Have it Your Way
Admiral Biscuit
“Did I ever tell you about the time that Burger King tried to source local beef for their burgers?”
“Burger King?”
Saffron nodded.
“But there aren’t any Burger Kings in Equestria.”
“Not anymore.” She grinned. “It was that much of a disaster, they just washed their hooves—hands of it.”
We were in a pony McDonalds, an official franchise. One of the few human restaurant franchises that had actually made it work.
Admittedly, the store fit in with local architecture, inside and out. The gaudy golden “M'' was the only obvious corporate branding from the outside.
Menu items were almost entirely different, as well, in order to appeal to the local market. McCafe drinks and flurries and apple pies were largely unchanged, but only the fries and Fish Sandwich survived. The ‘Equestrian Mac,’ as it was called, was entirely vegetarian and could be ordered with hay substituted for the veggie patties. McMuffins were meatless, with two varieties of non-meat patties, or for the purists, hay.
They did have Happy Meals and a drive through—technically, a trot through—and a sign on the front door which began “In deference to local customs. . . .”
Rumor was that there were some more conventional McDonalds in heavy tourist areas where you could actually get burger patties, imported directly from Earth, and you paid dearly for them.
I’d always figured that McDonalds had deep enough pockets to fund a few loss leaders and other franchises didn’t, and to be honest, who went to Equestria to find human fast-food restaurants anyway?
“This is going to be good, isn’t it?”
Saffron didn’t reply right away, she just took a spoonful of her McFlurry and that was all the answer I needed.
“So they were the first restaurant to make it to negotiations. Nopony knows why for sure, although I suspect that there was a misunderstanding and they thought that ‘King’ was an actual title—you gotta negotiate with the leaders, you know.
“Besides, ponies weren’t really all that interested in burger restaurants, for obvious reasons. Although I’ve heard that Burger King onion rings are good.
“Anyway, they got a proper royal charter and set up a restaurant in Canterlot and another in Manehattan. They wanted it to look just like one on Earth, so they had to get all sorts of variances and import all kinds of stuff from Earth from their stupid booths and their stupid kitchen appliances and their supid and confusing bathroom fixtures.
“And of course, they had to import all their beef and chicken, ‘cause they couldn’t get any of that locally.”
“Would ponies even eat beef?”
She shrugged. “Maybe. Like, it won’t kill us, not in small doses, anyway. And there are always adventurous ponies who want to try something new, maybe just to say that they’ve done it, or impress a stallionfriend or because they’re curious and it’s probably morally okay to eat a beef patty that came from Earth.”
“Have you?”
“Of course not.” Saffron blushed. “I’ve tried chicken a couple times. It’s okay, it tastes kind of like tuna but it’s stringier and not as salty.”
“So why not try beef? At least once?”
“’Cause every day I buy a pint of milk at the market, and I can’t look the salescow in the eye and know what she tastes like.”
“That’s not . . . .” My voice trailed off as I remembered back on Earth I could get horsemeat, and would I look at her, or ponies in general, differently if I’d eaten it? If I knew what it tasted like?
“I know what you’re thinking.” Her eyes were distant, too. “I did my time on Earth, and I wondered, was it an opportunity I’d never have again or knowledge I was better off not having? Nopony ever talks enough about the difference in diet and the moral choices and personal choices that come with it when you go from world to world. I guess we’re lucky in that there are lots of sapient carnivores here, so anypony who’s travelled and keeps her ears perked at least knows that there are creatures who’ll eat things she would never consider.
“Which I suppose is why Burger King got kinda unfettered access and permission, nopony really thought about the implications.”
“Protests in the streets? Ponies complaining about the smell of cooking meat?”
“Surprisingly, no, there were a few complaints about that, but ponies mostly avoided it. It takes more effort to protest than to just not go there, and while they got a few curious ponies now and again, for the most part it was only human tourists.
