"How much do you need?" she asked. Rick answered that eight thousand pounds would cover the immediate gap. He had larger long-term plans, but the initial shipment was the problem that would determine whether those plans mattered. Marlene nodded, then turned a page in her notebook to show the lots she had identified as available for the commercial order. They met the profile he had described, subject to his company's own verification and final acceptance tests.
Rick asked what she was charging for the product in ordinary wholesale sales. Marlene told him those prices depended on volume, packaging, and the specific lot, and that she would not apply a routine restaurant price to a source-specific order requiring extensive records and a tight delivery schedule. She had learned from Wade Harlan that selling quickly for less was a legitimate choice, but not the only one. She would not apologize for the cost of keeping a product ready when someone else needed it.
"Eight thousand pounds," she said. "Ten dollars and fifty cents a pound. Eighty-four thousand dollars total, with the verification package and agreed handling requirements included." Rick repeated the price, then leaned back. He had expected a premium, but the number was above the commodity quotes he had been collecting in December.
"That's a lot of money for tallow," he said. Marlene did not argue that it was cheap. She showed him a summary of costs: the early capital repairs, the refrigerated collection equipment, raw material purchased after October, transport, labor, energy, testing, retained samples, storage, and the work of tracing every batch to its source. Those figures did not produce a neat formula saying exactly what the product ought to cost. They did show that the pails were not simply free fat poured from somebody else's barrel.
Rick said a plant in Oklahoma had quoted him $6.40 for ordinary tallow. Marlene asked whether that material could carry Ironwood's approved pit-origin statement, and he said no. She asked whether the plant could have verified Ironwood material ready before the launch, and he told her the answer was uncertain. Then she asked what Ironwood risked if it missed the grocer's opening date.
He did not answer immediately. The direct shortage deduction would be $3 per missing pound, or $24,000 for the eight thousand pounds they were discussing. Worse, the retailer could give the space to another brand, forcing Ironwood to wait for a new opening and possibly lose the promotional investment already made. The generic tallow quote was not a true alternative to her product because it did not fulfill the contract's basic promise.
Marlene did not need to say any of that for him. She simply let him compare the two choices as a manager: one purchase that cost more than commodity fat but matched the approved source, and another that seemed cheaper until the company tried to put an honest label on it. Rick drew a line beneath his figures. "You know we've been paying you to take our waste away?" he asked.