Como Salsa para los Tacos: S.C.S. Livery
Admiral Biscuit
The Powerhouse at Union Station—located across the street from Union Station—was, despite its name, not a powerhouse, although perhaps it had once been. It had a smokestack in back, between the building and interstate 64. It was also conveniently located only two blocks from the Gateway Transportation Center, which had buses and trains.
It also had a 1274 square-foot office for lease on the fourth floor, and a Taco Bell within easy flight distance for Sweet Pepper.
S.C.S. Livery, named for the three ponies who had founded it, had the stated mission of helping ponies get jobs on Earth, which they did. Their unstated mission was industrial espionage, and they were good at that too. They found jobs with access for field agents, as well as for ponies who had no idea they were helping.
Reports were sent in by post or e-mail. Their IT department, such as it was, was totally overwhelmed, and they were scrambling to get more equipment put in. Even after months of operation, they still kept underestimating just how much could or should be done on computers.
On the plus side, they had a big operational purse with bits to burn, so purchasing the equipment wasn’t a problem. The challenge was figuring out just what they needed and finding trustworthy ponies to operate it.
Aside from computers, Creme Brulee dealt with the rest of their office needs. He occasionally clashed with the two mares, since he preferred function over form, and usually bought the cheapest used desks and filing cabinets that would get the job done from the Warehouse of Fixtures.
He also got the daily mail. Besides field reports and other official business, they also got a fair number of unwanted junk mailings; those got shredded and recycled and if they were plain white paper some of the strips got repurposed into a nest for Sweet Pepper. It wasn’t as good as a proper cloud, but it was good enough for morning and afternoon power naps.
They’d split the office into two halves. Up front was the legitimate side of the business; in the back they had their desks as well as a conference room lined with maps, charts, and filing cabinets, which was where the three ponies were gathered along with a special guest.
“So tomatoes are a dead end, nothing new to learn there.” Sweet Pepper tossed a cluster of papers on the table. “We’ll keep Rosella on until her visa expires, of course, but we can go mostly hooves-off.”
“We didn’t learn ‘nothing,’” Creme Brulee objected. “We learned that they use inferior tomatoes for fast food.”
“And steaming and canning and salsaing and juicing and everything else where you don’t see the whole fruit . . . tomatoes are a fruit, aren’t they?”
The other ponies nodded.
“Nothing we needed to know.” Sweet Pepper said. “We already knew the tomato varieties they use, so unless we want to build a human-style harvester. . . .”
Creme Brulee shook his head. “There’d be a riot.”
“What about Grace’s reports?”
“Pure gold, from one end to the other, just like you’d expect. She’s a natural. We got feelers out, ponies in place and others moving in . . . still working on Kenosha Beef, I’ve got some information on the recall but not entirely sure if they’re still a supplier. Sometimes companies get bad blood between them, especially when there’s a lot of money involved. Plus, it’s hard to find a pony who’ll go into an abattoir, even for what we’d pay.”
“You have consulted with griffons, right?”
“Of course,” the pegasus huffed. “No stone unturned and all that.”
“I’d prefer to get a pony into the office end of things; she’d have more access. Rather than a griffon on the, uh, processing line.” Sweetcream Scoops lit her horn and pulled up a stack of papers. “We’ve got good leads on fat/lean ratios and cooking times and the size the beef’s milled to, and we can get exports made to our standards if we want. I am going to get a filming crew into a processing plant, I’m still working on negotiations for that. Moving on, what do we know about McLean Co.?”
“Trucks working for Pepsico, they’re just a delivery service.” Creme Brulee pointed to a flowchart. “Not likely to be fertile ground there, but we can put a truck driver or laborer in place if we think there’s gonna be anything useful. I was on the Matchbox truck logistics team, and shipping isn’t what we really need to know. The products go in a box from the factory, sit for a while in a big barn which they call a warehouse, then go on another truck or boat or train to be shipped to a different distribution barn and eventually a store. From what I can tell, they have the same process with their food distribution.”
“Chapulin’s been sending in good reports. What do we have for follow-up?”
“Let’s see. She gave us another company name and address, probably an intermediate but we’ve got a pony on payroll there starting next week.” Creme Brulee consulted his notes. “Restaurant Supply Chain Solutions LLC; they’ve got an opening in Dallas.
“There’s a lot we knew about the ingredients. They make the hard taco shells out of tortillas in-house, so that’s why we couldn’t find a source on those. Food holding temperatures, cooking times, POS interface—that’s not worth pursuing—machine names.”
“We got anypony on the machines?”
He shook his head. “Not yet. I think that they’re all custom-made for Taco Bell, not commercially available. But there have to be companies who build them to spec, and we’ve got feelers out there. Between Grace and Chapulin, I think we’ll get most of the equipment sources in time.”
Starlight Glimmer licked her lips. “How about the sauces?”
Sweetcream Scoops stood up. “Bulk sauces and salsa packets come from two different sources, I think. Their salsa’s proprietary, and we’re working our way up the chain on that one. Kraft sells some kinds in bottles but we’re not sure if it’s exactly the same stuff.
“They’ll usually give you as many little packets as you want at the store and sometimes you can get the other kinds in little cups, so we’ve got plenty to study and maybe reverse-engineer. That’s not actually our operation; we don’t have the space. There’s a test kitchen set up outside of Kansas City.” She pointed a hoof to the west. “The train goes there, so it’s really convenient.
“They’ve got hot and mild mostly figured out, but diablo is proving to be a tougher nut to crack. We haven’t found out where they make them, yet, but we will. Hopefully it’s the same kitchen where they make the bulk sauces, or else we’re gonna have to get more ponies involved.”
“I can get however many you need,” Starlight assured her. “What about the tortillas?”
She shrugged. “We’re working on that. Grace said that some of the flour is milled at Star of the West, we found that, and we’ve got a miller we can get in there once there’s an opening. I’ve been twisting legs on that end. A lot of big companies don’t want too much cross-pollination though, so it’s tougher. She should get in eventually—I padded her resume to make her look more appealing to humans.”
Starlight Glimmer nodded. “Okay, so you’ve got basic logistics, preparation techniques, and some suppliers nailed on and folded over. Flour’s on the to-do list, logistics is a maybe, and you’re working up the sources for machines.”
“And cheese, that’s important too. We haven’t forgotten about that. We’ve got a cheesemaker named Beemster sniffing around in Wisconsin, learning what he can, and when we’ve figured out who supplies Taco Bell, we’ll get him in there.”