Its been Christmas for us since around mid-February and that is absolutely no problem for me, its our industry’s focus, all roads lead to Christmas in the food game, its our metaphorical and literal harvest time.

It’s a time for us to make someone’s Christmas (get them what they want, on the day they want) or wreck someone’s Christmas (not get them what they want, on the 5th January).

Hero-Items is what we call them, that one or several products a house will use to build a day, a party, a dinner around, I am talking a Kelly Bronze Turkey, some Caws Cenarth Cheese, Chase Distillery Sloe Gin, a giant Toppings Pie our delicious handmade award winning Pates…….you get my drift. That one product you want to put on the table, watch the gathered loved ones and even better neighbours you want to impress go silent and stand back and scream “Ta-Da”.

If we fail to get you these individual items we make your Christmas memorable for the one we messed up and with no exaggeration on the very rare occasion that has happened it crushed me. Another week we can rectify the issue, find a nearby stockist, but on Christmas Eve it’s all over, the lights go off and what’s not arrived is left going off in a delivery companies warehouse till January.

But I also have little time for what I call the mail order “Thrill-Seekers………”

Let me explain the Mail-order Thrill-Seeker:

Christmas is on the same day every year, this year its on Monday 25th December, some couriers might be delivering on the 23rd, but lets try and imagine their focus and motivation after 4 solid weeks of delivery over 140 parcels a day, ok you’ve pictured that. You want, need and have built your whole Christmas around your Kelly Bronze Turkey crown arriving, as your mouse hovers over which delivery day don’t pick the 23rd or the 22nd, consider your Turkey going via a wrong depot, build in a contingency. Do not do what a lovely lady did last year with me.

My mobile number is on the answer machine at work over Christmas so I can personally deal with any issues long after the factory has been closed down for Christmas festivities and around 4.30pm on the 23rd a lady called me at home and asked where her order of Christmas Pate was, horrified we had messed up and assuming it should have been with her the day before (because why would anyone ask for delivery on the last possible day of Christmas business) I asked her what day had she been expecting it, “today” she calmly said “its my whole families favourite, its our Christmas starter every year”. Desperately trying to think of an answer/solution I just decided to opt for the cold reality of fact and said “you will not be getting our Pates, I am afraid, because lets look at the facts: its 4.30 on the last day of business for the couriers and you have left yourself no contingency, you’ve not even called us at 9am this morning to put a squeeze on the driver, with you knowing today was the only day we could fulfil”. This was meet with a sad silence and maybe even a sniff, realising my tough-love my have been a tad misplaced I added “but there is a chance the driver is just delayed and as we speck heroically making his way to you, we have till 6pm or maybe7pm depending on his mood, so lets wait and see what happens……….” I struggle to think of a more optimistic sentence I have every created and bizarrely and as if guided by the bright Star of David the driver found her, she called ecstatic just after 6pm “its arrived, its arrived”. I was obviously delighted, but please don’t be a Mail Order Thrill Seeker with us or anyone.