Her Beasts Volume Four

Grocery Store Plans Part Two

Fawn looked slightly embarrassed for having kept Iris standing in her living room so long. She quickly waved her into the kitchen where she had one of her males feed the kitchen hearth some more wood. Fawn had caught on to the fact that Iris was not one of the tribes blessed with night vision, it seems. Iris smiled gratefully as she took a seat at Fawn's new kitchen table. The table seemed to be quite sturdy and a good deal larger than the one at Iris's home.

However, with thirty mates, Iris doubted that Fawn's males were all eating at the same table every meal. It was possible that some ate in the living room or in their own rooms, but this certainly served as a sad reminder of just how harsh life was in the beastworld for males. It was likely that only those who were favored by Fawn would ever get a place at the main table. Iris couldn't resent her friend for such a choice, this was normal behavior for the beastworld. However, Iris didn't think she could ever bring herself to accept enough males for such a problem to arise. She'd rather keep the number of males in her family small rather than worry about being able to provide them all with the same level of care and affection.

Iris shook her head, trying to focus her thoughts as she pulled out a tablet from her dimensional bag. Now that Basil had a clinic to work from and store all of his equipment and herbs, there was no need to share the bag with any of her other males. Iris started to sketch a basic design on the tablet with some charcoal before asking some questions

"Have you had any issues with the amount of space you have for storing or processing plants and meat? It might be a good idea for your shop to include two large basement levels so you can have one for refrigeration and one for dry storage."

"We've been alright thus far, but it couldn't hurt to have more space. Since I want to increase the variety and amount of products we sell, it would be good to have storage included in the shop. It could become tiring if we always have to carry goods back and forth from the storage buildings to the shop. I mean, we will still have to transfer things over, but not having to worry about it just because the shop itself gets low on stock would be good."

Iris nodded in understanding. She sketched some more details out and added some notes to a separate tablet. Having the bottom basement for cold storage with lots of bins and shelves would be ideal for meats and fresh produce. However, it would be good to separate the meats and plants to ensure there were fewer food safety concerns. The first basement would likely be for things like flours, sugars, dried fruits, and dried meat. Those would also need to be separated to some extent. Iris looked up from the tablets as she addressed Fawn

"Have you considered selling some fresh meat? It could be good if you broke the meat down into different cuts and only dried and smoked some of them. Things like boar bacon or jungle fowl would be better to sell fresh since they can be used in recipes. Some of the roasts would also be good to keep on hand as fresh, but the other cuts could be good to turn into jerky and dried, smoked meats. Also, I'm planning on putting a wall with doorways in each of the two basement levels. It can be dangerous to have meat and plants mix too much as it can cause people to get food-based illnesses."

Fawn looked worried at this. Iris had mentioned such concerns to her previously, so it wasn't anything new, but it still worried her that others could get sick if her mates were careless.

"The meat thing isn't a bad idea, but I don't know what all the cuts of meat are. We don't tend to separate the meat from our prey like that. We mostly just cut things into more manageable pieces and, sometimes, the males give me the more fatty cuts. I'll follow whatever advice you have regarding food safety. I know I've been sure to remind my males to wash their hands with soap frequently when they process the food and to work on plants and meats separately."

Iris nodded, happy to hear her friend was taking her advice to heart. It was difficult to explain food-borne illnesses in detail since she couldn't exactly get into the whole story. Things like bacteria wouldn't be a concept that beastmen would be able to understand easily. However, Iris was lucky that most of her people trusted her and were familiar enough with the idea of food being able to cause sickness. It wasn't like no one had ever been poisoned by eating the wrong berries or mushrooms before.