Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed .....

Evening All,

Last week I wrote my first blog of the year, I didn't promote it on social media the way I used to, I had to get writing again, make sure I'm comfortable with what I'm saying. Ironically in the same week I had a number of people question why I stopped writing, they had been enjoying my story, so to quote the amazing Dolly....

"Here I go again"...

 I told you about the many things that were  happening for us at The Delicious Food Co, new packaging, new shop, new crowd funding with Linked Finance....it's a busy scary time,

We first put our toe in the water of Crowd Funding a few years ago  via the wonderful team at Linked Finance. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept: lenders commit to lend money to small businesses at a rate decided by them in an auction type process. It's a simple idea, the banks will give you 1% on your savings, but take a risk, back a small business (vetted by Linked Finance) and you might get up to 15% on your investment

.https://www.linkedfinance.com/loan/delicious

Everybody is different, but if I had money to invest in a small business I would certainly expect no greater rate of return than the banks. It's a moral/ ethical thing for me. So we have opted for a three year fixed rate of 8.8%, so reaching our target may be more difficult when we exclude those offering above this rate, but we will feel better about our new business partners.

Crowd funding is a difficult personal exercise, you need to write a profile of your business, your accounts are published & available to those registered with the site....you feel very exposed & vulnerable.

 I suspect it's a lot like being on Tinder...putting  yourself out there & seeing who's attracted enough to make a move.

So far we have over 26 wonderful people who have backed us to the tune of almost 20% in 3 days and we are not just grateful but touched.....For you & all of you coming down the track, I want you to know that we have been invited by BWG  to exhibit at their annual Suppliers Conference in Citywest on Wednesday, in the category of Emerging Suppliers. and I want you to know that when I am there promoting The Delicious Food Co, I will be doing it not just for  Mr Delicious,our team  in the kitchen & me, but I'll be doing it for you, our current  lenders and our future lenders, making you proud,

ensuring your return on your investment, hoping you spread the word...of this innovative world of  crowd funding..

Shirley x

If you have a minute  check out the blog I wrote when we last crowd funded with Linked Finance in 2014...I think you'll enjoy it.

http://deliciousfoodco.blogspot.ie/2014_03_01_archive.html

Good Friday...(glorious & exhausted !)

Good Evening Everybody,

It's Friday 6pm,

 I've opened a bottle of wine, which I am delightfully sipping, whilst Mr Delicious sleeps deeply on the sofa, a glass of white wine poised precariously in his hand. I daren't move it, as he might wake up & if ever a man needs some sleep  it's him. 

It's been early starts all week for us, so when I woke up this morning and he had already left I thought I must have overslept ....but it wasn't even 5.30am  when I stumbled into  my home office  blindly  searching for my last two contact lens.

The dog benefited from an extra long walk & I was at my stainless steel work table by 6.15am.

The last few months have been mental, so much going on in some directions, so little in others....my daydreambeliever  in missing in action  (but I'm sure I'll find him, I always do). Business continues to grow with all the excitement & pain that comes with it....bigger supplier / wage bills, big highs when the cheques come in & enormous lows whey fail to arrive within an expected time frame.

One minute I'm lovin' it, and the next minute  I'm sellin' it !

If you are an small business owner, I know you'll share the agonies &  ecstasies of this roller coaster ride and if you are in a safe pensionable job, well I loathe you & envy you in equal proportions.

Next week I am going to do something I have done  before & that is to expose myself to the general public and do some crowd funding...I can't manage this growth without help so I'm going back to a space I know & lets see what happens...

The new packaging will be ready next week, so that feels like the end of something & the beginning of something new.

We have first option on a site for our first retail space , which we also hope to agree on  next week..how exciting is that !

Tonight we got final confirmation that whilst the fridge in our van is super COOL..the engine of the van is DEAD...so  we also need to buy a new van, asap.

And all of that has to happen between the actual work of producing our delicious products.

Yesterday morning myself & Mr Delicious decided that the best way to get a better work life balance over the summer was to start training, so as he drove the hired fridge van around the city, on our deliveries, I signed us both up for a charity cycle to our favourite festival of the year....

