Overnight Success...it takes years

Evening All,

Earlier this year I told you that this being our tenth year in business is the year we finally become an overnight sensation.We may well be into the second half of the year and you may well think...what happened with that, but I promise you things are on course for that overnight stardom.

If we were an X factor kinda company I'd tell you quietly & in confidence that we have made it through to judges houses....Simon Cowell & "his team"has been working away with us. Simon is confident that we have the most potential since Leona Lewis in 2006 to fill stadiums or in our case supermarket shelves.

 We've been focusing on what kind of artist /producer we need to be. We've agreed we will not do cover versions, we are serious authentic artists, we will produce our own lyrics /recipes, we will stand out in the market

 .....we will make  millions for him & for  us.....

Simon is beyond excited & so are we. Just as Leona quits his Syco label, along comes The Delicious Food Co.

Everybody needs a day dreamer believer...we might just well have found ours.

Watch this space !

Shirley

x

Young Blood , Old Turk....Foodie Prophet

Hi Evening All,

I know, I know, I know....

A few months ago I promised to get back to writing a weekly blog about life in the food lane. I'm sorry to have let you down, but I have an excuse, honestly I do. I finished my last post wedding blog, telling you that it was mouth to mouth resuscitation I needed to get my body breathing again. I was so, so tired at the end of May and that aching tiredness stayed with me all through June.

As I crawled shattered out of bed each morning, my main goal was to make it through the day to crawl back under that duvet as early as possible and try to recharge my fading batteries.
The tiredness was exacerbated by the sheer volume of work we got through at
The Delicious Food Co.

It was by all accounts an exceptional month  as shop after shop sold out of our wonderful salads & sandwiches, new clients came on board and the excitement in the kitchen grew. We have a superb team in the kitchen, and each day as I would arrive in guiltily  with yet another order, increasing the burgeoning work load...Mr Delicious would groan but our young & exciting team would simply smile & rejoice for our good fortune.

"Another 500 salad pots for client X"..No problem !, "400 Hummus Pots"..Hooray!, "Two new sandwich accounts to be delivered before 8am"....Yippee !, "48 kilos of mixed bespoke salads"..Fab! and joyfully they would send me off again like a foodie prophet to gather more orders and bring them back to the kitchen to be fulfilled.

Last week I gave a lift to one of the team and  worried to him about the work load on everybody, especially Mr Delicious.With youth on his side he confided in me ..."don't worry Shirley..I have explained to the guys, that  Mr Delicious  is  an old man, whilst we are young , we can do the work, we are happy to work, you  just bring in the orders and we will make it happen.

So to honour the lads and their relentless energy & positivity, I  feel my old energy slowly & ryhtmically trickling back through  my veins, I am back on track....hungry for business, sniffing out leads at every office building I pass.

So if you crave great food in your office or local deli...watch out 'cos I am coming to get ya!



Shirley x

Here Comes the Bride ....Mouth to mouth required !

Evening all,

At the end of last month I sat down & started to write a blog. It was a cold Sunday afternoon,dinner was in the oven & I was sipping a lovely glass of red wine. The house was clean & I  was in a very chilled zone.The topic of my blog was energy, the kind of energy that pushed a business forward, the kind of energy that no amount of hours in the gym or  Red Bull can activate, the kind of energy I had been feeling of late.

I was trying to explain, that, that  kind of  energy comes from somewhere deep within you. It's a kind of energy that pulls you out of bed, when every bone & your body is screaming no !An energy that comes from being excited about your business or your life. As I typed away merrily, sipping my wine, I became very  aware that at 6pm Mr. Delicious, was not yet home. After a very long day (& week) he was still in work, It felt wrong to write about energy...I knew he was exhausted & despite my own excitement about our business, I was beginning to feel tried too.

No sooner had I committed the blog to "Drafts",than the energy I'd been eulogising just minutes  earlier seemed to abandon my body  and  bizarrely I have been exhausted ever since.The daily rhythm of  life, up early, dash, dash, dash...deadline after deadline culminating with the organisation of a wedding on the June bank holiday weekend finally caught up.

