Well the Christmas order book is starting to fill up and it looks like I am going to be busier than I initially thought which is all good. Thank you to those of you who have already ordered through the webshop or messaged me privately. If anyone would like to order for anything for “Christmas Eve” then please do so sooner rather than later as I would hate to have to say no to an order. I am closing the webshop next week as I don’t want to overload myself over Christmas but I still want to keep myself busy in the kitchen and leave time for my family 🙂 The joys of juggling a small business and spending time with my family is such a balancing act at times.
I have received quite an assortment of bakes to do starting this week with Chocolate Baubles, Fudge and Christmas Cakes and then I have Savoury Bakes to do before heading into next week which will include lots of planning and organising so that I am ready for the week ahead.
My trial post using DPD has been left at the shop so fingers crossed it arrives in good time as I really am trying to sort out my delivery options for online orders due to the ongoing Royal Mail strikes which are starting to take their toll on small businesses now. I feel like I am starting all over again with the webshop by testing the water with posting a baked product and I am using my daughter who is at university as the guinea pig. Her special request was for Turkish Delight Brownies and so her wish is my command and that is exactly what she will be receiving when her parcel arrives. I wonder if she will share the Brownies with anyone? I am sure I will get the postal deliveries sorted but for now I just have to keep my fingers crossed and wait. 🙂
I am busy planning on how to add the DPD posting to the webshop as there seem to be two options – one is to have the parcel dropped at a shop for the customer to collect and the other is to have the parcel delivered to the customer’s address. As these are fairly reasonable options I will add both of them but they do cost different amounts. The postage is based on weight and dimensions of the parcel similar to Royal Mail so I will have to figure it out as I go. I can’t have a business account due to not having over 14 parcels per week so until then I am just a general customer and I assume when you are a business customer the postage will be cheaper and the parcels will be collected from my door but I may be wrong as I still have some research to do on this area.
Also, when posting to my daughter this morning it gave me the option to add her email address and phone number so that DPD could contact her if they need to about the delivery. My daughter has already contacted me to say her parcel is on its way? That was awfully quick as I can’t even see an update on my screen. Maybe my screen has to be refreshed or updated for me to see where her parcel is?
Anyway enough about the DPD parcel and onto my other plans for tomorrow starting with a Chocolate Fruit Cake order which I have to bake. Maybe I will make a sample cake as well for customers to try on the run up to Christmas? Whilst the Chocolate Fruit Cake is baking I will be cracking on with some chocolate work – so I be in creative mode for a change instead of admin mode which I seem to have been stuck in for the last couple of days racking my brain over the postal delivery problem and how I can solve it. I am looking forward to tomorrow as I find working with chocolate very therapeutic and I am usually calm afterwards. 🙂