Electric Picnic 2016, we're coming to get ya...and we'll be on our bikes

Shirley

x

'Tis the Season ...Rejoice ...

Evening all,

Tomorrow is Tuesday of Christmas week... 

What a gift just to be here, to be alive, to celebrate this momentous time of year, a time  that grows bigger & bigger with every year that passes; a time of year that captures our lives in a way that no carefully poised selfie can possibly do.

Every year the first Christmas card that arrives through our letter box comes from Mr Delicious' oldest friend Kevin, who emigrated to New Zealand many years ago. That card has been the reminder of a relationship that endures despite the miles & the time lapses.Each year it arrives with his address on the back of the envelope and year after year Mr Delicious puts it somewhere safe, paying homage  to a friendship that is  so far away & yet so near. This year there will be no card from Kevin, as he died tragically & so suddenly in June this year whilst out running in NZ just weeks before he was due to come home to us in Ireland with his wife Susie, where we were all going to party like the old days.

On Christmas eve at our traditional gathering, our core gang have been all be bereaved in the most tragic way;  Barbara has lost an ex partner & Emer the same friend,  to sudden death: Crona's beloved nephew died just 11 weeks after this magnificent & beautiful man & father  (42) was diagnosed with a brain tumor.Our son  Charlie was on his J1 in San Francisco, and returned home to attend the funeral of his pal Nick, killed in Berkeley, before returning back to complete what should have been a trip of a lifetime. Marie's beautiful dad Eddie, a man who at his funeral was (correctly) described as the definition of a gentleman, also passed away this year, whilst her beautiful son Keelan, is always fore front of our mind every year, at this very special gathering.

I am desperately sad & I  am intensely  grateful.

 Desperately sad for the losses we & so many more have suffered. But I am also grateful that today,  so close to Christmas, Mr Delicious, our children, my mom & all our siblings  & their children are here.

My blog is supposed to be a business blog: my life as an SME owner, but tonight as I reflect on life, there just doesn't seem to be a fitting place for such commentary.

Where ever you are I hope you are in a place to  share a peaceful happy Christmas.

Merry Christmas.

Shirley xx

"and there was homecoming...

after 40 years in the states,

all dressed in dollar green, he comes home to his own faithful Kathleen..

they hug by a dresser of shiny plates....

oh Happy, Happy scene ..."

by

Patrick Kavanagh

Yours, Eternally Optimistic...

Evening all,

Sorry I  skipped town for a while...it was kinda nice

 Life had been  so busy I sorta crashed. & opted out. As those of us who are self employed will know "crashing & opting out" consists of keeping going, same old same old....it's an in joke in the world of self employment that only those with the luxury of a PAYE job, have the luxury of having a nervous breakdown.

 Many years ago, stressed to the hilt, I went to buy catering buckets for salads in an outlet in Finglas, tears rolled involuntarily down my face as I conducted business. "500  x 5 litre buckets please, do you have orange lids, how much is that including vat" " that's great thank you". "here the cheque" " yes please put them in the back of the van"...not a single sole asking if I was okay....I take it I wasn't the first basket case to arrive in the depths of the recession in such a state.

Last months crash came when my daydreambeliever stopped believing albeit momentarily. There was a misunderstanding that I hadn't been aware had occurred. We met up had a long chat which  revealed more about each other  than any amount of legal documents could reveal...I'm glad it happened & I think we are now back on track.

To have somebody invest in your business is about so much more than money (at least it is to me), it's about the relationship that you have with the investor, how you get on, do you share the same vision, can you work together, it's about compromise.

When I was first approached about this possible co (ad)venture....my daydreambeliever, (emphatic that this was an initial chat),  concluded whatever happens, if we do try something & make a killing, great...and if it doesn't work out...in unison we said
 "we won't fall out"

I remain eternally optimistic !

Shirley x

Seize the Day or Lose it ..(.honour that you have the choice.)

