2 wooden seats in front of the table complete with seat cushions. On the right corner of the room, there was a blue sofa, a coffee table, and a 1-seater sofa.

"Let's sit there." Greg points to the sofa seats.

After they were seated, Greg opened the discussion.

"So, what's this about?"

"I want to help to restore this cafe from its doom and I need your approval."

After hearing Ray's words, Greg had hopes that the cafe can finally grow into a successful one and even known throughout the country. Though the last part was too much, at least he wanted the cafe can be known throughout the city where it stands, Bogor.

"...Go on."

"Do we need to talk about this with the rest of the crew?"

"We can do that later after I hear about your proposition."

"Okay. I will say the truth, this cafe has a bad interior design. I knew you were the one that designs it, but it doesn't make the restaurant more pleasant. It is weird and should be fixed. The second one is that we need marketing. We can hire people for the sole purpose of marketing but we need to fix the main problem of this cafe, the bad food. I know that the 2 of them have grown but they need some more training."

Ray said it where it hurts the most. Greg was looking at the floor, contemplating on his mistakes. The first time he opened the cafe, he didn't think about making any social media to promote the restaurant, just using handouts and giving it to the people that lived near or using the road in front of the cafe. It was not very effective but he always thought that the cafe will manage, which was his second mistake.

His third and biggest mistake was hiring not-so-good chefs and not firing them in time. If Greg hired new chefs, his cafe will not be in this state. But alas, by the time they improved, it was all too late.

He knew the traffic was really low but he still went with it, and now he was the one that felt the full force of his wrongdoings.

"I can help you revive this cafe to its glory. I'm not asking for anything in particular, because I like this cafe and its people so I wanted them to be happy as well. With the cafe being like this, it is not only you, owner, but all of the crew also feels sad."

"...What do you propose?" Greg was still looking at the floor, feeling that he failed his employees for making the cafe this way.

"I can help with the marketing and the food, but I can't help with the design of the cafe. If you don't have any person to help, you can always rely on your employees. Don't you remember that Chika has an Interior Design degree and Budi has a DKV degree as well? With their brains, I'm sure that they can design something great."

Chika was one of the waitresses and Budi was the only waiter. They were both from the same university, albeit from different faculty. Both of them were childhood friends that have lost contact for some time. But because of 'Greg's Coffee', they reunited.

"You are right. How do you want to help with marketing?"

"Should we invite all of them to the discussion?"

"Yeah, I think we should." Greg got up and exit the room to call all of the staff and turned the sign into 'Closed'.

While Greg was doing his thing, Ray and Artoria had a short conversation with each other.

"Is it okay for me to be here?" Artoria asked. She felt that she was not supposed to be here because she's not one of the employees.

"It's okay, teacher. Since I need your help on something else."

"What is it?"

"Can you become the taste tester for the new menu? I'm not a great cook but I hope I can satisfy your palate."

"As long as I can help." Artoria was glad that she can help her only student with something else so that his mind will not think about "training-related" stuff all the time. Even though training didn't start yet, she knew that once Ray feels the increase in his power, his mind will only focus on training. It's a good thing if someone put their mind in what they were doing, but everything needs moderation.

The door opened and all of the employees entered the room. Greg's briefly told them that they need to go to his room because they need to discuss things inside with Ray. When they heard it, they were in high spirits.

'Finally, things will change.' is what in everyone's thoughts when Greg told them about what was going on inside the room.

With the addition of 1 chair taken from the front, all of them has seated around the coffee table.

"So, what are you going to talk about?" Adrian asked.

"Okay, I want everyone's participation here. Not a single person will be idle when we rework the internal affairs of the cafe. I want to address the problematical things that we are facing. First, our food sucks. Adrian and Santoso already improved but it is not enough for what we are going to do. But I have a solution for that. The second thing is we need Chika and Budi's brain to change our cafe design. Angelica will help me market our cafe."

When Adrian and Santoso heard Ray's complaint, they felt very bad. But they placed their hope in Ray's solution.

For Chika, she thought that she can finally utilize her knowledge from her university. For Budi, he was confused about why he needed to help Chika in designing the cafe's interior because he never learned about interior design.

Angelica was in the same state as Budi. She never dealt with marketing, so Ray essentially assigning her to her "new job" with Ray was both exciting and scary at the same time.

"I'm sure some of you were perplexed. Well, I need Budi to help Chika because you learned about designs in your entire university years, right? So I thought that your creativity can help Chika while she's the 'lead' designer of the cafe. For Angelica, I just need you to be the face of our cafe because you are beautiful and it attracts customers."

Budi's mind finally 'clicked'. He's also sure that he can help his childhood friend with his knowledge.

