Silly Season

25 September 2013, 13:33 pm
Speciality Bites by Paul Hargreaves

The last week of September marks the beginning of our truly, madly, deeply silly season as it is the first week that much of our Christmas stock is ready to go out. So, welcome to non-stop telephone calls, large bills from the temporary jobs agency and late nights in the office! But you know we love it really

The next eight weeks will see us send out of our warehouse doors more stock than in all the summer months added together – which normally makes it very easy to see where the growing pains are in the company!

As I said last time, it does seem that there is a lot of confidence in the market at present. As predicted, Speciality and Fine Food Fair was busier than ever and there were more and more new brand start-ups represented making our job of choosing new products for Jan 2014 even more difficult than ever, but it all makes life interesting! The summer holidays certainly seem a long time ago now!

The show, of course, saw the final of Cotswold Collaborates – our competition for 16-24 year old food entrepreneurs – won by Ben Nichols of SoSmoothies. The whole competition certainly inspired me and the others who were involved, and we are definitely going to run it again! I am looking forward to working with Ben over the next year to develop his business, and have my first meeting with him next month.

The next month is busy – lots of changes going on within Cotswold Fayre, a trip to Austria and Belfast and also a whistlestop trip to the orphanage to plan the next phases of the farm. When I catch my breath you will hear from me again!

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