You may have seen quite alot of coverage of the situation regarding world wide wheat supply, the heatwaves in Russia together with floods during sowing in Canada have had an impact on world wheat prices particularly since Russia stopped all exports. To be fair this should not be enough to cause the rises; we are seeing this situation arise and  bemade worse by commodity speculators ramping up the futures market in wheat.

What does this mean for the UK? Well, wheat prices have already risen by £89 a tonne something we can cope with BUT watch out for the effect on meat and dairy prices as we see animal feed prices rise in the winter, this could have a very large impact on food pricing and together with the increase in VAT due in January will cause some food prices rise a great deal.

At Halls we are constantly looking to control our costs and our commitment to sourcing from local producers helps us to keep costs down as we are easy to supply, pay on our suppliers on delivery and have very low food miles so have less logistical costs. We are undergoing a review of suppliers and we are aiming to add some new local suppliers to our list as well as moving to some free range product. All this will mean an ability for us to keep any price rises to a minimum (even we will need to raise prices with the vat increase) and in some cases hold the price.

We will still be able to offer superb value catering for businesses in Chorley, Leyland and Preston and our mobile shops will be able to provide great value fresh food and help the environment by keeping total journeys away from the work place for lunch etc lower. Our outside catering will remain excellent value for money and our ever popular pie and peas will certainly still be a firm favourite because of its superb value as well its great taste.

Posted under General musings | No Comments »

Once again a lovely weekend in the North East where I managed to see the “Viz” exhibtion at the Lit and Phil in Newcastle http://www.litandphil.org.uk/html_pages/LP_home.html if you are ever in Newcastle try and get into the Lit and Phil its an absolute treasue I hope it continues for may decades to come.

Any way Halls last week was pretty hectic for lots of reasons some good some bad. The great thing about the week was the sample catering platters we sent to a potential new client in Preston. The feedback has been excellent and I am very hopeful we have secured them as clients they right in the centre of Preston which is excellent. Our outside catering in Lancashire for the monthof September looks very busy indeed with everything from a cold buffet to a pie and peas supper on order every weekend has an event to cater for.

We are also taking part in the inaugral Lancashire Market on 21st August on Friargate in Preston, we have never done anything like this / that before so its all a bit in the air as we try and get organised, I am certain my excellent staff will be capable of doing a great job and we should meet a load of new customers. This is an area we are looking very hard at expanding into so its going to be a good introduction. Who knows it may well lead to more outside event catering and market stalls across Lancashire.

We are also looking to have a coporate video produced so watch this blog for an update on that, also looking at a new coffee supplier and at three new sites for Halls expansion plans. All fairly positive I am still trying to find the time and the skill level to write about my Grandfather so lots to do no need for a telly then!!

Posted under General musings | No Comments »

What a great day yesterday was I arrived back from some great meetings about social media with Stage9 Marketing www.stage9marketing.com  and a really super morning at Recycling Lives (excellent work they do) www.recyclinglives.org . On arrival at home I was surprised to find a large number of tweets about an article in the Guardian not the Chorley Guardian but THE GUARDIAN http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2010/aug/12/top-bakers-north-england . “1o Cracking bakers” its been a great couple of days.

Of course we also had a power cut due to a mains fault which knocked out 47 Chapel Street and a couple of people off sick in the middle of the holiday dseason never helps……BUT we are still going strong and after a great BNI meeting this morning i am looking forward to a good weekend.

Posted under General musings | No Comments »

Things are pretty hectic at Halls at the moment. Today we have been having photographs taken for the Bakery Industry Awards as we are finalists. We have been meeting with Chorley FC and seeing what we can do to help support them and we have had enquiries from Chorley Little Theatre regarding some ideas there as well.

Monday will see our new mobile shop driver “Lisa” starting work so “welcome to Halls Lisa”. Ray will be leaving us shortly after that and we wish him well for the future. Ray has done a superb job building the Preston Docks route from scratch with the route firmly established providing catering and lunch time deliveries to Preston.

On Saturday we had a sample pie day in Preston with the Chamber of Commerce which went extremely well with Halls Pies going down a storm with the good people of Preston so we should be on good ground when we launch our second mobile truck into Preston in September that vehicle is on order and will be delivered last week in August.

Our e-canteen project is still progressing well with Halls being able to deliver lunches, breakfast and catering from an order placed by web or sms text messaging ……. watch this space…..

