#8 Thank Goodness For Dan

It's been too long since my last blog. Many apologies. Things have been a bit topsy turvy since I last engaged my brain with this. Recovery from the surgery on my finger took longer than I'd hoped, which coincided with a few weeks of busyness which simply wouldn't have been possible without newly installed right hand man, Dan. He was able to step in at exactly the right moment to give me the lift I needed, meaning orders were fulfilled and catering clients received the deliciousness they were expecting for their events. What a legend.

It's been challenging in a completely unexpected way too. You'll remember that Dan is a highly qualified and experienced chef (compared to me, a glorified cook who can make things taste nice...) It turns out explaining recipes and methods several times a day is a time consuming thing to do, especially when you've spent the best part of 6 years making things up as you go along and tinkering without any real process or method being written down 😬 Asking Dan to start a dish with fine diced onions was met with "How fine?" And so it went on, for days. Fortunately he had the good grace to be patient with me, and every dish turned out exactly as it should!

One of the reasons I was keen to get Dan on board was his willingness to get involved with anything. And so it's proved! When I suggested we should get some flyers out to homes in Marple, to hopefully pick up the demographic who maybe don't do social media, he was all over it. And guess what? We picked up some new customers. Wonderful.

Anyway, enough of this love-in for Dan. What else is happening? (After all you're here for the growth journey.) Another of Smithy's prospects has placed their first order - hurrah! - and we've hived off the sports club business to a brand of its own, Sports Catering, hopefully making it more obvious what we can do for them. Info packs are ready to go, Smithy is ready to go, let's see what happens.

We've also upgraded our fridge and freezers so we're more future proofed. It meant we had a spare freezer which was way too good to send to freezer heaven, but definitely in the way, so we offered it to our largest farm shop customer, Kenyon Hall in Warrington for them to hold more of our stock, and they gladly accepted it. A win for them, a win for us, and a win for the freezer (if that's even a thing...)

And there we are. The trials and tribulations of a tiny business working hard to be less tiny.

Till the next time.

Dan (and Dan.)