#10 Crikey, that escalated quickly.

You may have noticed we've not been blogging much recently. At all actually. And that's because we've been stupidly busy! The arrangement we secured at Marple Golf Club which I told you about in [checks diary] July 25!! went from something really good to something really, really good and frankly I haven't had time.

To bring you up to speed, in June last year we came to an agreement with Rachel at Marple Golf Club to be their sole supplier for event catering, effective from the beginning of August. As August got closer we continued talking and eventually came to an agreement to take on all the day to day clubhouse catering as well as their events and functions, whilst also moving our existing operation in to the golf club. So since 4th August we've been busy, busy, busy, and what a baptism of fire it was. We had visiting golf societies (who knew they were a thing 🤷‍♂️) coming out of our ears, the president, lady president, captain and uncle Tom Cobley and all had their annual dinners. There were birthday parties, weddings, wedding anniversaries, funerals 🙁 and hundreds and hundreds of bacon butties flying out of the kitchen (golfers it seems eat a lot of bacon butties!) It's been marvellous and chaotic in almost equal measure.

Meanwhile we had our existing frozen meals business to maintain and a few of our own outside catering jobs to fit in. By the middle of October I was wondering what on earth we were doing spreading ourselves so thinly, but thankfully we settled in to a routine and by November we had it all pretty much under control. The core frozen meals business ended up being neglected somewhat (which I expected to a degree) and sales dropped off way more than I would have liked but that's picked up a bit now and is heading back to somewhere more respectable thankfully.

None of this of course could have been achieved without my now right hand man, Dan. I had a pretty good idea what I was getting when he came on board, but little did I know how much he'd contribute and how it would all have been a catastrophe without him. Going from a one man band in a tiny home kitchen and doing my own little thing, to now having a whole human at my side most days to talk things through with, laugh with, and on at least one occasion cry with, has been wonderful. Long may that continue!

Sales guy Smithy is still doing sales things and he's just set me up with a meeting at another sports club to talk about their catering. More on that soon hopefully but I'm hoping our experience at Marple will work in our favour... Who knows?! And Next Door Neil is still chipping in with some deliveries for us whilst he waits for a hip operation. He's a good 'un!

Anyway, if you've made it this far then let me reward you. We're currently having a sale and if you use the code FEB26 at checkout in our shop - cheshirefood.co.uk - you can have 20% off your order.

Finally it'd be remiss of me not to mention that if you're looking for a venue for your big celebration then please do consider Marple Golf Club. It's a great venue, and I know the chefs!