A week after lockdown and reading about the shortages of groceries and supermarket shelves being stripped I thought that as my coffee shop was empty why not convert it to a takeaway coffee shop plus grocery store?
With some changes to the layout and a bit of fortuitous planning – I bought large quantities of flour and yeast along with some other essentials – I was back open for business. We traded well and saw a lot of new customers and pared back our menu to create the leanest model we could.
WE CREATED A WHOLE NEW BUSINESS MODEL
As part of the Boughton’s Business Bounce Back feature in issue 124, Burzin Mistry of The Post Room in Chiswick, reveals how diversification has made him re-evaluate his business
Now as things start to lift it has actually made me re-evaluate my whole business. Obviously because of the current status of social distancing I am limited with a sit-down offering so for now will remain as a takeaway service only. I think the grocery side of the business will also remain as it does seem to have been part of our local community store experience that we’ve never had before.
We use our website for online ordering as the problem with services like Uber Eats is that the margins just don’t add up – losing 30% of every item just doesn’t make economic sense so I’m just keeping it small and we are doing the deliveries ourselves.
We use our website for online ordering as the problem with services like Uber Eats is that the margins just don’t add up – losing 30% of every item just doesn’t make economic sense so I’m just keeping it small and we are doing the deliveries ourselves.
Long-term planning has gone out of the window – I’m just focusing on what we do up to October, and then October to February as historically that is our leanest period. This whole experience has made me realise just how much value people place on their daily caffeine fix – which is a real positive. Now I just have to concentrate on finding ways of holding on to my new customer base for as long as possible – that will be the real challenge. Being prepared to change was key to getting us through the last few months and I think will be a huge part of this next post-lockdown phase.
