Cake Marketing: Floral Markets

Danovan had been sent to represent Isodore at one of the many wildflower festivals of Castemeria. He had a basket containing a selection of baked goods to set out on the stall she had other adventurers arrange for her.

There was a short ride down a river in a row boat manned by two locals to take him from where his portal arrived to the town that was hosting today's festival. The banks were covered with local wildlife munching on the various flora. It would be a relaxing journey if not for ensuring that he did not spill the merchandise.

The market in question had been set up in a field on the outskirts of the town, which

was called such given this was one of the most built up islands. As such there were multiple markets each with their own theme, for this one the theme was imports.

The stalls were set up in a circle around a special grass that was designed to be soft on bare feet. There were flower beds, some planted with various local flora and others deliberately left to go wild. Each of the stalls was also decorated with flowers from the world that the goods it would sell came from, he sought out the one decked in those from Theodore's Garden. The white ones of the saltstick, the yellow ones known as daft roses and the black ones called dark daisies had been twined up either side of the box. There were strange clovers set up on one of the other stalls, it looked like it was a hand drawn illustration rather than a proper plant and the various flowers decorating that stall did too.

Several other stalls were decorated with flowers made from metal, he wondered which were from Avangarde and which from other similar worlds. He supposed there could be worlds with biological people but metal flora but had yet to come across one.

He placed the basket down under his stall, it was enchanted so that only approved individuals could interact with it. He would have to add the various grains he planned to supplement the decor with later. He wanted to see the parade that was being held as part of the festival before the market opened.

The parade turned out to be a lot less exciting than Dan thought it would. It was really just a procession of florists taking their goods to market whereas he'd been expecting each of them to make a float to show off the goods they sold, maybe a garden on each one.

It was time to return to his own stall. He had bread and cake to sell. There was a second person selling the flowers from his world there. The stall was clearly divided into two so that the inedible ones would not contaminate his product. He was using shadow violets as a decorative addition to one of the cakes and daft roses as an ingredient in another. The next step for now though was to decorate his space with grains such as the tribute wheat and the ultra barley.

The neighbouring stalls were demonstrating just the flowers of their world and not how they could be used in cooking. The person manning the stall with the strange clover was a rabbit person who also looked like they were hand drawn. They also had some other iconic flowers that had the ascetic which was apparently called toon and reflected the fact the world they came from was a living cartoon.

In the end none of the stalls with metal flowers represented Avangarde. They all represented worlds with no biological life but these all had ground on which the metallic plants grew.

There were of course people who sold flowers from more conventional worlds such as the world where everyone was an elf and the various Earths. Then there were those selling flowers that were food in and of themselves. There were even some selling produce from some of these worlds but he was the only one who was selling foodstuffs which had been modified by more than basic cooking.

Dan spent the rest of the day selling Isodore's various wares before he returned home. He took a trip back up the river disappointed he hadn't had as much time to himself as he would have liked, still he'd enjoyed meeting several new potential customers and learning about the various other worlds they had come from. One day maybe he could visit them himself.

Dan took the various produce he had obtained back to the bakery. Isodore would want to see how viable using them in her baking was. They would test alternatives for their carrot cake and apple pies. They had gluten free bread alternatives to try too. They just had to decide was the price worth it and if so for which options, after all there was options for all from their own world.

In the end it came down to a mix of availability and cost, the new versions only being available while the relevant portals were open and the local version being cheaper meant the alternative recipe was used only as a display of wealth. Especially when it turned out that the version made with the local ingredients was much tastier.

Dan would frequently return to sell the products of the bakery to a wider audience but was routinely being sent to other new markets as they opened. It was hard keeping down two full time jobs but that is why the other one was equivalent to being a reservist on a world where the military had that concept not that his neighbours understood when he tried to explain, the local language did not quite have the words to truly convey the concept even if he could get most of it across.

The search for new, cheap, tasty and reliably available ingredients would go on for as long as he remained an adventurer but it would never be a focus when he was working for that guild. Maybe one day he'd find something worthwhile but his visit to Castemeria had not been that day.