Tapas

At Tastes Deli we sell lots of unusual and hard to find ingredients. I get to experience "The Delia Effect" first hand and see exciting trends emerging in what people are cooking and buying. Such as the sudden demand for pomegranate molasses, sumac and za'atar (thanks Yottam Ottolenghi) or marshmallow fluff (Hummingbird Bakery and their Whoopie Pies).

One of the most satisfying parts of my job is when someone comes to the shop for the very first time, driven by a desire to track down a particular item they need for a recipe but have been unable to find anywhere else. It's great to be able to say we have the elusive item and take them to it.  More often than not, a conversation ensues about the journey to find this ingredient, or the recipe(s) for which it is essential.

And so it was that I was told about the Morito App. Morito, the tapas bar of Moro, published its own cook book in 2014, along with an accompanying free app (i phone and i pad only). The app turns out to be a mini recipe e-book with enticing photography.

Queue, four happy hours cooking tapas dishes at home and far far too much food!

Peas, Gem Lettuce & Sweet Herbs.
Cous Cous with Broad Beans, Cumin & Yoghurt.
Grilled Onion, Pepper & Lentil Salad.
And my favourite: Beetroot, Almonds & Mint.
Plus some Morito flat breads which don't appear in the app, although the recipe is elsewhere online.



With the exception of the red peppers and the fresh pomegranate, all the veggies were English and every ingredient can be found at Tastes Deli! I made four portions of four of the dishes, plus two portions of the cous cous and spent just £15 on the vegetables. We ate like Kings for days afterwards!

Abandonment

I promise I have not abandoned this blog. I know I've not posted for a while, but I think I have three pretty good excuses. Here goes:

1) The shop has been busy. Really busy. Lots of lovely people buying things, organising picnics, planning weddings.... I need every spare moment, and some, just to order stock to keep the shelves full. It's a brilliant problem to have and I'm not complaining!

2) I have a blog post in progress which, although lengthy, is not quite finished. Those of you who subscribe to this blog by email (there is a box on the right to enter your email address) will have seen a sneak preview a couple of weeks ago. It is still ongoing, and will appear soon.

3) I have carried out a major overhaul of tastesdeli.co.uk, our web site and online deli. It is now "responsive" so changes its appearance depending on whether you visit from a PC, tablet, mobile etc. Clever hey? Still more to do, as ever.

I'll be back!

New Postal Calculator

What a long day. Its been a long time since I have sat still for so long and I'm exhausted!

Today was the day I set aside to add the hundred or so new products we've taken on since I last added to our online shop. For months now our online shoppers have been missing out on some fabulous new lines. And today I planned to remedy that. But first things first, I needed to fix the postage costs. As a consumer I always resented the high postage charges incurred with relatively small online purchases. So when I set up the online deli I weighed every single item for sale so that the web site could estimate how much it really would cost to post something and charge the customers that price. It is not 100% accurate. Once packaged some combinations of products weigh less than expected, some more. The model I use to estimate the weight of the packaging is regularly tweaked and I keep a record of the packed and unpacked weight of every parcel I send so I can use the data to create better models in the future.

The postage calculator was working nicely, until this month, when Royal Mail dramatically changed their pricing structure.  Not only does weight effet the price, but size as well, and the standard parcel service no longer exists. Even the post office staff aren't quite sure how the new system works.  I sent the same item on two different days, one day it was a "Medium Parcel" another it was a "Small Parcel" (as even though it was too tall for the measuring slot it got a special exception!).  I carried on charging my old prices for a while whilst I worked it all out. But it needed to be changed. I was charging £2.20 for second class post for items which now cost me £5.20 to send! And so came about today's little project.

Sadly it wasn't so little. Involving weighing, and measuring, and a few formula. I felt like I was back at school attempting some huge homework project! Our online shop now offers ELEVEN different postage services (if you include "collect from shop").

• Royal Mail First Class Standard "Small Parcel" (only available for small items costing less than £20) and Royal Mail First Class Confirmed "Small Parcel" (aka Signed For) (only available for small items costing more than £20)
• Royal Mail First Class Standard "Medium Parcel" (only available for items costing less than £20) and Royal Mail First Class Confirmed "Medium Parcel" (aka Signed For) (only available for items costing more than £20)
• Royal Mail Second Class Standard "Small Parcel" (only available for small items costing less than £20) and Royal Mail Second Class Confirmed "Small Parcel" (aka Signed For) (only available for small items costing more than £20)
• Royal Mail Second Class Standard "Medium Parcel" (only available for items costing less than £20) and Royal Mail Second Class Confirmed "Medium Parcel" (aka Signed For) (only available for items costing more than £20)
• Royal Mail Special Delivery next day.

