Hi all, I thought I’d do a quick post on what I’ve been up to since the start of the year….
The year began very well for us with an all time record number of orders on New Years Day. The thing with the really big all time records is that they nearly always happen due to an external factor such as a bank holiday, valentines day or the X Factor. So even if we’re experiencing good growth in the numbers of orders per week we’re unlikely to hit a really big daily record without the help of an external factor. These external factors are pretty huge giving us a boost in orders of 30-40% over our previous daily record.
So following the holiday period I headed up to Manchester to get cracking on getting us some decent restaurant coverage in that neck of the woods. Going away on these trips exposes the best and the worst parts of my job. It’s really great to visit a new UK city and I particularly loved Manchester more than most. I was staying in the upmarket area of Deansgate near the Hilton Tower which was a very cool place to spend a couple of weeks. Obviously Manchester like every town has some not so nice areas but overall it was a good experience.
Being just out of university I have a fair few friends still studying around the country so it was nice to knock off an hour early on a few nights to meet up with friends who gave me a few tours of Manchester’s late night hotspots.
Whilst its all well & good being in a new city the fact remains that signing up restaurants is a fairly solitary job hanging around the dodgy suburban areas of large cities. Then you arrive back at the hotel/hostel with only your laptop for company all day before heading out in the car again at 4pm. Sure you get loads of work done but its not exactly a bundle of laughs!
I stayed in Manchester for 2 weeks but nipped over to Leeds for the weekend to visit my girlfriend at uni. By the time I returned it was the end of January and lots of stuff needed sorting back at our office/call-centre. We’ve got things set up to pretty much run themselves with a really great team but still everyone needs some guidance and the paperwork had mounted up.
We also needed to take on a new person to work in the call centre due to increasing volumes of orders so I held interviews for this post during the 1st week of February.
For the 2nd week of February we had decided to have a “management week” up in London. Two of my partners (Stephen & Velin) work from the capital city to give us a nice geographical spread around the UK. I don’t think we’ve ever got so much stuff achieved in just 1 week! I’m not going to go into details but we’re working on some very exciting stuff that will help accelerate our expansion and really push the business forward.
This week culminated in a D-Block PARTY! Basically a meet up of (most of) the people who lived in Rootes D-Block at Warwick University in our 1st year. It’s great that we’ve all stayed close friends throughout uni & beyond, when we all get back together within about 5 mins it’s like being transported back to a kitchen somewhere in Rootes. I had a really good time & hope these meet ups continue.
Since then I’ve returned back to Gloucester to ensure the call centre is running smoothly, I try to never spend more than 2 weeks away. The next big milestone for us was Valentines day which duly delivered a bumper record number of orders to round off a fantastic week.
Finally tonight is the final of the Be Your Own Boss competition run by Warwick Entrepreneurs. E-resistible won this last year so we’ve been invited back to exhibit & show everyone what we’ve done since winning. I’m looking forward to seeing what ideas are out there & seeing everyone again.
Has it really been a year already?
