SAVE MONEY BY WASTING TIME… HMMM

Picture this, I was at the petrol station, filling up with diesel and minding my own business while a guy on the next pump is messing about with the pump trying to get his fuel to come to a round price. I didn’t really care at this point, but it was quite funny when he went over by 1p and I had to laugh at how passionate he was about having exactly £20 in his tank. I generally pay all my petrol costs by card – this way I can trace back my purchases and I don’t have to have a pocket full of change. So you can imagine my surprise when this guy is in front of me at the checkout, complaining to the woman on the till about the fact that they should let him off the 1p and he did not want to pay it!

Now this would have been okay if I could have got in and out by joining another queue, but on this occasion there was only one till open, and I was stuck. But it made me wonder why this muppet thought he should get this 1p free! Imagine how much it would cost a huge corporation like BP if they let everybody off 1p – although they probably would not miss it that much, business is still business, after all.

So now you’re probably thinking what does this have to do with fish and chips and how I run my shop. etcetera? Well, the point is that this experience and a chat with a fish and chip shop owner earlier that day had brought home to me that there is not much loyalty to wholesalers in our industry. I am out on the road most days and I talk with a lot of fryers and a lot of wholesalers and it seems like there is a lot of distrust amongst them all.

Sorry to do this again, but picture this: a shop owner gets into his shop in the morning, sets up his jobs, puts his peas in the bain marie, makes up his curry sauce, puts pies in the oven and lights up the range and sticks the kettle on so that he can make a coffee (or in my case Neil will make it for me…!) and then the phone rings and you pick it up and it’s T Quality (or whoever you buy from) and you place your order and that’s it, you’re done. After a long day at work you finish up, go to bed and get some well-earned rest. Next day, you get up and repeat the day before – but this time you’re accepting and checking your delivery rather than ordering – and so it goes on.

But this is where it can get tricky when your day still consists of all the above – but then you spend anything up to an hour haggling with and talking to five different suppliers trying to save a penny, and then you place orders with three of those companies which means that the long day you would have had using one supplier has just been made three times harder because you now have three deliveries to unpack, three invoices to pay, and on the day of ordering, another three people to talk to – and the annoying thing is that if you have bought own label products, some of them might be different and might not appeal as much to your customers…

Please don’t think I am stupid and don’t agree with finding the best price. Let me explain myself – I am not talking riddles, I promise! I am a big fan of value for money. If I can buy products I trust for my business at a cheaper rate than most wholesalers offer, then I go for it. But one thing I won’t do is keep going to and from five or six suppliers. I don’t believe in sacrificing time over price, because yes, you can save money, but if you have just spent several hours of extra work and stress in that week, which was already a long week, then I don’t see the point. Yes, you might spend an extra ten pence on sausages if you don’t shop around, but that’s life and you are less stressed than before.

Now, I am not saying don’t look at others’ prices – if you see a difference that you’re not happy with then walk away, but I am saying that this method of time saving and staying on top of things is better for business than chopping and changing from one supplier to another for pennies, with all the extra work it involves.

It would be interesting to know what the suppliers think about this, what efforts they make to keep prices down for fish and chip shops and explain to us why prices go up?

Written for Fish & Chips & Fast Food Magazine, September 2009 Issue

Picture this, I was at the petrol station, filling up with diesel and minding my own business while a guy on the next pump is messing about with the pump trying to get his fuel to come to a round price. I didn’t really care at this point, but it was quite funny when he went over by 1p and I had to laugh at how passionate he was about having exactly £20 in his tank. I generally pay all my petrol costs by card – this way I can trace back my purchases and I don’t have to have a pocket full of change. So you can imagine my surprise when this guy is in front of me at the checkout, complaining to the woman on the till about the fact that they should let him off the 1p and he did not want to pay it!

Now this would have been okay if I could have got in and out by joining another queue, but on this occasion there was only one till open, and I was stuck. But it made me wonder why this muppet thought he should get this 1p free! Imagine how much it would cost a huge corporation like BP if they let everybody off 1p – although they probably would not miss it that much, business is still business, after all.

So now you’re probably thinking what does this have to do with fish and chips and how I run my shop. etcetera? Well, the point is that this experience and a chat with a fish and chip shop owner earlier that day had brought home to me that there is not much loyalty to wholesalers in our industry. I am out on the road most days and I talk with a lot of fryers and a lot of wholesalers and it seems like there is a lot of distrust amongst them all.

Sorry to do this again, but picture this: a shop owner gets into his shop in the morning, sets up his jobs, puts his peas in the bain marie, makes up his curry sauce, puts pies in the oven and lights up the range and sticks the kettle on so that he can make a coffee (or in my case Neil will make it for me…!) and then the phone rings and you pick it up and it’s T Quality (or whoever you buy from) and you place your order and that’s it, you’re done. After a long day at work you finish up, go to bed and get some well-earned rest. Next day, you get up and repeat the day before – but this time you’re accepting and checking your delivery rather than ordering – and so it goes on.

But this is where it can get tricky when your day still consists of all the above – but then you spend anything up to an hour haggling with and talking to five different suppliers trying to save a penny, and then you place orders with three of those companies which means that the long day you would have had using one supplier has just been made three times harder because you now have three deliveries to unpack, three invoices to pay, and on the day of ordering, another three people to talk to – and the annoying thing is that if you have bought own label products, some of them might be different and might not appeal as much to your customers…

Please don’t think I am stupid and don’t agree with finding the best price. Let me explain myself – I am not talking riddles, I promise! I am a big fan of value for money. If I can buy products I trust for my business at a cheaper rate than most wholesalers offer, then I go for it. But one thing I won’t do is keep going to and from five or six suppliers. I don’t believe in sacrificing time over price, because yes, you can save money, but if you have just spent several hours of extra work and stress in that week, which was already a long week, then I don’t see the point. Yes, you might spend an extra ten pence on sausages if you don’t shop around, but that’s life and you are less stressed than before.

Now, I am not saying don’t look at others’ prices – if you see a difference that you’re not happy with then walk away, but I am saying that this method of time saving and staying on top of things is better for business than chopping and changing from one supplier to another for pennies, with all the extra work it involves.

It would be interesting to know what the suppliers think about this, what efforts they make to keep prices down for fish and chip shops and explain to us why prices go up?