Chapter 250
Lacey couldn’t help but intervene, her tone pleading.
“She squeezes out a few fake tears, and you two throw every standard and protocol out the window. Is that it?
“Funny how I don’t recall you ever bending over backward like this for Mira p>
Ethan realized he needed to seriously reevaluate his family’s toxic dynamics.
“What the hell are you implying? Are you questioning us p>
Adrian flared up instantly, his face turning a furious shade of red like a cat whose tail had just been stepped on.
“Do whatever you want. I’m done p>
Ethan dropped the conversation and stalked off to his room.
Being around them was utterly suffocating.
“Who do you think you’re walking away from? You think you’re untouchable now p>
Adrian bolted up, ready to drag his son back, but Lacey grabbed his arm.
“Let it go for now. We’ll figure something out later p>
She couldn’t stand watching her husband and eldest son rip each other apart.
The following afternoon at Solflare headquarters, an executive pitched a new idea. “Should we launch our own e-scooter division to counter them p>
Mira shut it down instantly.
“EcoRide is designed specifically to solve the ‘last mile’ problem-the short distance between a subway station and a customer’s final destination.
If they need to travel further, they’ll take the bus or a cab.
E-scooters might be faster and require less physical effort, but from a purely logistical standpoint, there is zero market necessity for them p>
“Furthermore, the manufacturing overhead for electric vehicles is astronomically high. We’d have to demand massive user deposits, which would price out the working class immediately.
Then there’s the inevitable nightmare of widespread battery theft.
The operational costs alone would bleed us dry. Scooters need to be constantly charged and have batteries swapped out manually. That requires a massive fleet of technicians and trucks p>
She was drawing entirely on the catastrophic tech-bubble failures she remembered from her past life.
Scaling EcoRide to four hundred
thousand bicycles in Melvion City, at roughly seventy-five dollars a unit, had already cost nearly thirty million dollarsin hardware alone not factoring in payroll or operational burn rates.
How much would four hundred thousand heavily motorized e-scooters cost?
You couldn’t cheap out on the build quality either, or the fleet would disintegrate on the streets within weeks.
“Won’t their e-scooters eat into our market share?” an analyst asked nervously.
Owen fielded the question. “The impact will be negligible.
Bicycles are vastly cheaper to deploy, exponentially easier to maintain, and fundamentally safer for urban terrain p>
As for user deposits, Porter Entertainment wouldn’t dare operate without collecting them.
With such a staggering upfront capital burn, without a massive deposit pool to float their cash flow, the E-Scooter Program would inevitably implode.
Let Shane Porter dig his own grave. EcoRide was a well-oiled machine, and barring
a total disaster, Owen’s teams had the market on lockdown.
Aside from acing her finals, Mira’s singular focus was the impending launch of Solflare Hearth & Grill.
With thirty locations preparing to open their doors simultaneously, the Lennox family’s elite chefs had meticulously refined traditional recipes while inventing several groundbreaking flavor profiles.
To dominate the broader market, Mira had also poached master chefs specializing in non-steakhouse cuisine to diversify their menu and cater to every possible demographic.
That way, during the sweltering summer months when heavy steakhouse dining typically plummeted, their secondary menu would sustain their revenue streams.
Piggybacking off EcoRide’s massive
digital infrastructure, they had
developed a proprietary Solflare dining app. Users could book tables, order ahead, and request at-home deliveries, creating a fully integrated ecosystem.
Food delivery existed in this era, but it was incredibly niche. The modern titans of on-demand delivery hadn’t even been founded yet.
Mira planned to aggressively market Solflare Express during the upcoming holiday season, capitalizing on the massive demand for catered family dinners.
Her pricing strategy was ruthlessly competitive-high-end dining at a price point the working class could actually afford.
Porter Entertainment’s Azure Skillet catered exclusively to the ultra-wealthy for maximum margins. But the elite one percent could never generate the sheer volume needed to sustain a massive corporate empire.
True economic dominance lay in capturing the massive middle and lower classes.
By operating on razor-thin margins, Solflare would absorb an astronomical volume of daily customers.
They offered premium VIP services for those willing to pay, but the core business model was built on absolute volume.
The day before final exams, Solflare Hearth & Grill officially launched. Their branded signs were mounted just thirty minutes before opening, accompanied by a sudden, devastating blitz of city-wide marketing.
The moment their hyper-competitive prices went live, they unleashed a shock-and-awe promotional campaign forty percent of font
Vornet
opening day, thirty percent off day two, twenty on day three.. ending the discount by day five.
Shane Porter, currently drowning in debt from his E-Scooter Program, watched in absolute horror as his culinary empire was obliterated overnight.