The Art of Kaizen and Multitasking

"Are you actually a professional chef or something?"

"No, but I have some knowledge about cooking and running a F&B business from a friend from one of the networking events I-"

Martin stopped halfway through his words as he realized that he might have spoken too much gibberish for the three women to hear.

"What's an F&B?" One of the girls asked.

"Networking event? Is that a festival or something?" the other one asked.

Martin then pulled out an on-the-spot elevator pitch of F&B business strategy, minus the PowerPoint slides.

He explained that he always wanted to have his own business, so he had done plenty of research on different kinds of businesses, including a food and beverage business.

After finishing his quick lecture, the older woman looked him in the eyes and spoke, "Please, if you have any more tips to improve this business, tell me. Of course, we will pay you extra for the information."

Martin didn't actually mind if he shared the knowledge freely with an older woman inside a game.

There was no risk for him unless he suddenly wanted to open his own tavern that targeted the same target market in this fantasy world.

Which was something that he would most likely not do, considering his experience in a low-cost F&B establishment.

But with the benefit of an extra incentive dangled in front of him, it was a no-brainer for him to do.

After a quick sharing session from Martin and what things they could implement right this second, the four of them began working.

The two girls, Silvie and Jane, continued preparing the tables while also doing several more preparations following Martin's instructions.

On the other hand, Martin, and Nancy, the owner of the tavern, were doing prep work for the kitchen.

Before Martin came, the most prep Nancy did was to pull out the ingredients from the storage and pre-cook the dishes that needed a long time to prepare.

But now, the two of them prepared each ingredient for the menu. Pre-chopping vegetables, preparing egg mixture, and half-cooking basic fried food to be finished later on order.

The night came, and the customers started coming in.

Afternoon stall owners, construction workers, and adventurers quickly filled up the seats of the tavern.

Most customers ordered mead and ale, an information that Martin used to pre-pour the drinks into the tankards. 

Giving Jane and Silvie more time to take orders from other customers who didn't have alcohol as the first thing on their minds.

There were also numbers assigned to each table now, making sure that every order went to the correct customer, even if the customer wasn't a regular that the two servers already knew.

With the preparation in the kitchen that Martin and Nancy did earlier, the dishes came out faster than ever, as guests only needed to wait at most 10 minutes for their orders to arrive.

Not only that, Silvie and Nancy now picked up dirty dishes from the customer's table even before they left, and Martin would wash the dishes in between his cooking, making sure they would never run out of plates.

Silvie and Nancy also did maths the moment they weren't attending to customers, making it faster for Nancy to bill the customer and speed up the payment process.

At the end of the busy day, with Martin constantly washing dishes throughout the service time, only a few more dishes needed cleaning up.

By the time Silvie and Jane finished cleaning up the chairs and tables, Martin and Nancy had long finished cleaning up the kitchen as Nancy did the accounting for the day.

"This… We actually sold significantly more than usual… We also had gone halfway through the ingredients that were supposed to be for tomorrow… How?"

The three employees, Martin, Silvie, and Jane, were currently eating their free meal, and Martin answered after swallowing his food.

"It's just Kaizen and Multitasking.

By sending out orders faster, the less time the customers wasted on waiting and the quicker they finish their food.

The faster they get out of here, the faster the potential customers who saw the empty tables would go in.

Maybe this tavern is more popular than you all think it is. And the reason not more people came to this place was because the table was always full.

They might love the food and the service, but they might consider waiting in line for 30 minutes just to have a seat a huge waste of time.

Why would they wait that long if they could just go to another tavern that had empty tables? The food might not be as good, but they could sit down and eat the moment they arrived."

Martin was about to go into more tangent about why multitasking was important in today's operation, but he stopped himself when the three just looked at him as if he were an alien.

Even Silvie and Jane had stopped eating just to hear Martin speak.

Silvie then asked him, "If you're that experienced in running a tavern, why don't you open one up yourself? With your skills, I believe you can persuade some people to give you the money to do it."

Nancy glared at the young lady for a split second, but managed to retain her calm and sighed.

"That is true. With your skills, you can be a successful merchant, or at least a successful tavern owner. Why did you want to be an adventurer instead?" Nancy decided to ask Martin.

Martin laughed and took a sip of the tasty mead. "Well, I mostly cooked for myself, so I don't know what people think of my cooking.

And this is also my first day in this city? I didn't know anything about this city better than a five-year-old toddler."

Jane rolled her eyes, "As if a toddler knew about this Keizin, F&B, and networking thing."

Martin rubbed the back of his head and smiled.

"Besides, I have found something far more interesting than running a tavern."

Martin looked up at the ceiling, imagining all the changes, adjustments he could make to a magic musket.

"Is that the reason why you wanted to work and earn money even before becoming an adventurer?" Nancy asked.

"Yes. I want to earn money to buy a magic musket of my own. I was mesmerized by the magic engineering of it, and I wanted to try out developing my own musket."

Nancy nodded her head in understanding and pulled out 10 silver coins from her purse.

She put it into a small pouch and gave it to Martin.

"This is not enough to buy a magic musket if my memory serves me correctly, but this is your pay for the day and the bonus for the knowledge you've given me."

Martin didn't know the average wage for a cook in a tavern, but seeing the two girls' faces in shock, it could only mean 1 gold was more than two or three times the usual amount they got.

And considering a bronze coin here was about a dollar, getting 100$ after a night of working as a cook was certainly worth it.

He essentially got the same amount of money from only working for two hours as a manager, but he was currently in a fantasy world, not Earth.

'I just need to get 2 more gold for that musket! I'm already a third of the way there!'

Fortunately, Martin didn't need to pay for an inn since he could just log out, so he could save up even more money.

"Will you be coming here again tomorrow?" Silvia asked as she prepared to go back to her room on the second floor.

"I will. But there are some days when I can't come, is that fine by you, Nancy?"

"Of course. We have managed on our own so far. Although it will be harder to be as efficient as we are with you, we'll still be able to do better with the Kaizen thing you've taught us."

With the confirmation that Martin could come back to this job whenever he could, Martin thanked Nancy and said his goodbyes to the three as he left the tavern.

Just as he had planned, the second he got out of the tavern and went into an empty alleyway, he spoke in his mind,

'Log out.'

Martin blinked his eyes, and he soon found himself back on the bed in his apartment.

Sunlight pierced through the blinds, forcing him to squint his eyes as Martin looked at the clock beside his bed.

"12 at noon…."

Several questions raced through Martin's mind about the virtual game that he had just played.

But the first thing he did was call Stephen, asking what the hell was wrong with the kid that called him an old man and shooed him away the second he logged into the game.