Upper Crust

“Whew, what a day. Ahhhh sweet sofa, come to me…”

Pinny flopped himself down on the couch and let out a yawn that stretched his jaw wide as he made himself comfortable on the cushions. He was about to shut his eyes when he saw Cookie standing over him with a frown, at which point he pulled himself up and made room for her next to him.

“That’s better. I want to rest too you know.” she said with a slight tone of annoyance which quickly vanished. “Now then.”

“Ah yes, the great plan. So you said you’ve got something? Something that needs work beyond just baking.” Pinny asked her as she sat down next time him and leaned into him to relax.

“Yeah...although it sounded a bit fanciful and almost like something out of one of those old ponies tales you hear when you’re a foal.” Cookie started to explain. “You know how I’ve been going around the city searching for special ingredients?”

“Oh yeah. Well you had some success didn’t you? I saw you bring back a whole bunch of things the other day.” Pinny mused.

“Well yes, but there was one thing I didn’t show you. Hold on.” Cookie replied, getting up off the couch and disappearing into one of the few rooms their apartment had. Pinny heard her rummaging around as items were shifted. Whatever it was she was getting it was pretty clear she had hidden it. Eventually she returned with what looked like a rather plain bag which she put on the small table in front of the couch.

“So uh, what is it?” Pinny asked.

“I got it from a rather strange pony in a warehouse near the docks. I didn’t want to go back and get more without explaining what it is first.” Cookie said.

“So go on, explain. I’m waiting to hear what it is.” Pinny said, Cookie opening the bag to reveal an ordinary looking pile of white sugar inside. “...But that looks like sugar to me.”

“Well, it is sugar.” Cookie said. She watched as Pinny inspected the bag.

“It has very few markings, in fact they haven’t even listed the ingredients. Isn’t that illegal?” he asked.

“Well yes...and no. It’s imported sugar. The pony I spoke with said it comes from a land far beyond Equestrian borders but a small town is dedicated to producing this stuff. That’s partly why it’s not labelled as you’d expect, another race produces it but he didn’t say who or what.” Cookie carried on. “Probably for the best, the whole deal seemed a little shady but I think this might be what could really put us on the map. I stumbled across all this quite by accident on my travels. They told me they could supply as much as we needed. It’s a little more expensive than what we use right now but I was promised we’d start making the money back tenfold if we used it.”

Pinny raised an eyebrow. “That sounds like some mighty slick salespony talk to me. Are you sure you weren’t swindled?” he asked. “We’ve precious little money as it is what with pouring it all into this.”

“Well, I only bought this bag. I said I’d be back if it worked.” she reasoned. To Pinny this seemed fine, a single bag of sugar was hardly going to put them into debt.

“So what’s so great about it?” he asked.

“It’s something to do with the way they make it, it’s extra sweet and apparently has a very light addictive quality. If you add it to food ponies will want more. Perfect for us because we put sugar in almost everything we bake. I figured we could try it tomorrow and if we get repeat customers we’ll start using this. It could be the thing that wins over that critic and more customers. What do you think?” she asked, picking the bag up and holding it in her hooves.

“Well...we need something. Honestly I was hoping for some novel treat ideas but this is the one time we’ve struggled. We don’t have the time to sit here for hours trying to think of new and wonderful treats for the ponies of the city right now...perhaps we can in a year or two when we’re really on our feet but we’re too stretched…” Pinny said, thinking about the whole thing. “My worry is if this stuff actually works, what happens if we run out of it, or the supplier vanishes? We’ll be back to square one.” he said, concerned.

“Well by that time hopefully even if it does happen we can start thinking of new things. Ease off using it and go back to the regular stuff. Hopefully ponies won’t be able to tell the difference.” Cookie said. “I know it’s a bit of a cheat but we need this Pinny. I’m just lost of ideas right now what with concentrating so hard on making the bakery a success.”

For a moment Pinny thought, but it was honestly a no-brainer with how they were doing. “Alright, we can give it a go. But I don’t want to use this stuff forever. I mean if it’s addictive before we know it ponies will be demanding more food than we can produce.”

“Well, I don’t know if it’s that good. But we’ll see.” Cookie replied. “I’m going to start applying it to our baking tomorrow and we can see where we go. There’s something else…” she said.

“What?”

“He did mention due to the way it’s produced mixing it with food has a small side effect. It loads it with calories. So anypony that eats this stuff will rather quickly gain weight, especially if they eat a lot of food with it in.” Cookie explained.

Again Pinny stopped and thought. “That might be a good thing. Perhaps if ponies coming to Upper Crust are large, it’ll make others think the food we serve is so good they’ve eaten themselves to that size at our bakery. I mean, this is where we can impose a ‘limit’ I guess. When they start getting too big that’s when we can think about going back to regular sugar.” Pinny replied.

“But they’ll notice, I know you said they won’t but I bet they will.” Cookie said back.

“Well, we can deal with that when we get to it. By that time we’ll be well established and hopefully we can weather the storm. In any case like you said, we need this.” Pinny said with a smile. “Go and get some more bags of this stuff just in case when you can. We’ll start to work it in tomorrow as you planned. I suppose the sugar is just baking and the future plans is the work beyond it.” He said. “At least this will give us more time to consider our options when we have to move away from it.”

It was a little shocking for Cookie to see Pinny change his mind about it so quickly. He was always the cool and calm one of the two and he seemed to make the decision about the sugar with very little qualms apart from what he raised. Hopefully this little gem would give them the edge they needed for the moment. Cookie was worried however what sort of long term effects it would have on their customers. Pinny was too, he just didn’t show it like she did.

They spent the rest of the evening discussing what they could bake tomorrow before retiring to bed. They had enough of the sugar for what they planned to bake in the morning at least. They’d see what sort of reaction they got when they started making sales.