"Only Good Food Goes to
Organic Heaven"
2009 – MAKE OR BREAK!
With sales dropping below last year’s level for 13 out of the last 20 week’s (not to mention all the gloom & doom around generally) we felt it was time to take a serious look at what we can do to ensure the survival of our little shop.
One thing was clear: the new section upstairs was not attracting anything like the numbers of customers we had hoped it would. Yes, we haven’t done much with signage nor promoted very effectively the impressive range of non-food products on display there. Nor has our seating are with free (yes free) tea been very enthusiastically taken up. We really wanted this to be alive with the buzz of people meeting up, relaxing and taking it easy – whether they bought anything or not!
After a visit to a lovely veggie café in Cromford (Scarthin Books) we longed for that kind of ambience at Organic Heaven. So we revisited the idea of a café upstairs and, to our surprise, the environmental health officer told us that, with a modest redesign of the downstairs area (to allow access for customers to the staff toilet).
Now we are looking at how we can run the café with as few additional overheads as possible. We don’t want to be pricey, so if we can make the café as self-service as possible, we have fewer extra costs to pass on. Self-service also fits nicely with the ethos of the shop – trusting your customers. We’re looking carefully at the operational aspects of the café (do we really want to be up late cooking every evening??) and sourcing the extra supplies and equipment needed. A timescale of two months seems reasonable, so watch this space!!
We also feel that we could generate more sales via the internet, but let’s get the café open first. One thing at a time!
In terms of the home delivery side of the business, we still only have one (yes, one) regular weekly customer. And, despite putting details in our new shop leaflet, we haven’t yet had any bookings for our buffet service. Once the café is ready for opening, we will do a mailshot to the 300-odd customers on our Ethical Points scheme (another very underused resource – we’ve only mailed them once in two years!)
So, there are certainly opportunities out there for us in 2009, but maintaining a decent work-life balance is also important, so we’ll develop a plan for achieving these goals over the next twelve months (then lost it down the back of the sofa……)