New Stour & Avon, July 29, 2022 57
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Business
Time flies as award-winning deli turns two
Andrew Diprose is the founder and editor of dorsetbiznews.co.uk, the No.1 business website in the county with more than 25,000 unique users
Simon and Claire Warren can’t believe how quickly the first two years of their popular deli have flown by. Launched during the first lockdown in 2020, and one of Wimborne’s smallest retailers, the East Street Deli hit the ground running from day one. Simon, 43, said: “We were serving customers in the oldfashioned way from a table at the front door for the first three months. “That first morning we had a queue down the road, waiting for us to open. “We were blown away and it’s never really stopped since then.” The couple came across what was to become the East Street Deli while Simon was considering his options after spending nearly 17 years in retail. He’d grown up above his parent’s convenience store in Wool and, despite vowing to never work in the sector – ‘the hours, the hard work, you can never escape’ – went on to enjoy a highflying retail career with the wholesaler for Spar in the West Country. But, said Simon: “I had a big team and was doing a lot of driving and spending a lot of time in the boardroom and no time in a shop or with a customer.” And then the opportunity came to start their own
business by acquiring the fixtures and fittings of what was once the Hungry Bird deli in East Street. Simon said: “The day before the first lockdown in March 2020, Georgie Boyd, the owner of the Hungry Bird, sat me down and said: ‘I’m having a baby, I’ve got another business, the lease is up here and something has got to give – I’m going to close the deli’. “I was out of work but reassessing what I wanted to do. I decided it was still retail but it needed to be customer-facing. “This seemed ideal, but there was the small matter of the lockdown. “We thought ‘that’s it, we can’t open a shop’. “But, after thinking it through, we said ‘hang on, people are looking for this type of business more than ever before so why not? “Let’s give it a go, because what’s the worst that could happen?” Simon and Claire, who met while at school in Dorchester and married in the Minster in 2015, massively increased the stock range with particular attention on expanding areas such as
cheeses, meats and wines. They also expanded the ecofriendly range and invested in new tills. The deli is now home to thousands of European, national and local products including 50 cheeses – around half from the UK and the rest from abroad including France, Spain and Italy. All the beers and ciders are from Dorset, with other local products also stocked, but, said Simon: “Just because it’s local doesn’t mean we’ll get it in. “It’s got to be good.” The couple are constantly researching new products with Claire, who is also a freelance PA, taking the lead as well as looking after the books, the marketing and working two days a week in the business. Three months ago the East Street Deli was named as
both the overall winner at the inaugural Wimborne Business Awards and also Independent Business of the Year. Simon said: “Winning the Independent Business Award in any town was going to be a big thing but to win it in this town, where there are so many great independent businesses, was just amazing.” Claire, 42, added: “We’re working all the time but it’s exciting because there’s so much more we can grow and develop. “We’d like to do more collaborations with other businesses and, eventually, possibly look at a second site but we’d never leave Wimborne. “This is our flagship site even though we get a lot of people coming in and saying ‘open one here, open one there’.”