I did add the Special Delivery 9am service as well, but removed that when I saw how many exceptions there were and how long my description would need to be to explain it all. We will still offer the service, but customers will need to contact us first to check their area is covered. I hope that is less off-putting than the list of postcodes where the service isn't available.

The Royal Mail services are now quite a lot more expensive for the sort of parcels we send a lot of. Our most commonly used service was the (less than 2kg) Standard Parcel at £5.30. The closest equivalent service is now £9.10. So I've also added an economical courier service, collect+. I anticipated this might be necessary and have been offering the service to those who ordered by telephone over the past few months. We've not experienced any problems.

Needless to say it has been a lengthy process. I'm already aware of products which won't be in the right shipping category.  Royal Mail will class up to six packs of spring roll wrappers as a "small parcel", but my model will class two or more as a "medium parcel" and some teabags which the model says are a "small parcel" but will actually be a "medium parcel".  I'll take a hit on the tea bags and am working on a discount code built into bulk purchases of spring roll wraps to compensate for the postage cost.

But seeing as I have spent an entire sunny day tapping away at my computer, have not added a single new product to the online deli , I think it might be time to call it a day. If anyone out there wants to buy any of the wonderful new products you've seen on our facebook page, but can't find in the online shop, please just email me!

Web Site Update

I spent some time this weekend checking over our web site to make sure it complies with the new EU legislation. As far as I can tell it does, but the legislation is very new and includes quite a few "probably"s which don't give me a lot of confidence. Whilst I was at it, I decided to change the home page. I wanted to add our video to the front page, which of course meant moving everything around, so I changed the photographs as well, and the words. I think it looks far more bright and summery. Now if only the weather would do the same...

Major Works

Over the past month I have been carrying out some "major works" on the Tastes web site. Lots of it was very boring behind the scenes stuff for security, to improve speed etc. But I've also re-photographed most of the products, improved lots of product descriptions, added some new categories (snacks and raw foods) and most significantly added lots of new stock (there are 350 products available to buy online today). I've also added a little google map to our contact page, just in case the original hand drawn map isn't sufficient (and because I can!). So if you haven't visited Tastes Online for a while, do have a look. I hope you like it.

Getting Smarter!

I'm trying very hard to keep abreast of modern technology. We do have a facebook page, and an online shop. We don't twitter (yet) and haven't quite managed to get the GPS stamp part of facebook to work (apparently "they" need to do something).

Each time I think I'm getting there, something new comes along! Pleasingly the new google GPS type thing available on smartphones seems to work automatically without any effort from me. That is the sort of technological advance I like.

Thanks to Graham for showing me what Tastes looks like on a smartphone.

Update

This week I've been working on the Tastes Delicatessen web site. I've resisted the urge to redesign it (although I was tempted) and have forced myself to concentrate on adding new stock to the online shop. There is so much still to describe, it is a daunting task, and it is easy to get side tracked by one particular product. But I remained focussed and now have more than 150 products listed (which isn't even 10% of what is available in store, but is progress in the right direction). If you’ve been buying things from the real or online shop, do pop by the web site and leave your product feedback.

Getting Better All The Time

Sales from the online deli we launched last November have gone surprisingly well and have motivated me to try even harder. The past few weeks have seen a flurry of online activity. More products have been added to the online shop, more photographs added to the site, our google listing updated, a facebook page set up and everything generally fluffed up a little. If you haven't visited for a while, take a look now, and motivate me further by increasing my hit count!

Cyber-Deli

In a further instalment to my list of excuses for my lack of "blogging", I would like to cite our new and improved web site. Having photographed, described, and weighed over a hundred of the items on sale in the shop, I reached a point where I had enough content ready to launch an online shop. And (with some technical jiggery pokery and fair amount of luck), I did. It is far from complete, in fact, it never will be, but it works! Now you don't need to be anywhere near Eton to have a look at some of the things we sell (and buy a few if you like!). Have a look at www.tastesdeli.co.uk.