14th December 2025.

Opening Reflection

This week has been a strange blend of relief, frustration, small victories, and the ongoing grind of running a retail business. I started it with my regular appearance on the Storm Huntley Channel 5 programme — a welcome distraction from the day-to-day battles. Sitting on that panel for an hour gives me space away from stock issues, courier dramas, interview shortlists and spreadsheets.

But the minute the cameras go off, I’m straight back into it.

Retail doesn’t pause for television.

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Sales, Listings and the Christmas Question

Sales in Brixton have picked up — slightly. After extending hours and adding the restaurant service last week, you’d hope to see movement. But in retail you learn not to celebrate too quickly. It could be the Christmas build-up, it could be the new offer, or it could just be a blip. Retail is the art of cautious optimism.

There was one win worth celebrating properly:

Alexander — my son and our Commercial Director — secured a listing for our Black Farmer sausages in Booths.

Booths is essentially the Waitrose of the North. Ten years ago I tried and failed to get in. This listing is proof that persistence matters. Sometimes the door opens a decade after you start knocking.

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The Online Sales Paradox: Joy and Dread

Every time an online order comes through, my phone pings.

That little sound carries two emotions at once.

Joy, because sales are coming in.

Dread, because most of these are Christmas orders — and Christmas orders are unforgiving.

If a courier fails to deliver, or delivers to the wrong address, the customer doesn’t want to hear about whose fault it was. From their point of view, we ruined Christmas. So we end up fixing other people’s mistakes to protect the brand, and that can be expensive.

I still remember the Christmas when ducks were “selling out” online, and we were patting ourselves on the back — only to realise afterwards that we’d priced them below cost. A fantastic sales graph and a terrible profit and loss. Lesson learned: a spike in sales can be a warning sign, not a victory.

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White City: Where Thursday Is the New Friday

Most retailers look forward to the weekend. Not us.

At our White City farm shop, Monday–Thursday are now the busy days. Thanks to the legacy of Covid and working from home, the traditional week has been turned upside down. The weekend footfall simply isn’t what it used to be; the rhythm of retail has shifted, whether we like it or not.

Inside the business I can see another side-effect of remote working:

communication has got worse.

People genuinely think emails and Teams messages can replace real interaction. They can’t.

You learn more in an office by overhearing conversations, asking quick questions, reading expressions. Working from home has stripped out those small but vital moments, and the gaps show up in mistakes and delays.

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Shoplifters, Champagne and One Small Victory

After last week’s drama tackling a shoplifter, we finally had a sliver of justice:

the police arrested him and even rang my manager to let him know. That phone call was a rare moment of the system actually working for retailers.

Of course, retail being retail, the good news didn’t last long.

A shoplifter in his 60s walked out with a £100 bottle of champagne. No hoodie, no disguise — just casual theft. Shoplifting now has no age limit and very little shame. And every incident chips away at morale and the bottom line.

To add insult to injury, a gust of wind snapped one of our A-boards clean in half. That’s £2,000 gone in a moment. You don’t think of the weather as a business cost — until it is.

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Subscriptions: A Modern-Day Trap

One issue that really wound me up this week has nothing to do with sausages or sauces: subscriptions.

If I could change one law tomorrow, it would be this:

companies must make it easy for customers to cancel.

The amount of time I’ve wasted trying to cancel subscriptions is crazy. Endless menus, hidden options, fake “are you sure?” warnings — all designed to wear you down. It’s a kind of legalised entrapment. And I say that as someone who runs a business: some practices are just wrong.

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Interviewing: The Needle-in-a-Haystack Hunt

I’ve had to start another round of interviews. There is nothing more tiring than trying to find the right people.

CVs are increasingly written by ChatGPT — polished, clever, and often completely detached from the real person who walks through the door. You can’t rely on a CV anymore; it’s become marketing copy rather than a window into someone’s character.

A lot of young people are still living at home with their parents after finishing their studies. I genuinely think that’s bad for personal development. Independence forces you to grow. When the rent, bills and food shopping are someone else’s problem, there’s less urgency to toughen up and take responsibility.

Finding people who are actually ready for the real world of work — turning up on time, taking ownership, doing what they said they’d do — is increasingly like hunting for a needle in a haystack.

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My Daily Rhythm

My mornings follow a familiar pattern:

coffee (three sugars), WhatsApp, then email.

I usually wake up to around 200 emails. I deal with the urgent ones straight away, flag the rest for the weekend — and then discover by Saturday that half of those “urgent” emails are now irrelevant. Retail moves so fast that yesterday’s emergencies vanish and are replaced by new ones.

I’m a night owl. My best work happens late at night when the world is quieter. By about 3.30pm the next day, I often crash and need a nap. It’s not glamorous — it’s just how I cope with the pace.

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Retail Lives and Dies by Footfall

We’ve just learned that 200 people from a nearby office have been made redundant. Overnight, that explains the dramatic drop in sales. Retail depends entirely on people being physically present. Remove the bodies and the tills stop ringing.

This is the side of retail most outsiders never see.

Your fate can change because of a decision made in someone else’s boardroom, miles away, with no thought for the ripple effects.

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Closing Reflection

If there’s one phrase that sums up this week, it’s this:

randomisation is the new marketing