....I cannot even begin to describe how much energy the organisation of a wedding saps from a small event planner...it looms in the distance overshadowing everything until two days before it arrives. Like a well prepared Leaving Cert student you know you've put the work in..but what if something goes wrong...this is the most important day of somebodies life & they've given ME the responsibility to organise it.(What were they thinking..!!.) It consumes every ounce of your being. My bride was gorgeous, her wedding was planned by her in meticulous detailed excel sheets & folders...my plans for her wedding were a few scribbles at the bottom of the Cater hire list.

The success of her wedding was in my hands...I trusted me & my team, but she was right to be nervous. Her wedding was in my head, only I could see it.

On the morning of the wedding I probably got more good luck texts than the bride herself.The wedding in a private house was a triumph...my team from The CaterWaiter were sublime...Mr Delicious was outstanding ..the bride was overwhelmed by our transformation of a beautiful drawing room in Rathmines to a fairy tale wedding banqueting hall.

As for me, with dinner out of the way & the dancing in full swing, people were offering me champagne, toasting my great work, but as the release of pressure took over & the exhaustion impaled itself in me, I knew that it wasn't a drink I needed  keep me going, 'twas   mouth to mouth resuscitation.

Sweet dreams !

Shirley 

Lucky Breaks: The breadman, the auditor & me.

Evening everyone,

There is no doubt about it but every business needs a lucky break.

The biggest break we ever had came in 2006, when a bread supplier came in to pitch business to us, his bread was great, but didn't come in commercial sizes, so wasn't right for us. As he left he picked up a brochure we had produced. His next call was to a small Gallery/Cafe whose sandwich supplier had ceased trading,He passed on my brochure and two days later The Delicious Food Co were the new sandwich supplier. Enquiring as to who the previous supplier had supplied I found amongst others two gems.

 Ernst & Young and Avoca Suffolk St.

I made contact & set up meetings with both clients. After pitching to AVOCA, they were so impressed they had placed   their very first order with us before I'd even  got back to the car. It was the start of a great relationship &  we continued  to make sandwiches under the AVOCA label for a number of years.

The next client, Ernst & Young as it was known then, was a bit more tricky as the catering facility was run by a contract catering company.Getting on the approved supplier list was as difficult as getting a mortgage in 2013.
 However the EY client loved us & ultimately he called the shots.

This required an audit of our food business...to be honest we hadn't a clue. Sure we had a HACCP system, but it was basic. Our (commercial) kitchen was full of cookery books, pretty ceramic platters, a kind of Kath Kidson meets Martha Stewart, mixed with a little bit of Nigella (to keep Mr Delicious smiling). The scope of the audit was 32 pages long & covered things I thought petty ...specification sheets for packaging materials....water certificates...a corporate responsibility statement...OMG..

But the auditor (who had flown in from the UK to do the audit), saw something in us, a small business making seriously good food, albeit in a slightly disorganised way. The audit took 12 hours as both he & I looked for a way to get us over the line: the line from Martha kitchen to a proper professional food business..and we got there (achieving A grades, no less,  in our past two audits for that same client)

Ultimately that one act of passing on our brochure, transformed our business & led to clients that included not only AVOCA, EY, but Citibank, PWC, RTE, Google, Yahoo, Deloitte, Bank of New York..and many many more...

Now wasn't that one hell of a  lucky break !

Shirley

Me, Bord Bia & The (Dublin Food) Chain Gang

Evening All,

By now if you've been paying attention you will know that I'm a bit of a procrastinator...

Benjamin Franklins'  quote

"why put off  until tomorrow when it can be done today"

has been amended in my head replacing "today" with "tomorrow", 

 Leaving things to the last minute, pulling things out of the bag,  well,  that's something at which I excel  I always know I'm onto something I really want to do when I start early, plan in advance & hit that deadline fifteen minutes before it expires.

So, when I got an email from Dublin Food Chain announcing a trip to London with a group other Foodies & Bord Bia to suss out food trends over there I was on to it like a bat out of hell. I emailed by return with a very definite "expression of interest" and despite the trip being over subscribed three fold , as one of the early birds I secured a much coveted place on board.

Dublin Food Chain was started a few years ago by  James Burke a man with a wealth of experience in the food business with a vision & passion to put something concrete together that would bring small food businesses together to share ideas, to mentor & to inform each other.The work that James, Bord Bia & LEO  are doing to support small food businesses is phenomenal.

