Its been a strange week very busy and good in many ways but also filled with niggles and things that make you go aaagh!!!

Good news is that we have an opportunity to become a preferred supplier to Go Ape that would be very good indeed and we are really looking forward to having a go at that. Good news is we are going to enter the Bakery Industry Awards (BIA) why not? Watch this space! Good News is people doing LEJOG are making contact so the twitter presence is having an impact great ( www.twitter.com/joehallspies ). Good news is we have lots of work for catering being booked in a applications for the new Admin Job have been enormous and great quality as well. Really thats all very positive and its good to be kept busy.

I have a diffcult time with a financing company ref our new vehicle promising me the earth and delivering a load of rubbish failing to get it done on time which has driven me NUTS, really its so frustrating and it leaves me with the problem of explaining to our supplier aaagh!!!

Lots of people have been setting off on lejog this week so good luck to you all go, go,go,

we got a presentation from Students at Lancaster University Management School on Thursday relating to a consultancy project they undertook for us looking at re-launching the Chorley Cake, the whole thing was excellent and it really makes good reading there will be more to come on this I am certain, watch this space…….

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Well the weather has cooled down today after some glorious sunshine here in the North East yesterday. Plenty of people surfing at Tynemouth even though the sun was out, the water was still “North Sea Cold” some people really dont suit “Blue skin” (and I am one of them..!). Back to Chorley tonight and am looking forward to another week of delivering food all across Lancashire. Lots of new Catering orders have been arriving in the “in box” and we seem to be as busy as ever with lots of pies being made and sold. Well done to anyone who competed in the London Marathon today it would be great if we could have a “Proper Pie” stall at the end a mince steak or chunky steak pie are a great post work out snack, after the marathon you could probably have a dozen!!! Or maybe we could hand out the world famous Chorley Cake full of high energy natural carbs…..

We are now looking for a new “jiffy truck” driver really we need a person who is strong on retail selling, the driving is just the method of the getting product to the customer..we are also looking for an admin assistant with accounts experience sage line 50 preferably, lets hope the search goes well. More work completed on our e-canteen project which will really enhance our lunchtime delivery service and I think advertise the fact that we provide catering in Chorley, Preston and across central Lancashire and Manchester.

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Its been a funny old week, once again I found myself at a University for someone who didn’t actually go to University this is pretty strange, this time at Manchester Business Scholl where I was working on a long term project with a consultant courtesy of the High Growth Programme www.highgrowthprogramme.co.uk and once again a great day was had with some superb work on the use of mobile technology to benefit our customers in the future, especially in relation to lunch time delivery service’s and sandwich delivery…excellent.

We are also looking at sponsoring a “Pie and Pint” evening which should also be really good for us as its in Preston and it could really help us launch the new Preston Lunchtime Delivery Service and our Catering Service in Preston. In fact corporate catering has really been picking up ths last week which is great news. We are now looking at using the “jiffy trucks” at weekend as part of a drive to target farmers markets and events, country shows etc etc.

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Another interesting week with another visit to a University this time Lancaster where I have been attending the “LEAD” course and now “LEAD GOLD”. All really great stuff for us small business people who rarely get time to sit down and plan and think strategically about businesses. We got confirmation today that we will be taking delivery of our new “Jiffy truck” next week, third one on the road since August grrrrreat! Even more people will be looking to have the sandwich delivery, pie delivery, what ever you want for your lunch delivery. It will also mean we have more capacity to deliver hot pot suppers and pie and pea’s suppers.

We have been following the LEJOG (er’s) starting out this year on twitter and so far its going really well with alot of retweets telling people bout our free drink and Chorley Cake for theose LEJOG or JOGLE ing. Twitter is going well with 30 following us now we will soon be launching the “what soup is it today?” daily update on twitter so that you dont need to phone up to find out what soup we have available. The triathlon training is ok but I need to up the intensity and the volume of work I keep getting distracted…the joy of being a small business owner… I wonder if we could sponsor a Triathlon? Maybe Pieathlon? or the “Chorley Cake Tri” mmmm(can you hear the cogs grinding..)

