Thanks from Glenn at No64 Biscuit House

We have been sent the following piece by Glenn Harrison at No64 Biscuit House:

I’d like to say a few words many suggest are the hardest to say, ‘Thank you’ and ‘sorry’!

Thank you

Glenn - No64
click image to enlarge

Thank you for coming to our Christmas Launch last night, it was an absolutely fabulous evening and we really hope you enjoyed yourselves.

Clare & I got up this morning to loads of email messages of thanks, what a lovely way to start our day, we truly didn’t expect such a lovely response, so personal too.

But it isn’t just 2 hours of us taking money from you (which wasn’t the idea at all)…..

So that 2 hours last night actually started almost 3 years ago when we first opened our doors when you, our lovely customers, friends & family started to come in, and I started to build our customer database.

Then there’s the advance planning for the event, seeing if suppliers will contribute to our goody-bags, getting the drinks and food organised, hiring the glasses, organising staff, ordering the Christmas stock and ensuring it arrives mid-October, Clare’s incredible styling, etc.

Clare has to, literally, strip the whole shop and completely re-style it over 3 days, she does this for 14+ hours a day for those 3 days and do you know what, we actually had a couple of ‘visitors’ to the shop complain that room 2 was closed while she styled it! Bizarre.

In the shop, to help Clare & I ensure your evening went as enjoyably as possible, we had the wonderful Jo and her daughter, our close village friend Monica, and the Wash House’s manager, Becca (yep, she loves our shop so much she came to work for us for the evening!!).

Behind the scenes we had Clare’s Mum, Jo, and Clare’s best friend Sharon making the Glögg, pouring the drinks, serving & topping up drinks and serving mince pies, keeping some form of order in our kitchen, and looking after Bailey, Ralph, Ester & Erik!!

Within your goody-bags, which we hope you all took away with you, you will have found a beautifully handmade chocolate from the amazing Miss Witt, our amazing New Forest chocolate maker.

We MUST support our local businesses / entrepreneurs and Kerry works tirelessly building her business and we were delighted to support her – if you don’t know her, or are having an event that could benefit from chocolate, have a look – www.chocolatebymisswitt.com

And did you have a mince pie? Again local catering business entrepreneur, Fiona Hill, of Real Food New Forest (@realfoodnewforest on Instagram) made them for you and I hope you’ll agree they were delicious. Fiona does all sorts of amazing catering and so if you’re having an event…

Now I’m going to swear as then there’s Brexit! 

80% of our stock, as most of you know, comes from EU countries, Denmark, Sweden & Belgium for example. And so Brexit is more than just an awful bore to us, it’s affected our business, and our lives frankly. We’ve had to plan for it, we’ve even got one supplier levying extra shipping costs on us already, and so it’s been no fun for us and will continue to be of concern until these buffoons we call MPs grow up, stop squabbling amongst themselves, and stop this uncertainly they’ve caused. Nuff said. 

To make a joke of it: of the 3 things happening last night, October 31st, namely Halloween, Brexit, and the No64 Christmas Launch, one was organised & delivered as promised, one was really scary and involved a bunch of children making fools of themselves, and the other was Halloween!! 

Sorry

We’re sorry if it got a little busy last night, at times! The idea was absolutely not that you came and spent money, we merely wanted you to see our Christmas stock and we wanted to say ‘thank you’ (oops, there I go again!) for supporting us by way of inviting you along, providing Prosecco and Glögg (did you all try some?), providing you with a goody bag to take away with you (have you checked yours by the way as we’ve already had the Gold candle / £75 voucher winner in today, that means the Silver (£50) and Bronze (£25) candles are still out there somewhere), and to hopefully bringing you all together for a social event.

What I’m trying to say is yes, there were queues at the tills at times but you should still have been socialising, your glasses should have been topped up, and you were supposed to be feeling (just a little) festive, despite it only being October!

I’m sorry also if this is a little boring too but, as well as thanking them personally, we wanted tell you about, and thank our team publicly as, without them, we couldn’t have done it.

I’ll finish by saying that we love doing this and we love the village. I think you know now that, even after 3 years, when you come to No64 Biscuit House either Clare or I, or both of us, will always be there to serve and entertain you.

But we can’t do it forever and as quick as our first 3 years has gone, the next 3 will go just as quickly and we’re not getting any younger!!

So, we wish you all to have a great Christmas and we thank you, from the bottom of our hearts, for your support. 

Glenn (& Clare) 

No64 Biscuit House
High Street, Milford on Sea, SO41 0QD
www.No64.co.uk
01590 643765