A Soda Shop? What's That?

Carson couldn’t believe it, after contracting the builders for his establishment, it was finally done. It only took a little over a month, and the construction team was a little confused by some of the requests due to never having them before that commission, but the generous funds Carson had been willing to provide had smoothed a lot of that over. The cold room was tricky, and would have been more so without the presence of magic in this world. And the first of his supplies only arrived about a week after the construction work was done. It took Carson a few days of brewing to get the first sodas read. Nothing too crazy, mostly basic root beers, both classical alcoholic and the surgery nonalcoholic variety modern Earth is familiar with, and similarly structured ginger ales. Those were the only ones whose base ingredients were most readily available in the area he was situated in. Oranges, Limes, Lemons, and the like are tropical fruits that would take longer to reach him, even with magical transportation as part of the delivery process. The same held true for melons, it would take time to find a proper analog for the Japanese muskmelons used to make melon soda.

On the plus side, once he got the fruits, he could plant the seeds in a section of his property and cultivate them so he could have them on hand for local production. But he still had to wait it out for the products to test them. Blueberries, Strawberries, and the like were still on route, and they also needed to be tested for the same reasons as everything else. Carson was stuck waiting for most of his components to make his intended products. On the plus side, he at least had enough for a basic start. Making Root Beer, Ginger Beer, and Ginger Ale were a decent start to things, as far as soda shops could go.

Carson hadn’t noticed any changes to his body, which are a common side element to isekai type stories. As far as those sorts of stories go, Carson had limited interaction with them, he knew a few of them were out there and had maybe watched a few episodes of two or three series when he was in the mood for watching television, but he lacked the kind of nuanced understanding others probably would have in his predicament as a protagonist. He was aware of some of the story elements and tropes, mainly due to classmates at school who talked about these things but he had also done a little digging into things regarding their base structures online. His research of particular series usually was in service of his desire to see what sort of sodas the characters were drinking.

When he thought he was ready for the first wave of customers, he began his advertising, putting up signs to direct potential customers and handing out flyers around the nearest town. Root Beer and ginger sodas were all he could provide, but that was okay when this was all new to everyone in this world. Hopefully, he would have more options in the coming months. And depending on the popularity of the products, he could even come to business arrangements with dining establishments. He just hoped he didn’t fall too far into funds getting low, Carson really didn’t want to have to go through the headache of renewing his adventuring license.

The confused and curious questions about his shop when he started letting everyone know he was finally opening the shop were amusing, and hopefully worth it. It had taken Carson some time to come up with a catchy name for the shop, Spells and Soda Shop. He decided he would at least lean into the magic this world had, and probably use a few parlor tricks he picked up over the years to make service a bit more fun and easy. Now, he just had to see who came for a visit first and what they would think. His orders for what would hopefully mean more options were still quite a ways out from even being there for him to actually work on.