“Things went okay for a while, then they got the idea that if instead of importing it, they were to source local beef, they could save a lot of bits and improve their margins.” Saffron sighed. “I’ve been in business meetings, and I know when somepony who’s never set hoof on the shop floor comes up with a ‘great idea.'She made air-quotes with her forehooves and ate another spoonful of McFlurry. “Somebody had seen a picture book but didn’t know that Equestrian cows are sapient, and that somebody was high enough in the ranks that they didn’t just kick him in the flank and ignore his idea like they should have.
“It was still kinda early days, so most negotiations still went through the Princesses first, and staff shuffled them off in whatever direction required. I have to imagine some underpaid intern got the original request, thought about rejecting it outright, and then decided that it ought to go to King Asterion.”
That was a name I hadn’t heard before. As far as I knew, the ponies didn’t go for kings or queens, although they did recognize those titles. “King Asterion?”
“King of the minotaurs, and also cows. There’s some overlap.”
“Surely he said no.” But would it be a story if he had simply said no? Would it have caused Burger King to completely abandon the market?
“Nopony knows what was in his mind. But everypony knows what minotaurs are like, and for a company to dare to ask such a question, he wasn’t going to just tell them no, he was going to teach them a lesson.
“Minotaurs like contests of strength, of one-on-one combat, everypony knows that, but they’re also clever when it comes to getting trade advantages. Although I don’t know what he got out of this deal, but he would have gotten something.”
Saffron ate another spoonful of McFlurry before continuing. “He gave them a sort of vague ‘let’s continue with negotiations’ sort of reply. Not a firm yes, not a firm no, and he hinted that he’d been negotiating with other fast food franchises for the limited supply, so of course they were tripping over their toes to be the first to the negotiating table, and pretty soon a meeting was arranged.
“At a restaurant, of course, one that’s run by one of his wives. It’s where you gotta eat if you want to have a good negotiation with him.”
“Isn’t that kind of like bribery?” There was a better term for it, but I couldn’t remember what it was. Nepotism?
She shrugged. “I suppose, but the food’s great so nopony minds. Anyway, he’d done his research, and had it kinda remodeled to look more like a human restaurant, new menus with fancy Prench-sounding food names, and a new shingle out front that said it was the Hunt Club. In English, which should have been a tip-off.
“He invited them all in, and . . . well, I’ve seen how some of your human leaders are, all pomp and circumstance and everyone fawning over them, but he kind of played it down and had a small retinue and wore his—” Saffron scratched her chin. “Uh, I don’t know if there’s a proper human term, it barely translates into Equestrian. He’s got his fancy King clothes for when he’s doing important state functions, then his less-fancy King clothes for when he’s just around the palace or negotiating, and on the other end he’s got his fighting clothes, either armor or nothing depending on if he’s commanding or brawling.” She tapped a hoof on the table with each item, leaving a space in the center. “Right here, it’s fighting and negotiating clothes, the ones he wears when he’s ready to accept a surrender. Understated, ‘cause he knows he’s already won, even if his opponent hasn’t figured it out yet.
“Everyone crowded around a big table, and of course they were served by the prettiest minotauresses he could find and everybody was complimenting the exotic dishes and how it was nothing like they had ever tasted before.”
“I know that feeling,” I said. “The McKale wasn’t exactly what I was expecting, but it was pretty good. Also, since we’re on the subject of food, I’ve got a question.” I held up the red saltshaker. “What the heck’s in this? It tastes like dirt.”
“Red clay. Good and minerally. When I was on Earth, sometimes baked food had a dusting of cornmeal on the bottom to keep it from sticking.”
“Yeah.”
“Sometimes we use red clay for the same purpose.” She took one last bite from her McFlurry, scraping the spoon around the waxed cup, then set it aside. “So they didn’t know it, but they’d walked into his trap, and he set it right before the main course.
“He softened them up, telling them how great contact with Earth had been, how many new foods had been found, whole new classes of foods that had never been imagined by minotaurs before, how profitable a relationship between Earth and Equestria could be, and it was all a matter of ironing out the little details, and he even had a . . . I don’t know what the exact phrase is, but a contract of interest. He claimed that Wendy’s had already signed one, and that it had to be done before any further negotiations and it was short and simple and there wasn’t much in there that could have raised red flags except that all Equestrian-side rules were subject to the laws of both the Crown and Tauran Law, which I guess their lawyers and negotiator had forgotten he could make on a whim. It is what he says it is.”
