Holly Wilson’s From

Holly Wilson’s

From The Frontline

Welcome back

Left: Emily, one of Holly’s new team that has been welcoming customers back. Right: Holly is appreciating the surge in support for local shops. Below: Display at Richard Dare.

It feels so good to be open again. I hope that you are all enjoying having your doors flung open once more.

t has been amazing! The outpouring of joy from our customers has been truly heart-warming. Everyone just wanted to come in, look around, drink in the atmosphere and be in the company of others! Such a lovely experience. The first few weeks were predictably buoyant and reassuringly so. It has reminded me that (hopefully) the high street is still a viable option. The growth of online has been so steep, obviously due to necessity, but it has felt like it would change the way people shopped forever. And perhaps it has. However, for my customers, it has made them realise how important a real shop is. How being able to look at and feel a product is so much better than seeing it on a screen. How the buzz of buying something in real life is so much sweeter than the click of a button. How having real human interaction - a laugh, a chat, getting advice from a person face to face - is worth so much and is good for the soul. They have really felt the loss of that community and are shopping with renewed vigour to ensure that they don’t lose it again. And long may it last. With the May bank holiday and a downturn in the weather we have seen sales slow, but we are still going strong. Stock in some cases is really causing an issue though. Some suppliers seem to be navigating customs with more ease than others but when it goes wrong, it really seems to go wrong, and there seems to be very little that anyone can do about it. But short shipments and breakages are now much more of an issue when you are left short of stock as the costs associated with each delivery have a much bigger impact than they used to. Then we are also feeling the effects of the shortage of containers and surcharges being added to invoices. Of course, I understand this and am grateful that it is (hopefully) temporary, but it is quite a hefty addition to each invoice and, on top of price increases, is making prices rise quite steeply in places. However in general, customers seem to be happy to spend a little bit more to support their beloved high street - for now. With the shops’ reopening has come a completely new team for Prep. Existing staff had slowly moved on to pastures new, and we didn’t really need to recruit while we were closed, so it all became a bit of a panic for opening as I didn’t want to take on people and then have opening pushed back again. However, I have managed to pull together a great new team with a brilliant mix of skills. We have finished initial training and are now building on it. Finding stock is always one of the hardest parts of the job for newcomers. Prep is very small and the stock room almost non-existent, so stock is packed away tightly in every nook and cranny and it takes a long time to remember where everything is stashed, but they’re doing a brilliant job. We have also taken on an extra pair of hands part-time at Richard Dare to free up some of Fatima’s time. We are aiming to spend a bit more time sourcing and planning together, and I also want her to help with my accounting as she’s much better at it than me. So that leaves me with very little to do and I’m now in semi-retirement! If only that were the case! Now that the team is settled, it is time for me to go back to the website and get it updated and work on building its profile. And then it is almost time to think about returning to the shows. Exclusively is up first, swiftly followed by Top Drawer. I wonder how a post-Covid show will feel but I’m certainly excited to see familiar faces and look at all the gorgeous new product. Bring it on!

Holly Wilson is the owner of two award winning North London cookshops: Prep in Stoke Newington and Richard Dare in Primrose Hill.