Franz's idea was to lower prices and expand the consumer base within the Austrian Empire. However, in consideration of export profits, Austrian citizens would have to purchase from royal companies or the Church using Austrian Imperial identification documents.
Taking shoes as an example, Austrian citizens would be entitled to buy shoes at half price twice a year. Naturally, the selection would be limited to work shoes and ordinary walking shoes; special luxury footwear and boots were excluded.
The same principle could apply to ready-made clothing and bread. Of course, the cycle for bread would not be very long. Bread nearing its expiration date would be held back and sold at night.
This was mainly to avoid affecting bakeries during their normal business hours, while also reducing the chance of people exploiting loopholes. After all, no ordinary wealthy person would line up with a crowd of poor devils to fight over food nearing its expiration date.
As long as they were not truly destitute, no one would be willing to spend so much time and effort scrambling for limited quantities of near-expiry food.
Thus, if one wished to judge the living conditions of Austrian citizens, one only needed to look at the sales of these goods. If discounted near-expiry food ever failed to sell, it would prove that they truly had enough to eat.
However, the people responsible for selling these special goods had to be well-fed, well-clothed children of wealthy families or reserve officials. At the very least, they could not be impoverished nobodies.
Franz intended to promote this together with department stores. After all, following these years of development, many regions of the Austrian Empire already had the potential to establish department stores.
The precise scale, however, would depend on the size and level of development of each city.