It’s the most stressful time of the year!

Well 2022 certainly kept us guessing right until the very end! It has been an absolutely crazy year for us small businesses. We’ve had diesel shortages, diesel price hikes, energy crisis, food shortages and then… the Royal Mail strikes. It’s a roll call and then some! Luke and I have been working around the clock for the last 6 weeks to ensure we could get everything out early. It’s really one heck of a task! The logistics of ordering ingredients on the right days, in the right quantities. The logistics of storing the brownies in much higher quantities than we’d ever imagined. Not forgetting the logistics of fitting in sleep and feeding ourselves! We have been through the wringer!

Being the conscientious folk we are, we sent out a huge quantity of corporate orders well in advance of their expected delivery date, however they were stuck in a Royal Mail sorting office for 10 days. The most stressful thing for us was that Royal Mail don’t scan the parcels in until they’re due to leave for their next destination. So it looked like I hadn’t even sent them. I personally drove some of the boxes to our local sorting office myself and I was behind the Postie that had the rest of them in his van, so I knew that they had definitely made it through the system. Have a period of 10 days with no accountability for where the parcels were was an enormous stress!

We really do care so deeply about each and every parcel we send out, so hearing that an enormous volume of gifts were stuck due to the Royal Mail strikes, was devastating.

There’s a happy ending though…

Having spent the weekend on the phone to Royal Mail complaining (and generally being worried sick), I was delighted to see today that my missing parcels had finally reached their destination! Our local posties have been incredible and have given us so much advice. If only they were the ones responsible for running Royal Mail.

Thank you to all of our wonderful customers for being so patient and kind through this very difficult period. Thank you also to all the amazing people at Royal Mail who continually go out of their way to help.

We are finally putting the whisks down and raising a sherry to 2022. What a year!