Posted under General musings | No Comments »

I attended a great meeting today at the Hilton in Blackpool. This was organised by the North & Western Chamber of Commerce to discuss LEPs thats Local Enterprise Partnerships which will be taking over from the regional quango the NWRDA. Firstly it was fantastic to see so many business people in the room with a real desire to get involved and to “give something back” maybe the “big society” thing is a good idea after all. If the LEPs can make things happen then that would be superb I am sure there is a huge amount of goodwill and a desire to bring about change and innovate the delivery of these types of services. BUT a word of caution the local politicians still use the same language and they still have an edge as they can direct paid employees to do leg work and set the agenda mainly due to the extremely hurried time frames. Lets hope we can get past that and all do something positive for the economic grwoth of this great county of Lancashire…..

Posted under General musings | No Comments »

Well on the business front we continue to work hard and we are eagerly awaiting the delivery of our 4th Truck the route has been decided upon and we have interviews going on for a new driver. The sad news is that Ray our Preston Driver is leaving to go back to engineering which is a real blow as he has done a superb job. The good news is Ray gave us plenty of notice and we have been able to find a replacement from the 4th truck applicants great news.

Other news is that my Great Aunty Mary will be 100 very soon fantastic!! This got me thinking about my Grandad Joe Hall the 1st!! Unfortrunatley he died whilst I was still very young but I have always been fascinated by the stories of his expolits so I am now considering writing some of these as part of my blog. Watch this space for stories on Joe Hall 1st………

Posted under General musings | No Comments »

Well having been away for 3 weeks I should apologise for the long delay in posting this…

I have had a great holiday and I am really looking forward to the rest of the summer, our Preston truck has been superb we could not have asked for a better start so good in fact that we have now placed an order for a fourth truck allocated to Preston as well. We have some market research going on for this route as I write this and I can foresee a fifth truck fairly soon. All of which means that Halls will be looking increasing their presence for outside catering in Preston as well as Chorley and the rest of Lancashire.

More posts to follow with much less of a gap!!

Posted under General musings | No Comments »

Its been quite a while since my last post mainly due to the demands on my time by our ever growing company. The mobile shop that I blogged about last time has now gone live in Preston around the docks area, today is its 2nd full trading day and it has been a good day above target and aiming to be 20% above target at the end of week 1 which is excellent well done to Steve and Ray for getting this route sorted and operating so succesfully. This means that companies wanting catering in Preston as well as lunch time deliverys will be able to use our outside catering facilities and arrange for the new delivery service to call. This really builds on the outside catering and delivery services in Chorley and Leyland and takes us along to the next step of a second truck in Preston. Other outside catering orders continue to arrive with Lancaster University Management School now on our customer list.

 With being so busy the triathlon training seems to have been a casualty in my time management or lack of time management, so i am making a conscious effort to reverse this situation swim, bike, run fest the rest of this week and beyond……

Posted under General musings | No Comments »

Finally our new or 3rd jiffy truck has arrived its now at the signage company www.poppysigns.co.uk being given its “clothing” yippee. We shall be, launching this truck into Preston and so are now looking to recruit new outside catering customers as well as corporate catering customers for this vehicle to service, besides the outside catering we shall be looking to provide a lunch time delivery service with the full range of sandwiches and savouries all freshly made of course.

This is a big step for us as we begin to expand outside our normal geographic area of Chorley, Preston is going to be challenge with lots of companies providing the outside catering services and sandwich  delivery.

We have lots of outside catering work on this weekend and the diary is looking good in the next few weeks with us catering for a Tennis Tournament, a conference in Blackpool as well as now recieving the specifictaions required for catering at Go Ape which we will be working on next week. All good stuff have a lovely bank holiday weekend….

Tags: Corporate Catering, outside catering, Preston, sandwich delivery

Posted under General musings | 1 Comment »

Today we delivered our pies for the British Pie Awards www.britishpieawards.co.uk its our first time so we will see how we do, Pete had to drive down to Melton Mowbray at 6am to get them to the judges before 10am. Apparently security was very tight with no one being allowed past a certain point and boxes to be labelled correctly etc.

As mentioned in a previous post we are sponsoring a Pie and Pint evening at Glovers Bar in Preston tomorrow which should be really good night www.downtownpreston.com this will be a good event for us to market our outside catering in Preston, Chorley and across Lancashire and Greater Manchester. We already cater for a number of clients in Preston but the addition of a 3rd vehicle now means we are able to provide a much better outside catering service in Preston on a daily basis. The 3rd truck will also allow us to focus much more on outside catering at events across Lancashire as a whole with both hot and cold food.

Tags: Chorley, Lancashire, outside catering, Pie, Preston

Posted under General musings | No Comments »