Shrubway

Shrubway is Benacia's premier chain of fast food restaurants. It is operated by the ESB Group and has premises all over the former Minarborian Empire, as well as premises in Ardashirshahr, Musica, and Shirekeep, as well as operating staff canteens at ESB facilities globally. Technically the modern company is a survival of the franchise granted to the ESB Group by the Church of Minarboria, prior to the latter's collapse in around 1648 AN. That a company associated with the military-industrial complex of Shireroth and the excesses of Human Supremacism came to operate a franchise associated with the core tenets of what would become Ketherism can largely be attributed to the cynical exploitation of the whimsical consumerist impulses for nostalgia and "irony" in the relentless pursuit of profit maximisation.

History

Shrubway was founded in 998 AF, as a charitable food bank for those extremes of the Empire where the Second State Arbor welfare system had not yet reached the failed homesteaders and other downcast breathers who invariably accompanied the more successful pioneers. Pleased by the reduced strain on its own resources, the Second State Arbor permitted the Church to expand the Shrubway brand effectively without limit, until it bacame a major supplier of both breather food and lich cookies in all parts of Minarboria. In many places it outperforms the Arborial food distribution system in resourcing and popular uptake, thanks to the Church's independent base of agricultural and industrial suppliers who are motivated to provide their goods and services directly to the Church in exchange for formal indulgences and other shortcuts to Shrubly salvation for their workforce.

In 1032 AF, Shrubway extended to Shireroth under the auspices of ESB-Jörmungandr Group as exclusive franchisee. The Shirerithian operation was set up as a purely monetary affair free of direct Minarborian control, although the Church secured twelve percent of the ESB franchise's profits thanks to the singular negotiating skills of its in-house Deep Singer lawyers. This is rumoured to have gained the Church a wealth equal to the Third State Arbor in terms of liquid assets abroad.

Menu

(Note:rework)

Shrubway's menu is constantly rebalanced and fine-tuned for theological effect, given its immense value as a memetic vector for the core principles of Minarborealism amid the ordinary population. The alchemical allegory of bodily digestion as spiritual cleansing has long been a feature of Minarboreal liturgy, and Shrubway represents an oppurtunity to implement this on a level far beyond Church and missionary work. Although this is less emphatically pursued in foreign franchises, the name of Shrubway itself and certain legacy products on foreign menus assure a basic level of memetic pollination far beyond Minarboria's borders.

Savoury Products

(Note: rework)

• Breakfast Shrub Sub (made from ingredients blessed at dawn by a Holodomatic Cedrozurvanist priest)
• Six-inch Virtue Shrub Sub (each inch themed with one of the the Six Laws of the Garden. 'Purpose' to be eaten quickly, 'Efficiency' to be eaten without shedding crumbs, 'Direction' to be eaten with a minimum of lip-smacking, 'Purification' to be eaten with the alchemical incantation written on the packaging, 'Reciprocity' to be given to the vendor, and 'Self-Improvement' to be cast into the Putrefact located on the premises)
• Six-Virtue Footlong (the same, but with two inches per Shrubly Virtue)
• Fleurette's Flatbread

In such well-cultivated configurations as:

• Litel Forest Ham
• BLT (Bridezilla Lyssansa's Terror)
• Putrefact Combo (for customers with enhanced immune systems only)
• Spicy Florencian
• Minarbor Marinara
• Minarbor Carbonara
• Deep Singer Delite
• Geneshaper Mystery Meat
• Ouroboros Club
• Shrubby Patty (vegetarian)

Sweet Products

(Note: add soma)

• Breakfast Lich Wafer with Methyl Sauce
• Uncle Moshe's Binah Bagels (other Sephirot available on request)
• Lichcookie à la Lachmeren (crystalline glutaraldehyde frosting)
• Lichcookie à la Novodolor (phenol infused)
• Bread 'n' Circus Lichcookie (amphetamine-laced sugar icing, for blue-collar breathers)
• Sleepy Time Lichcookie (chocolate chips infused with equine tranquiliser, for unruly breather children)
• Zombot Lichcookie (for automatons; wafer comb impregnated with spindle oil to prevent mechanical failures)