In the One Piece anime, even more than twenty years later, the BIG Pirates still habitually used direct plunder to obtain rare ingredients that Totto Land could not produce itself for the Tea Party.
The cost of doing so was indeed very low, but it caused tremendous damage to the places where those ingredients were produced. Especially when only a small handful of people possessed the relevant techniques, a single raid could very likely cause that ingredient to vanish forever.
Not long after Charlotte Mousse awakened his memories from before his transmigration, he seized upon his mother's regret over this matter and persuaded her to abandon such a simple and brutal method of procuring ingredients. Instead, he urged her to pay for orders, reducing the family's sins at least somewhat.
Because Charlotte Mousse invoked the words Carmel had once used to persuade the Elbaf Giants—"Trade is better than plunder"—and did not immediately demand that the family compete with other buyers through high prices alone as in normal trade, the notoriously stubborn Charlotte Linlin was persuaded for once.
Although, even following Charlotte Mousse's suggestion, the BIG Pirates used their strength and notorious reputation to keep ingredient prices extremely low, at least the sellers would not suffer losses, so they would not be forced to fish a pond dry.
Under the previous procurement method, after being raided once, even if the ingredient did not disappear, its production would never recover within a month.
That would have left far fewer ingredients for Streusen, the head chef, to choose from, making his task increasingly difficult—so difficult that success would have been nearly impossible.
That said, even with more sources for ingredients now available, producing another creation that satisfied Charlotte Linlin after only one month still left Streusen racking his brains.
Fortunately, the old man