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….

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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.

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First triathlon of the season, the Eton Super sprints a fantastic location Dorney Lake quite a strong head wind and the water could have been warmer! Overall very happy although my legs are extremely sore two days later, really need to do better stretching more consistantly. The overall result was better than last year, although my performance on the run was pretty poor. Well just need to get back into it and improve my performance, it was pretty good to have that Chorley cake at the end, real butter spread on it!!  Time now to prepare for the Liverpool Sprint Tri in June Chorley Cakes at the ready…..

Still working on the move into Preston with the lunch and sandwich delivery service will be getting a list of companies we would like to speak to at BNI for the next month or two.  Corporate Catering in Preston is building strongly, and is growing rapidly in Chorley. We also entered the Bakery Industry Awards this week, our Chorley Cakes have gone off to the Great Taste Awards today and our entries for the British Pie Championships will be sent to Melton Mowbray on Wednesday…all in all just need to keep Tri  ing……..

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Good news all round I think at the moment, obviously the governement has now been installed and regardless of political persausion having a govt right now is better than not so at least we can all get on with business and doing our bit to help the economy by expanding and bringing new jobs into the company and hence the local economy.

The BIG issue with our new truck has now been resloved and we expect delivery on Monday yippee so we can now start to build the presence of the business in Preston with lunchtime deliveries and Corporate Catering in Preston as well.

Eton Tri now 2 days away so am getting nervous now, in the meantime I was so impressed by the students who did the presentation on Chorley Cakes that I have sent them a copy of Pies and Prejudice each, given that four of them are from other European countries i thought it might help them understand where they are in the Great British regional cultural differences.

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Busy getting ready for the Eton Super Sprint Triathlon on Saturday I did this event last year my first attempt at a Tri and really enjoyed it so I am looking forward to it again this year especially as I now have a modicum of understanding on whta it is I am actually doing! I will of course have my trusty Chorley Cakes to hand for when Ive finished, I will definately need it.

We are also now getting organised for the British Pie Championships which take place in a couple of weeks just working out how to get the pies to Melton Mowbray. Its the first time we have ever enetered anything like this so its all a learning experience. This week I would like to welcome Jane our new accounts/admin assistant who will be a very important member of our team as we move forward and expand the company.

We are of course all awaiting the outcome of the political negotiations whatever happens for us its all about stability thats what will help us plan and keep the company going we’ll see……….

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Oh the joys of TV Stardom, those of you that read this blog (ok the person who reads this blog) will remember way back in time (7th April) I blogged about us being filmed for Bloomberg News with Chorley being a marginal constituency well today it was aired………….long wait…………. neverthe less we have been on air and its a PR coupe for a small business so we are happy.

Business remains steady I think people are all concerned about what will be lieing in store for them after the election tomorrow lots of uncertainty which I think is reflected in peoples attitudes at the moment, the Geek situation certainly makes you think very hard about the future..here at halls we are continuing to invest in new equipment and we are trying to grow the company as well as engaging with new and existing customers using twitter etc.

We have now identified a new area of operation for the ecanteen (lunch delivery) project, as well as moving forward with our plans to develop the Chorley Cake, a few requests for our trucks to attend events so it looks like we are moving into event catering and a number of requests for hot pot suppers traditional work for us but welcome all the same.

So sandwich and lunch delivery, catering, hot pot suppers and events catering all growing strongly, now that we have the full nutrional info for a number of our products we shall be posting them online soon so watch this space…….

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