Oliver's Family Backstory (Headcanon #16)
This was requested by Anon. I know this is a little overdone in the fandom, but here’s my take on it. So yeah this is kind of what I like to think happened.
Oliver has been born into a rich family which naturally - at some point - might have been people who earned an average income.
His father always had interest in cooking. He liked to cook. A lot. But for some reason he wasn’t able to convince people that he didn’t want to do what everyone would do, the mainstream stuff. He didn’t want to become a doctor, engineer, lawyer or anything that the elders suggested. He wanted to do something else.. something different.. something that he’ll actually have fun doing. Something that he has a passion for.
Yeah everybody in the family knew that he liked to cook and could cook really well that too at the tender age of 13. But he thought they might not let him take it up as a profession as “it wouldn’t cover up his life expenses”.
However, after a few years of persuasion, he was able to convince his parents on letting him start a small food outlet. His parents and him settled on the decision that they would let him take a gap year as he had finished college and was to start university. What he didn’t know was that his father had invested in some property a few years ago and one of them was a small decent-sized shop in a bazaar that was just a few steps away from their residence. Turns out, it was an old shop which had been sold out, so the counters and cabinets were still intact. With the help of his father, he bought the supplies he needed to run a small kitchen. A stove with a built in oven, necessary utensils and a bunch of plates & bowls and spoons & forks. Along with all of this, his father also bought him a few extra stuff that would make his kitchen look good, one of which was a black board where Oliver’s father decided he would write his daily menu, as he wouldn’t be able to start a whole ‘restaurant’ at once. Prices would be kept low and the ‘product’ range would be kept limited in the beginning. He knew he had to go slow, but he was satisfied that he was doing something he liked to.
At the age of 18, Oliver’s father had started his own little food outlet. Daily he had a choice of two meals written on the black board, usually simple meals that wouldn’t take too much effort and time to prepare. As he would ‘open’ his shop in the afternoon at lunch time, he would prepare all the necessary ingredients - chopped vegetables and chicken, boiled noodles and rice, chicken stock prepared - in the early morning hours so that he wouldn’t have to go through much hassle when the customers do come.
Natural talent brought success to the boy, bringing him and the family more joy than ever. People would come to his outlet - office workers or university students usually - and pay compliments to him, praising the food he made and silently being thankful for the fact that the prices weren’t something they couldn’t afford, promising that they would definitely return. And they did, almost everyday. Some of the people would come back with their families, admitting that they loved the food so much that they wanted their families to try it as well. It was big success which earned them generous amounts of revenue.
That’s how it all started. That’s how Oliver’s father had to move his little shop into a bigger place, buying a restaurant and employing some colleague chefs and other staff. He had to use up a lot of his revenue but it was all worth it. His regular customers would still come to his restaurant. His business kept growing and growing. And so he decided to do a study a course after which he would qualify as a top notch, 5-star chef. After that, it was all in a the blink of an eye, the success of his restaurant.
Yeah, he owned a couple of restaurants today, he was a millionaire ! But he got all of this with hard work and the determination to fulfill his dreams. And the cherry on top of all of this, was that his young son, Oliver, was a 5-star chef at one of the restaurants he owned.