However despite all the help that is out there I find it difficult to take the time to reach out & explore the many options for help that are available. Self employment can be a lonely place which is why I was so excited about this trip, not only would I have a chance to see first hand what the trends in the ready to go market are in London, get ideas for packaging etc, but I would get a chance to meet my fellow foodie colleagues.

The trip was last Friday and it was a triumph,It was organised with the skill of a military operation. Starting in Kings Cross we visited food business after food business, taking pictures, absorbing the trends, connecting with each other. We walked miles in the sunshine, exchanged tips & stories of the  worries & successes of our businesses, we swapped business cards,  made & received suggestions that might be useful to each other.

At the end of the day, tired, excited & inspired I realised that the most important thing that I took from the day was that in the food business in Dublin, with such a wonderful supportive community nobody need ever feel alone.

Bless you all.

Shirley
x

(Owner of The Delicious Food Co)

Something Fishy's' Going Down !

Evening All,

Last week I promised myself that I would go back to writing a weekly blog about life as an SME owner & keep you updated, amused &  comforted that:

a) you are not alone if you too are self employed

b) that boring but pensionable job, you have considered forfeiting 

might not be quite so bad after all.

All businesses depend on one thing above all else & that is THE CLIENT. Without clients there would be no business.Clients are the oxygen that breathes life into our dreams of self fulfilment. It's important to have a good spread of clients, to never be over dependent on one, although we all wish for that special one, The Mr Big, who's business takes care of ours, with orders rolling in & the ultimate bonus of prompt payment that appears in the bank on the same day every month, without ever having to ask.

Last week I got a call from a key client, could I meet him to discuss where management were going with their expanding  business

I stock a number of their stores & whilst  not quite Mr Big, this is a piece of business I value & would not want to lose.

I went to the meeting, dressed to impress, yet feeling defensive. I knew what was coming..they are revamping their fresh food business, somebody "up North" will provide Crayfish sandwiches...it's a very sexy EXCLUSIVE  proposition & by exclusive I not talking about the Crayfish.

So I did what I do best when faced with Beechers Brook, I held on tight, dug deep & tackled it head on.

Now, I can't match the fantastic prices of a mass producer, my products may not be the best packaged product on the shelf ,but

my sandwiches are made the morning they are delivered. The bread  is made locally by The Bretzel Bakery, we buy all our vegetables in Smithfield, we employ five of us in our kitchen  Every penny we spend & make supports local jobs.

We matter !

I urged the client to consider this; that we like so many others need his business to do what we do. The success of a business is not just in the bottom line, it's how it supports so many small businesses like us and it is the small businesses like us who are the backbone of this economy.

Later that evening I got a call, the owner had heard my pitch and if I am willing to be flexible, he is willing to be flexible too, so as they sayin the music business
 "it's not over 'til the fat lady sings"


As for our sandwiches...forget Cray Fish, we'll be filling ours with nothing less than
 Dublin Bay Prawns.

 Delicious !

Starting Over...

Evening All,

When I started my blog two years ago, I fell happily into the rhythm of writing a blog every week, punching out tale after tale of the  life of a small business owner. I think the blog hit a chord with other small business owners as I revealed the highs & the lows of my daily  journey around the

 Food Lanes of Dublin, owner of The Delicious Food Co.

In 2013 the positive feed back that I got to the blog kept me buoyant personally when I might have otherwise sunk. It was wonderful to share the big successes & not be afraid to tell it as it was when things were tough. What I loved most about the blogs I wrote then was the honesty of them, the lack of fear of  

the freedom of my own expression.

The beauty about writing a  blog is the anonymity of it. I don't think anybody writes a blog for people they know, they write it for themselves (at least I do) and then cyber it out there into the universe to 

see where it lands, who  connects with it. If you write a personal blog like I do, you need to stay strong or the careless (often well meant) whispers about revealing too much can dent that treasured freedom.

So, starting from next week I intend to go back to writing a weekly (humorous) blog on the life of a small business owner,  warts, beauty spots & all.

Why not hop in beside me & come along for the ride , it will be fun.

I promise!

Shirley x