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Nov. 30th, 2014 08:53 pmI've been thinking about possible ways I can help with food this winter. Seven hundred odd extra mouths to feed is quite a lot, after all.
The problem is that either I need to buy a tonne of food and account for where it's gone, or I'd need to funnel funds to a second party to do it, and would have to come up with a decent reason why they would be buying a tonne of food so it wouldn't strike anyone as overly suspicious. And it'd have to be someone I'd trust, which narrows the list.
One possibility is that I could start a new side-business that works with food, like a restaurant or owl order business, and have it just massively fail. I could sink a lot of money into product, and only manage to sell a little, claim the rest spoiled or was wasted, and have everyone assume it was a frivolous risk made by someone who can afford it and who can keep failing at it on a lark, so it can continue to limp along even though I'd be spending far more than I'd be making. I could even have a few shipments of product 'rot' at the docks due to a delay, and have to re-order everything (that'd be where you'd come in, Stebs -- let me know if that sort of thing would be something you could help with. I might need general help with transport too, as I'll be doing some of it remotely. I can even put you on payroll).
The simplest option is to just have Hitty buy up a load of food using a lot of different stores, and cover her tracks so no individual store realises. House elves pick up food all the time, and for holiday parties and such it's not unheard of for them to handle quite a large order, and there's enough of them popping in and out that shop owners don't look too closely. I figure I could do a combination of having Hitty buy up while I'm home for hols, and start the business during hols so we could have a supply after.
There's always the fake charity route, too, of course, but I'm getting sort of stuck at how I'd get a proper excuse for buying food and then accounting for where it's gone to if anyone looks at it for more than a few seconds. And I've no idea how much scrutiny either venture would be under, either.
The problem is that either I need to buy a tonne of food and account for where it's gone, or I'd need to funnel funds to a second party to do it, and would have to come up with a decent reason why they would be buying a tonne of food so it wouldn't strike anyone as overly suspicious. And it'd have to be someone I'd trust, which narrows the list.
One possibility is that I could start a new side-business that works with food, like a restaurant or owl order business, and have it just massively fail. I could sink a lot of money into product, and only manage to sell a little, claim the rest spoiled or was wasted, and have everyone assume it was a frivolous risk made by someone who can afford it and who can keep failing at it on a lark, so it can continue to limp along even though I'd be spending far more than I'd be making. I could even have a few shipments of product 'rot' at the docks due to a delay, and have to re-order everything (that'd be where you'd come in, Stebs -- let me know if that sort of thing would be something you could help with. I might need general help with transport too, as I'll be doing some of it remotely. I can even put you on payroll).
The simplest option is to just have Hitty buy up a load of food using a lot of different stores, and cover her tracks so no individual store realises. House elves pick up food all the time, and for holiday parties and such it's not unheard of for them to handle quite a large order, and there's enough of them popping in and out that shop owners don't look too closely. I figure I could do a combination of having Hitty buy up while I'm home for hols, and start the business during hols so we could have a supply after.
There's always the fake charity route, too, of course, but I'm getting sort of stuck at how I'd get a proper excuse for buying food and then accounting for where it's gone to if anyone looks at it for more than a few seconds. And I've no idea how much scrutiny either venture would be under, either.
