John Shepherd, Partridges: “Coronation Street”

In previous articles I have often highlighted the importance of special events to the sales in our speciality food shops.

This is, of course, a well-recognised annual trend for the likes of Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, Mother’s Day and uniquely for us Chelsea Flower Show week. But national events which generally involve the Royal family can play their part too.

Going back a decade or so, the London Olympic Games and Golden Jubilee of 2012 spring to mind. More recently, the Platinum Jubilee event and even the time around HM the Queen’s Funeral were national moments when sales were positively impacted.

My expectations however for the Coronation week were, for various reasons, not so high. For example, the weather was predicted to be at its good old unpredictable self, the economic mood is currently gloomy, and questions were raised more than ever about the constitutional relevance of it all.

However, I am pleased to say that for us coronation week maintained the tradition of national events giving a helping hand to our shop. There are of course caveats. We are lucky to be so close to where the action is in Central London and we benefit from the influx of visitors to ceremonial events by being on the iconic King’s Road.

But we were somewhat taken aback by the general buzz created and the increased volume of British and foreign tourists who travelled to London, and especially the amount of overseas media who were looking for interviews and stories surrounding the event. Curiosity about the Coronation of the King was very great.

In fact, I think we gave about six interviews during the week to overseas film crews and had a live broadcast at 6:30am for Japanese afternoon television.

The result was a pleasing spike in sales that we were not expecting and a welcome respite from the stagnation of the cost-of-living crisis. Of course we massively underordered on Coronation related articles which meant we actually had not as much to offer when the big day arrived.

Thank goodness that the very dependable Walkers Biscuits and their very attractive tins of shortbread biscuits helped us out yet again. How many times have I said that over the past 50 years!

But it is not just about souvenir items on these festive occasions. Alcohol sales rose exponentially despite being a rainy week, chocolates, teas, dining ware and all the traditional items did well too, and our outdoor street parties – of which we organised two – were a great success. The street party tradition is a great way of reaching out to the local community, and my advice is that despite the detailed planning involved, if you see a street celebration join it!

Either by having a stall selling food and drink, donating some helpful products or even just standing around with a glass of Shepherd’s Ruin and a funny hat. One of our street celebrations was on the Saturday which was soggy and the other was on the Sunday which was not. Both did well but if it had been good weather on both days our sales would have been even better.

It may be some time before we have a national event like this but at the next opportunity Partridges will be putting up the bunting, decorating the shop with flowers and bringing all of our heritage and traditional products to the front of stage – especially Walkers.