Welcome to the Life Tavern
“Welcome! Welcome to the Life Tavern!”
“Huh?”
Faced with such an enthusiastic welcome, the botjimjangsu peddlers glanced at one another, plainly flustered. At any ordinary tavern, the whole exchange went something like this—brusque and to the point:
“Lodging or a meal?”
But Hayun greeted them with a bright smile right from the entrance.
“Right this way. This spot has a nice breeze—cool and comfortable.”
“Er, aye. All right, then.”
“You must be worn out. Hand your packs over here. We'll store them inside for you.”
“The packs, too?”
“Yes. We'll keep them safe, so just relax and focus on your meal.”
Hayun practically snatched the bundles out of the peddlers' arms as she spoke—and it was a thoroughly calculated move, designed to make sure they couldn't slip away without eating.
“Th-thank ye kindly.”
The peddlers stared at her, bewildered. They had never been treated like this in their lives. It felt as though they'd been mistaken for landed gentry.
“Ngh—this one's a bit heavy.”
“If it's too much, just set it down there—”
“No need, Uncle Mun-sik! Give me a hand with that one over there, would you?”
“Got it! Oof—goodness, what a load!”
Hayun and Mun-sik began hauling the bundles with theatrical groans, and the peddlers watched them in wonder.
“Heh heh, well I never. Live long enough and you'll see anything.”
“You can say that again. First time in my whole life I've been waited on like this.”
“The young lady's as obliging as can be, isn't she?”
“Obliging? That's not the half of it. With such a sweet face, she's a fairy straight out of a tale!”
Even judged by the eyes of a Joseon man, Hayun counted as a considerable beauty. Flawless, milky skin and large, clear eyes besides.
True, she wore a short-cropped bob that belonged to no era of this world—but even setting that aside, her looks were unmatched. She'd have held her own against the daughter of any noble house.
With a woman like that beaming her a welcome, the peddlers found it difficult to tear their eyes away.
“Pretty. So pretty...”
“Glad we stopped here, I am...”
“Ha! If I'd known, I'd have come ages ago.”
In truth, this too was one piece of a highly calculated strategy.
There's a statistic that hiring beautiful staff raises sales by thirty percent, you know.
It was an open secret in her old world that pretty employees boosted revenue. That was precisely why, whatever else varied, front-of-house staff who dealt directly with customers were so often hired on looks alone. In the service industry, appearance was as good as a weapon.
And so Hayun, under the banner of an “investment,” had bought herself new clothes and new shoes and dressed herself up.
Heh. Here, I'm practically a celebrity.
She'd never cared much for dressing up, buried as she was in work—but having fallen onto Joseon soil, she intended to leverage every asset she had. Her looks, her knowledge, whatever it took.
“Ahem. Well, I don't know about you, but I'm starving. Shall we order?”
“Ah—look at me, lost in my own head. Order away.”
“Then let's see—eight gukbap...”
Just as he was about to order gukbap for the group without a moment's hesitation—
“One moment, please!”
Thud!
Hayun rushed over and slapped a wooden board down on the table.
“What's this?”
“It's our tavern's Charimpyo—our menu board. Take your time and choose whatever you like.”
“A... menu board?”
The peddlers, seeing a written menu for the first time in their lives, went wide-eyed.
“Wh-what in the world is this?”
At the very top of the board, a set menu had already been added:
Reading through the dishes and the prices written beside them, the peddlers were thrown into no small shock.
“A tavern had this much food all along...!”
“No, wait—look, every last price is written down!”
“First time I've ever seen a place show its prices this honestly!”
The peddlers pored over the board as if it were some marvel.
In an age with no concept of fixed pricing, the cost of a meal was whatever the proprietor declared it to be. That was why travelers from out of town, wary of being fleeced, ordered gukbap everywhere they went across the eight provinces—its price was the one thing that never changed.
But when prices were displayed this transparently, everything changed. Now they could order other dishes without any anxiety at all. And the fun of picking their own food was a bonus on top.
Utterly absorbed in that pleasure, the peddlers spent a long while studying the menu board.
“With every dish written out like this, I find myself wanting to try everything.”
“Then a gukbap for me, and a bowl of makgeolli—ah, should I get the pollack jeon too?”
“Get it, get it. Let's eat big today.”
“Life Gukbap...? Now what's this?”
At one peddler's question, Hayun—who had been listening to the conversation from nearby—answered.
“Ah, that's a special gukbap sold only here at our tavern.”
“Only sold here, you say?”
“Yes. It's our regular gukbap with our tavern's secret seasoning added. You'll regret it if you leave without trying it.”
“Hmm...”
At the words only available here, the peddlers' hearts—though it cost a little extra—tilted toward the Life Gukbap. The price difference wasn't so great anyway.
“Well then, let's give it a try. Life Gukbap for me.”
“Then I'll have the Life Gukbap as well.”
“After being treated like this, how could I not? Life Gukbap all around, then.”
Eight men were nodding, about to settle on a unified order, when—
“Hold on.”
Someone had just discovered the combo menu and shouted out.
“If we're doing that, wouldn't it be better to order the two-person combos instead? Order that, and the pollack jeon comes to a mere 2 jeon.”
“Oho! What was that?”
“Ha, at that price it's practically free!”
Learning that the combo gukbap got them pollack jeon for a mere 2 jeon, the group now swung toward the combo instead.
Plain gukbap, then Life Gukbap, then the combo—their spending had grown larger with each round. This, too, was part of Hayun's meticulous design.
“Then we'll take four of the two-person combos, and two dongdongju as well. It's a day for a drink, I'd say.”