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On Thursday (15th) I paid a visit to John Mooores University Liverpool, the reason? Well LJMU had finished carrying our the analytical research into all of our pie products and the Chorley Cake.

Keep watching this web site for the information being published I can say we are very pleased indeed with the results of the research and the products come out superbly against our comptetitors and against RDA guidelines as given by the FSA.

Great news for our marketing and of course we can claim some advantage in the actual quality of the raw material against alot of the mass manufactured products with our use of very high quality protein.

I am now back in srious training for the three Triathlons I will be doing this year, watch this psace for more information “powered by Chorley  Cakes”

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The filming with Bloomsberg went very well and we now await the broadcast it should have been today and I was hoping to post a link but the Labour Party launched their manifesto so we have been put back a few days.

We are continuing to try and use social media for marketing and general networking for the company with some small successes to date. You can of course follow us www.twitter.com/joehallspies and soon you will be able to find us on face book.

We have now been spreading the word about JOGLE and LEJOG offers, for the unitiated JOGLE is John O Groats to Lands End and LEJOG well yes you guessed it is Lands End to John O Groats (by cycle usually although of course people walk it, run it, and probably have skateboarded it!!). Any way as it happens one of the most popular routes includes Eaves lane where we have two shops and so we have been using twitter to let people know this so that they can claim their free Chorley Cake, soup and a hot drink.. with some success I might add. We also had a repeat order from a lady that organises Girl Geek Dinners (its all in the title really) this time for pies for an event in Blackpool www.barcampblackpool.com which was also as a result of twitter, so Halls are getting involved in social media and we like it….

Follow us on twitter to see what the soup is at our retail sites, and on our mobile shops no need to ring up and ask…..tweet

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What a strange afternoon I got a call about 2pm from a guy at Bloomsberg TV, apparently their News team want to do some interviewing in Chorley tomorrow this is all because Chorley is a key marginal seat, the producer/editor wanted something to do with a Chorley Cake and hey presto we where in the frame. Thanks to our friends at the Chamber of Commerce for that, so filming commences at 9.30am tomorrow great PR and great to be recommended.

It is actually doubly great considering this morning we entered our Chorley Cake into the Great Taste Awards as best Regional Cake. We also entered a number of different pies into the British Pie Awards held in Melton Mowbray in May. We even enetered some of the pies into the best football pie as we supply and sell pies at Chorley FC.

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I was reading the Britsih Baker magazine today and hey ho we are featured with a great article about the forthcoming trials of our new food service “e-canteen”, it makes excellent reading.

e-canteen is basically a virtual canteen, the whole idea is to give customers another choice when making their lunch time purchasing decision, e-canteen will allow them to order their lunch on-line and pay on-line. Their lunch will then be delivered in plastic box along with anyone else’s order in the same department. Everything is labelled with customers name and department, when the box arrives they just dig in and send the box back to reception for collection the next day. the idea is that you dont have to leave your work station at any stage in the process including payment. We are also looking at enabling the customer to pay via their mobile phone making it even more convenient for a sandwich delivery. The market research is being undertaken right now and trials will commence in May we expect, if the trial goes well we will be rolling the idea out from June onwards to a group of about 10/12 businesses in the Chorley area, it will be a really convenient way to order your lunch time delivery.

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Having read my first and the last post I made I am astounded at how quickly a year has gone by in fact more, so I am now resolved to write this blog far more briefly and in small chunks on a regular basis.

As an update on the previous Blog, Halls now offer a delievered lunch service “Halls 2U” the ultimate in sandwich delivery, in fact its much more than sandwiches, with home made soup, fresh Pies, salads and homemade cakes to name just a few tasty treats on offer with our “lunch time delivery” trucks.

We have also launched “the Proper Pie Shop” and are currently working on a project e-canteen all very exciting.

I personlly have been nominated as “Business Person of the year” “and Entreprenuer of the year” at this years Be Inspired Business Awards…… www.thebibas.co.uk

All in all keep watching this space and you can now follow Halls on twitter www.twitter.com/joehallspies

here we go again……

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