“That wouldn’t hold in an Earth contract,” I protested, but I wasn’t sure. I thought about some of the dictators and kings and despots on Earth and what they did, and I thought about Darth Vader saying that he’d altered the deal, pray he did not alter it further.
“Crown laws are more stable but inside sovereign boundaries they’re not always enforced or enforceable. There’s a better process of dissent, at least from the pony perspective, but then I’ve sat through hours of boring negotiations and at least the minotaur system can be faster and more direct.”
“Which is?”
“They didn’t know either.” Saffron stuck her tongue out at me. “And he had a round of drinks brought, good strong stuff. Tauran Ale goes down smooth but hits hard, trust me. And then it was time for the main course, the masterpiece.
“Nopony knows where they got it, and nopony was gonna ask. It might not have been real, it might have been something that they made out of . . . well, between the neck and waist, minotaurs don’t look all that different from humans. So he could have gone to the hospital or just gotten a volunteer . . . that’s just whispers and rumors.”
“You—’ All of a sudden, I was regretting having eating anything, because I already knew what Saffron was going to say next.
“What the waitresses brought out was an arm on a bed of greens, what looked like a whole human . . . forearm?” She motioned at my elbow and down to my hand. “And as everyhuman at the table was recoiling in horror, King Asterion went on as if this was perfectly normal, saying how tasty human meat was, didn’t they agree, and he couldn’t wait until the contract was signed and he could get a steady supply for the Hunt Club. He’d offer up his citizens in exchange for an equal amount of their citizens, either by weight or on a one-for-one basis, that was still open to discussion.
“He also proposed that just like his negotiations with Wendy’s—which might or might not have actually happened—he would be willing to give more favorable terms by virtue of combat in a public arena. And when one of the Burger King negotiators timidly asked what he meant by a public arena, he swept his arm around and said that the Hunt Club was a public arena, and had they noticed that all the waitresses carried weapons?
“Not that they would have needed them, but he knew that humans sometimes measure their worth against the weapons they carry.
“Probably having one of the waitresses pull a knife out from under her skirt and slam it into the table ‘to cut the meat’ was overkill, but King Asterion didn’t get to be king by going small, you know?
“He’d only just pulled the knife out of the table and started to slice off a prime cut of forearm before negotiations ceased abruptly. According to what I heard, their lead lawyer vomiting precipitated the exodus; however it happened, they all fled with their tails between their legs.”
“They could have kept importing Earth beef,” I said. “Like some restaurants do in really touristy places. Just because they got shut down hard over their idea to get it locally doesn’t mean they had to give up.”
“Well, that’s a secret nopony knows,” Saffron admitted. “Maybe there was some clause in the contract they signed, something they don’t want to risk. It’s easy to imagine that they all fled in horror after their lead lawyer vomited, but you don’t know minotaurs or Tauran law, could be that they all signed a contract under duress forfeiting all franchises in Equestria.”
“You mean, because all his waitresses surrounded them and made them sign the contract? With knives out?”
“That’s something he might have done,” Saffron admitted. “He was wearing his surrender clothes, so he would have been expecting complete capitulation. I don’t think he would have had to have them draw weapons, though, just the thought that they might would be enough. I’ve heard it said that he claimed that Wendy’s was not successful at negotiations, and with an arm on the table, they would have thought that was the result.
“Sometimes when you try and move into a new market, it’s best to be first, to not have any competition. Other times, it’s best to let somepony else make the mistakes and learn from them. I wasn’t even there when the negotiations happened, but I heard about them, you bet I did. That was palace gossip for a full moon, the chef even made a marzipan arm in honor of the occasion. Princess Celestia had a roguish glint in her eye, sometimes our relationships with the minotaurs are frosty but she likes King Asterion, and you can bet he told her all about it both formally and in private.”
Author's Note
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