“Of course. Right away.”
Hayun turned to go with the order, smiling to herself.
Just as planned.
Men who would originally have ordered nothing more than a single bowl of gukbap had looked at the menu board and added combos and dongdongju besides.
Where she should have earned 32 jeon, she'd pulled in 54—an increase in sales of fully eighty-one percent.
Before long, Ok-bun emerged from the kitchen carrying gukbap bowls, steam curling off them in wisps. The pale broth was heaped generously with meat and scallions.
“Eight bowls of Life Gukbap!”
Tap-tap-tap.
As the earthen bowls were set down on the plank table, anticipation began to bloom across the peddlers' faces.
“My, look at that—a proper feast for the eyes.”
“Shall we, then?”
At that moment—
“One moment, everyone.”
Suddenly Hayun appeared, carrying a small plate. On it sat a single golden-brown piece of pan-fried fish.
The peddlers spoke up, puzzled.
“We never ordered this?”
“This ain't ours, is it?”
“It's on the house.”
Hayun said this with a wink of one eye.
“On the house? What's that, then?”
“Oh—a free extra. Gratis. It costs you nothing.”
“Free?”
“A little commemorative gift for our very first customers.”
Hayun lowered her voice playfully and whispered.
“And between us, I'm sneaking this to you without the tavern keeper knowing—so eat it up quick. If she finds out, there'll be the devil to pay.”
“Hahaha! Now there's a girl who knows how to treat folk! We'll eat it with thanks.”
“Never thought I'd see the day we got service like this.”
At Hayun's small gesture, the peddlers broke into beaming grins.
In truth, a single piece of fish cost next to nothing. But the effect it produced was enormous. Being waited on by Hayun like kings, they no longer cared one whit how the gukbap actually tasted.
The service alone had already made the Life Tavern worth the journey.
“Aaahh—this is to die for!”
“Whew, this tavern's gukbap is something else!”
“Best gukbap I've had in my whole life, I swear it!”
Intoxicated by the mood, the peddlers polished off their bowls in no time, their faces brimming with satisfied smiles.
“Finest gukbap I've eaten in years!”
“No wonder they call it the Life Tavern!”
Having finished their meal in high spirits, the peddlers began settling their bill.
“Well then, time to pay up.”
“Fifty-four jeon... that's more than I expected.”
“But we ate well for it, didn't we? When else would we ever get to try a spread like this?”
“That's right. If I had the time, I'd come back tomorrow, and that's the truth.”
One by one, the peddlers counted out their coins. The cheerful jingle of brass rang through the air.
“Here you are—fifty-four jeon.”
“Thank you. And please, take this as well.”
Hayun held out a slip of paper.
“Now what's this?”
“This is what we call a coupon.”
“A coupon?”
“Ah—call it an exchange ticket, if you like.”
Hayun pressed her stamp onto the paper. Stamped across it were these words:
[ 5 stamps — one potato jeon, free ]
[ 10 stamps — one bowl of Life Gukbap, free ]
“Each bowl of gukbap earns you one stamp. Collect enough stamps, and whatever's written there is yours for free. It's a benefit reserved for loyal customers of the Life Tavern—and only them.”
“All of that for nothing? Saints preserve us!”
“Never seen a tavern like this in my life!”
With favor following favor without end, the peddlers were left positively dizzy. They tucked the exchange tickets away in their breast pockets as carefully as if they were treasure.
“The Life Tavern... I'll remember that name.”
“Well then, thank you for the meal.”
“Come again soon.”
The moment her first customers—the peddlers—filed out, Ok-bun came sprinting from the kitchen.
“Are they gone? They gone?”
“Yes, all of them.”
“And how much did we rake in?”
Instead of answering, Hayun spread open the coin pouch. Inside was a number of coins Ok-bun had never laid eyes on in her life.
“Gah! This much...!”
But the astonishment was short-lived. The tavern keeper's face clouded over with worry.
“Still—we keep handing things away like this, will anything be left over for us?”
“What do you mean?”
“You knock down the price, you give the fish away free, and now we're to hand out free gukbap down the road. Ain't we just losing money in the end?”
“Auntie, don't worry. Running it this way is guaranteed profit. No question about it.”
“How so?”
To the puzzled Ok-bun, Hayun began a patient explanation.
“How long do you think those men were sitting in here?”
“Oh... thirty minutes?”
“Exactly. A mere thirty minutes.”
The great strength of gukbap lay in its fast turnover. All she had to do was ladle the prepared broth and top it with meat and scallions, so the food came out quickly—and since customers ate their rice soaked in the soup, mealtimes never ran long.
“And in those thirty minutes, we earned fifty-four jeon. Now imagine more customers like them. What happens then?”
“Sales climb even higher than they are now?”
“At that point, two nyang an hour would be easy. That's close to twenty nyang a day.”
“Twenty nyang!”
Twenty nyang amounted to roughly 1.4 million won in modern currency—an unimaginable sum for a tavern that had once struggled to earn even a single nyang a day.
“And those men will come back for these exchange tickets alone, if nothing else.”
“They'll come back?”
Hayun continued her explanation with perfect confidence.
“Better yet, they'll spread the word about us. And that kind of advertising can't be bought for any price—they'll publicize us without our spending a single jeon. We call that viral marketing.”
“Is... is that so...?”
At some point Ok-bun had lost the thread entirely, and was simply nodding along.
“Just wait and see. Before long, we'll be so busy there won't be room to swing a cat.”
Hayun gazed after the departing band of peddlers with a knowing smile.