Well alot can happen in 41 days….. since  my last post.

The really big news for us is that we have now signed a licence agreement with Northern Rail allowing us to operate at Railway Stations within Lancashire we shall be commencing a trial at Chorley station from the 31st May. This is very exciting for us and we take delivery of our new truck today which comes fitted with a bean to cup coffee machine so we can serve lovely coffee to those commuters on their way to work. Of course the truck will also have a full range of food offering to go with that coffee as well as Orange Juice and also the ability to purchase your lunch for later as well. looking for new ways to reach our customers is something we continually strive to do at Halls and so we are really looking forward to the launch or online service which should be July 2011.

A new truck means a new driver so welcome to Phil who has started with us this week. He will be starting to build his route across Blackburn and East lancs from 31st May onwards. This is another new area for us to operate in catering in Blackburn and East lancs and delivering food to hungry workers across East Lancashire.

Our catering in Preston, Chorley and Leyland continues to do well with catering being provided in Preston City centre everyday. We have two events to cater for later in the month and our Halls 2U lunch time delivery service is obvioulsy very popular looking at the way demand is increasing.

For those of you that are interested raw material (flour, sugar, fat etc) prices continue to rise placing pressure on everyone in our sector. Especially the small companies such as ours. It feels sometimes as though the small business pays the margin to suppliers that keep them afloat in effect we are being bled to give lower costs to the bigger businesses. But thats the nature of a free market, supply and  demand and buying power. No point whingeing about it we just have to get on with it, and tell our customers why they should use us and return to us rahter than the big guys. No one ever said it would be easy but being in business is interseting and for me very often fun even when its a pressure cooker.

More news to follow lets hope it doesnt take another 41 days….

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WOW it is hard to believe that its 177 days since my last post. In that time we have had the terrible weather of November, Christmas, the recent evnes in North Africa, the terrible tragedy in Japan and the ski season has been and gone!!

At Halls we have been extremely busy and despite the poor weather in November our new trucks have been performing extremely well. With new Corporate clients in Preston City centre and with regular outside catering orders being delievered into Preston every day for Corporate catering customers this ontop of our increasing customer base for our delivery vehicles in Preston.

We have some exciting projects on the go so watch this space for developments. Last week we attended the Lancashire red Rose Business Awards in which we where finalists in the medium buisness of the year award. Although we did not win the award being up there with such great companies was a real honour. Not bad for a caterer and pie make.

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How many of us like getting something for FREE? Most of us do hence the use of loyalty cards, discounts and vouchers. Well at Halls we like to give away Free Stuff did you know that for the last 3 years if you want a Bacon, Sausage or Bacon & Sausage barmcake/baton you can have a FREE egg. Thats right any breakfast item ordered and you can have a FREE egg, what makes this even better is that our eggs are FREE range so its FREE FREE range egg. Theres just too much FREE in this post.. and as always with Halls we buy our eggs locally these eggs are bought from J Coulthurst at Kenyons Farm Bamber Bridge. FREE and Local we think thats the way things should be. So next time you feel like a great breakfast barmcake or baton or toasted sandwich call in at Halls and dont forget to ask for your FREE egg.  We also do a range of breakfast platters as part of our catering menu (which you can down load from our web site)which we can deliver to your workplace and we can deliever breakfast sandwiches hot to your work place as well just email or call for the information regarding areas we cover and minimum orders.

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I have just read this article http://www.24dash.com/news/communities/2010-09-15-Clone-Town-Britain-2010-escaping-the-clones really scary if your an independant retailer like us. It is something we have known for ages we all do really when was the last time you went shopping in a new city or town and actually found an interesting or different shop? If I told you a new out of town site was opening you could probably name the retailers who will be trading before they even sign the lease! Sad but true, the knock on effect of course is that it is all self perpetuating, developers seek out the chains because they can get better rentals this keeps the independants firmly at bay, once the chains achieve critical mass they do not need to develop anymore because they already “draw” customers away from smaller towns look at Chorley! The smaller towns exists then on the remaining spend which decreases perpetually and local councillors try to think of something to attract more people back to the town centres (which lets face it they are hopeless at) if they knew how to do this they would all be running their own businesses and would probably be sat on “Dragons Den. Can this be reversed? Can market conditions exist where in actual fact you can build a retail business / brand without the help of a “Dragon” because actually you can make a margin and re invest and grow? Well we think so but it gets harder all the time as a last thought is “choice” onn the high street in Britain now just an “illusion”?

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So much has happened since my last post where to begin?

Well I suppose the first thing to highlight is the fact that Halls are one of this years WINNERS at the Bakery Industry Awards http://www.bakeryawards.co.uk/winners/2010_winners.aspx look for the Customer Focus Award and read all about it. Seriously it was a great evening and a real tribute to our staff and our business in general. Especially the way we try to focus on our customers and what they want with Corporate catering and lunch time deliveries as well as Outside Catering and event catering.

Also this week a really great article about us has been posted on the business link web site with a case study regarding our participation in the LEAD program some really great case studies on here well worth a read http://www.businesslinknw.co.uk/Beagoodleader/lead-case-studies/Pages/Halls-food-case-study.aspx

Watch out for some really superb news reagrding the provenance of Halls food coming soon to this blog…

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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.

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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!!

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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.

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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…..

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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…..

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