Angelica, on the other hand, was trying her hardest to not look flustered. Ray is the most handsome man she ever saw in her entire life and a handsome man like him, calling her beautiful, made her heart beat faster.

Unfortunately, not only that he already has a girlfriend, but he also has a beautiful teacher and their age was simply too far for her taste.

Because of Angelica's hard work, the rest of the employees didn't even realize that Ray's words can be construed as someone trying to flirt with a girl.

"Now that's out of the way, I will tell you what I have planned for marketing. We need to have a customer loyalty program so people will return to us instead of eating somewhere else. We don't need to offer too many things, just simple discounts are enough. For that, let's use something that they always brought with them, smartphones. Using cards can be a hassle, especially if they forget about it. Using something like smartphones simplify this."

"But how can we convince people to enter this program?" asked Santoso

"Simple, entice them using discounts. Who doesn't like discounts, especially if the foods are great? Talking about food, I'm going to cook something later. Back to the program, put some kind of fear inside of them that they will be missing out on promos and stuff if they didn't join is also a good idea. I will create our social media, website, and also the application. In 1 week, I will get everything ready."

"What kind of loyalty program that we will use?" asked Greg.

"We will use points for now. The more they spend with us, the more points that they get. Don't make it seemed like we milk them out of their money, the easier they can get the points, the better. Though making it too easy will liquidize this cafe in a jiffy. We can introduce some kind of dart games for the members as well if they spend enough money on us. Any questions?"

All of them were not convinced. They knew that for this customer loyalty program to work, the taste of each menu will need to satisfy their palate somehow.

Unknown to them, Ray already talked with Hana about his [Cooking] skill. Though it was still G, he can upgrade it by spending 50.000 System Points so that it reaches C.

On a side note, on Earth, D can be considered the pinnacle. So having a C in any of Ray's skills will help him quite a lot in life.

Though 50.000 System Points was not too much, it was still discouraging to see a little chunk of his points spent like that.

"I think all of you will need convincing. Let's go to the kitchen, shall we? I'm going to cook something simple." Ray planned to make a simple salt and pepper steak.

So all of them went to the kitchen. The moment Ray's intent focused on cooking, his [Cooking] skill kicked in. Ray opened the freezer and found some meat that he can use. The meat was tough even before freezing, so he went with pineapple to marinate the tough meat.

Ray cut and put the pineapple in the blender. After it has turned into something similar to mush, he poured out the pineapple into a bowl, submerged the meat and let it sit in the fridge.

After around 30 minutes, Ray washed the meat to get rid of any pineapple mush, put salt and pepper and then sear it in a hot pan. He also put 1 tablespoon of butter for the fat and also 2 cloves of garlic. When the steak was done the cooking, he let it rest for 10 minutes while covered in an aluminum foil before cutting it into 8 pieces.

The employees, including Artoria, were puzzled why he put the meat inside a pineapple 'mush'. Even Adrian wanted to know why, but all Ray said was, "Just wait."

It was like Ray became another person when he was cooking. That can be blamed for his [Cooking] skill though. It made him focused on cooking that nothing can disturb him, except if he suddenly is in a dangerous situation.

When the steak was being cooked, all of their confusion was thrown out of the window. The aroma from the steak was so enticing that they drool unconsciously. Since Ray let the steak rest, they almost grab the meat with their hands because they can't wait to taste it.

When Ray was done plating, they didn't even grab the fork and just use their hands, except Artoria. She can keep her composure, enough to not break any etiquette.

For them, it was the most delicious steak that they ever tasted. The meat was so tender that they thought that it was not the cheap meat that they always used.

Some of them wanted Ray to cook more, but the 2 chefs were discouraged. The level between them and Ray was so high that they almost lost hope of competing with Ray.

But the goal was finished, Ray wanted to convince them that the loyalty program will succeed. With the steak that he had cooked, the employees didn't need more convincing.

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Hello again, everyone.

Whew, finally finished this one. I was hoping to complete, edit, and publish it yesterday. But I was too sleepy to continue.

All that marketing stuff, I'm not an expert. I know there are more ways to revive a failing restaurant, better than what I had in mind. I'm a Computer Science student and I never deal with any kinds of marketing.

Please don't judge me when Ray cooked. I only have superficial knowledge about cooking XD. Though I always watch cooking videos in youtube at least once a day, I never cooked something so... fancy. Only a barely passed omelette, rice, and heating water. I have cooked Cacio e Pepe and Mac and Cheese but... better not talk about that.

I kind of wanted to "go premium" in Grammarly. It has help me a lot in not just writing this novel, but also writing formal emails and stuff like that. The only problem was that I don't have enough money because it was too expensive for me.

Well, I hope you enjoy my writing and good night.