“What’s in the recipe?”

Town Crier with

Justin Tunstall

Retail consultant, shares with us his cheese selling experience

• “Sticky fingers”
• “Everyone’s a winner”
• “Myths and legends of Turophilia”
• “When ‘cheese’ is not cheese”
• “Don’t disrespect the Cheddar”

I’ve a pension that matures next year – I know I don’t look that old, but my byline mugshot was flatteringly lit and goes back a year or two, just like the one I used on the dating site where I met my wife

With the financial bolster that pension will provide, I’ve decided to look at taking life a little easier and one of my options is to sell the business. I spoke with a friend who has successfully sold two delis that he started from scratch, who generously passed on some useful tips. When I explained that I’d possibly need to do a comprehensive induction cum handover period, he said: “Don’t give the recipe away until they’ve signed”. Of course not!

However, that’s actually quite difficult – I feel very enthusiastic about what we have achieved and the offering that we’ve built up over the six and a bit years we’ve been trading, and I love to tell people all about it. But what is for sale with the business is the ‘recipe’ created from more than just the ingredients list of Goodwill, Brand, Kit and Stock - it’s an enterprise that exceeds the sum of these.

Goodwill lies in the value to be derived from shoppers who have made a habit of spending money with us: tourists who, like migrating birds, pop in once or twice a year, often declaring their visit to the shop to be a (sometimes even ‘the’) highlight of their holiday. We also enjoy a strong local clientele who have grown used to treading the path down to our mediaeval Mill premises for favourite cheeses they can source nowhere else. Unless alienated by indifferent customer service, this business is a given, hopefully continually topped up by a regular stream of shoppers discovering us and what we do for the first time.

Our brand is well known within our catchment area and increasingly even further afield; the kit does the job. Stock has been, we believe, well-chosen and should be translatable into takings fairly swiftly.

Perhaps it’s knowledge and expertise that truly represent the ‘recipe’. Not just knowledge of cheeses and how to look after them, but how to run the business. We started with stock sourced primarily from two cheese wholesalers. We now use 8 or 9 in the course of the year, ordering the optimum quantities at the right time and the best price to ensure both minimal wastage and canny cashflow. We introduce variety to our range in a fairly structured way with supplier promotions and seasonal arrivals.

We have learned the way to upsell seamlessly rather than in an unseemly fashion. For these non-cheese lines, we use a couple of dozen suppliers and have developed mutually beneficial relationships with them all. From these partners, we have created our unique offering that delights people entering for the first time. We know how to run the business cleanly and hygienically – our systems have always earned us five star EHO inspections. We know the answers to the standard questions we’ve now been asked hundreds of times. In short, like all successful businesses, we have learned which way balls bounce when they come towards us.

In passing this knowledge on, we’ll save a purchaser the angst that we suffered as we made yet another mistake, facepalming and d’oh-ing our way through our initial months of trading. Hopefully we can ensure that the business we created can continue to serve the community in a manner of which we can remain proud. Of course, the business may not sell quickly, but the process of thinking about what we do and the value of it has helped me fall just a little bit more deeply in love with it. I’ve been briefed as a consultant to give some advice to a couple of other retail businesses next year, so I’ll need to find the time to make serving suggestions for other businesses’ recipes.