Hotshot shuffled his hooves impatiently as he tried to ignore the chill breeze blowing down the Manehattan alley in which he stood. The teal-coloured earth pony had been waiting on his contact for a little over forty minutes now. Many other ponies would have simply called it a night and headed home after being kept waiting for so long, and in any other case, Hotshot may have done the same. But not tonight. This meeting was too important; the success of his plans for the coming days hinged upon it. He'd stand there and wait all night if he had to.
Not that those sentiments did him any favours against the bucking cold. He shivered, and wondered for the umpteenth time just where in Tartarus his guy was.
As if on cue, a silhouette appeared against the bright street lights at the far end of the alley. It merged back into the shadows as the figure approached Hotshot. Once they were close enough, the figure became more distinct, until it took on the form of a unicorn stallion with a beechwood brown coat and bluish-silver mane. Hotshot glared at the new arrival.
"You're late," he stated simply.
The unicorn made a noise that was somewhere between a laugh and a grunt. "Surely you don't mind waiting for something this important to you?" he asked. His accent was peculiar; mostly Manehattanite, but with the careful pronunciations and inflections of somepony who'd learned Equestrian as a second language. "All you've been talking about all month is how your whole future depends on this."
"Cut to the chase, Astuto," Hotshot snapped. He'd been waiting in the cold wind in this Celestia-forsaken alley for far too long, and was in no mood for being heckled. "Have you got it or not?"
Astuto blinked, then smiled. "Of course," he said silkily. His horn illuminated and produced a small grey plastic case from his saddlebags. "There are a dozen vials in here. Just put one drop of this in your wares, and anypony who tries them will be incapable of turning them down from that point forward."
Hotshot smiled, the first true display of camaraderie he'd shown to Astuto that night. "Excellent. Once I get this stuff into my food and start selling it, I'll be on easy street."
"You remember our deal, correct?" Astuto asked. "I supply you with more vials as you need them..."
"...and I cut you in on twenty percent of the profit," Hotshot finished. Satisfied with his answer, Astuto levitated the case over to Hotshot, who took it and carefully placed it in his own saddlebag. He then took out a brown pouch and handed it to Astuto. "And that's the down payment of two hundred bits, as requested."
Astuto nodded and took the pouch. "Where did you say you were setting up shop, again?"
"Ponyville," Hotshot replied. "It's a town a few miles south of Canterlot. It's the perfect place to do business; small enough that it's relatively off the grid, but large enough that I can guarantee a steady supply of... loyal customers." He smirked. "Getting to the top there should be a snap. Pretty soon, I'll have a great deal of ponies beating a path to my door, and a nice flow of income to show for it."
Astuto grinned. "Sounds like you have it all planned out. Well, friend, I wish you the very best of luck. I hope your plan goes well."
"Oh, it will," Hotshot murmured to himself, as Astuto turned and made his way back to the noise and lights of the street. "It definitely will."
For as long as he could remember, Hotshot had thought of himself as a pragmatic sort of pony. He believed that if there was any kind of opportunity you could exploit to get ahead, you should take it. To do otherwise would simply be foolish. Opportunities were there to be taken. If you didn't take it, somepony else would, so it might as well be you, right?
It was that kind of attitude that had led Hotshot to the world of business and entrepreneurship. A field that was marked by competition and exploiting opportunities and weaknesses had sounded like the sort of thing that would fit him like a glove. As it turned out, he was right; he studied at Manehattan University for a major in business studies and a minor in marketing, and passed both with flying colours.
The next logical step had been to choose a field of business to go to work in. After some deliberation, Hotshot finally decided on the food industry—an industry that was notoriously cutthroat, but at the same time offered great rewards for those who succeeded. Some of the wealthiest ponies in Equestria were restaurateurs or celebrity chefs. That kind of high life was the sort of thing that Hotshot had dreamed about since starting his degree all those years ago.
Before he actually got started, however, there was a thought that kept coming back to him. It was no secret that opening a restaurant was a very risky endeavour; there were hundreds of restaurants that had gone bust over the years due to stiff competition, a poor choice of location, or simply being too optimistic with their business projections. Even the restaurants that did succeed nearly always started out barely breaking even, or even running at a loss, until they could get their names on the map.
It didn't take a genius to figure out that if you could get your name on the map right away—open the doors, immediately get ponies to love your food, and hit the ground running from the very start—you could potentially make a lot of money.
For a while, Hotshot had dismissed this idea as pure fantasy. No business could ever start booming from day one. Even if you served the best food in Equestria, you'd still have to worry about competition in the area. Ponies all had different tastes, and there was no way to guarantee that they would choose your restaurant over another one, especially not from the day you opened.
Then another thought had occurred to Hotshot; maybe it wasn't possible using any of the techniques he'd learned in college, but what about other... less conventional means?
Of course, "less conventional" was often synonymous with "illegal", but that didn't concern Hotshot. At the end of the day, legality and morality wasn't really relevant. As the old saying went, nice guys finish last. So, was there some way he could get ponies hooked on his food and his restaurant to take off right away?
Over the next few months, Hotshot carefully and calmly gave the idea considerable thought. He did as much research as he could on eating enchantments and potions, but all the ones he found were merely temporary—nothing that would have any long-term effects. Refusing to give up, he pressed on, and finally came across a particular potion in a book. When he read about it, he wondered if all the research he'd been doing had caused him to lose track of the date, because this was surely Hearth's Warming Day.
According to the book, there was a plant native to Griffonstone called Ranunculus pinguedinem, more informally known as the blubbercup. A tasteless and odourless potion could be extracted from this plant that would cause any food it was applied to to become irresistible to anypony who tasted it. The more that particular pony ate, the greater their attraction to that food would become, until they were essentially addicted to it. Unfortunately, there was a stumbling block—blubbercup essence was a banned substance in Equestria, and had been ever since a failed attempt by the griffons to use it to incapacitate the Royal Guard about a century ago. If Hotshot wanted that potion, he'd have no choice but to go behind the law's back to get it.
Hotshot had spent the next two months asking around Manehattan's seedier bars and clubs, looking for somepony who had an inside line on contraband. Finally, he had met Astuto, a freelancer who specialised in black market goods. To Hotshot's delight, Astuto had told him that not only could he reliably and discreetly supply him with blubbercup essence, but his contacts in Griffonstone meant that he could do so on demand.
Thus was how Hotshot had struck a deal with Astuto. Once he had the blubbercup essence and opened his doors in Ponyville for the first time, all he had to do was get a few ponies to taste his food, and the rest would be easy pickings. A massive flow of income, and no way for any competition to touch him.
A pragmatic solution to a pragmatic problem.