Evening All,

It's been almost a week since the new creative work was presented, since then I've been to the funeral in Donegal of a man who died too young, too soon, too unbelievably fast. A man with a smile who lit up the world & whose impact in life was like a comet of brightness on everybody he touched.

It was hard not to come back from Donegal angry with the unfairness of life, juxta positioned with the need to grasp it, squeeze every precious moment of out of it...to honour a life that was too damn short .

But try as I might I felt shaken & scared, how could have I posted such positive stuff when life is so fragile....it's like being in a fog. 

Today I got a call asking me to produce 100kg of salads per day for a major blue chip business, Wow,  I need to see how I can possibly work that into our daily work schedule. Later  I had a meeting with a potential new client who has been trying without success to get a range of seriously healthy  fresh food for his international clientele. He felt he'd met a blank wall, after exhausting his bank of mass producing suppliers, until a former client told him  she knew exactly who he should call...well that would be me/The Delicious Food Co..samples going in on Thursday.

After that I had a meeting with my daydreambeliever ; things are moving on there too, we have  a plan...we have a target to launch at Bite, an Artisan trade show in RDS in Nov, that means we need to settle on a creative direction, get it printed , all product finalised & put together for what will be a template of what could well be the first Delicious Food Co outlet,...it's a mammoth task.

But  let's face it if I can do that in four weeks...whats a 100kg extra of salad per day.

If I've learnt one thing in the last week it's that tomorrow is promised to no one

I'm going for it !

Shirley

x

Brand New ...in every conceivable way

Evening all,

Next up, after  daydreambeliever stood me up was a meeting at 3pm with the design company to see initial concepts for our new packaging.

As we all sat in the board room I felt very nervous. To see my beloved Delicious Food Co presented through somebody else eyes, well that's a toughie. Mr Delicious wasn't there...food to prepare for tomorrow etc.

The first concept involved tweaking our logo. I have to say I was kinda shocked, I love our logo...I felt as though somebody had taken one of my kids on a day trip & returned with all their blonde curls cut off I was looking at the same child....but now...different.

The second concept pushed that boundary further…not only were the curls gone....but the hair had been dyed too…same child, but more different....

I wanted to cry.

Finally the third concept; basically my child was gone & a new child was presented as a better one, Not only that, but part of the concept involved photos myself & Mr Delicious...NEVER!

Any kind of creative process is a "journey". A journey that starts somewhere, maybe somewhere that the client doesn't like or is defensive about. Changing a logo is particularly hard/ sensitive to accept for a business owner because that logo is our public identity, part of who we are, the public face of our hard work.

As I walked home, two of the concepts stayed with me; enveloped me; challenged me the way the creative team wanted. Great creative work does that, so maybe, part of the change I need to make is not just my wardrobe, my PR, maybe I need a brand new approach in every sense of the word, it's certainly food for thought.

Btw

On the way home my daydreambeliever called....so sorry about today's mix up, meeting rescheduled for Tuesday....

sorry, sorry, sorry

Shirley

Where has my daydreambeliever gone....

Evening All,

I promised to keep you all updated on my "journey" to put me & my beloved Delicious Food Co on the map. 

So here we go.

Just after I posted my last blog about how my daydreambeliever wanted to start talking margins, which in his language meant we might be getting serious....he disappeared. Texts went unanswered, until yesterday when beep, went my phone suggesting a meeting  at 12.30 today. At noon I got a text " leave it until 1pm" I had planned to get home, put on a one of those new outfits, dress to impress, show him I'm taking this seriously.

Things didn't work out that way & I just about made it to the meeting wearing the warmest thing I could find at 6am this morning; a bic pen; a debit card & my phone which proptly died on my arrival. It didn't matter...he wasn't there.

I waited for a while, but thought to myself, what's the point if he was interested he'd be here. We've worked together before and back then he was clear;if I didn't deliver on his expectations, my phone would go unanswered, texts unreturned and I would slowly realize I was being dumped. Suddenly it was beginning to look like, that was happening before we'd begun.

I walked to the van dejected,  kicking myself for declaring this possible adventure in social media

wondering how could I rewrite the story....


Shirley

x