food for thought

Emily

Tell us about the deli.

The deli is predominantly cheese and charcuterie as well as ambient goods. We want beautiful products that work well for gifting; items you can’t find in the supermarket. That’s one of the biggest challenges because supermarkets are really upgrading those sorts of products.

There’s a balance as well between items that are exciting and attractive but not so skewwhiff that you’re only going to have a couple of customers buying them.

I work regularly with 12 to 15 suppliers. Being outside of London, it can be tricky, because they want a minimum spend or you end up paying high delivery charges, which unfortunately you have to build into the pricing.

Do you work directly with any local farmers?

There are no producers that we’ve seen in Essex for cheese, which is a shame.

We mostly have British and French cheeses, but people are wanting more British cheese, because with Brexit the prices are rising. In November European cheese is going to become more expensive. They’re going to have to check it in France or Spain to make sure that it is safe to eat, and then they will have to check it in the UK again. So that’s going to increase paperwork and increase the price, which I think will drive people even more to British produce.

Has the cheese room made a big difference to sales?

We usually have about 45 to 50 different cheeses in there. We have to ensure that we’re retailing cheeses quick enough so that people are buying them in the best quality that they can be. We don’t have an electronic system for it, so it’s all with paper and pen. The only way you can really keep on top of it is by checking them every week. We minimise waste by using up cheeses on our cheese boards. We look at the dates and then we’ll say these are the cheeses we're going to push on the platters this week.