Fish and chips

Monday was the return of the Fish and Chips van. They had been on holiday for 6 weeks so their return was eagerly anticipated by the expat community and some of the French.

They arrived at 6pm and were quickly followed by car after car some people coming into the bar for eat in and other for take away.
We were very pleased with the way the evening was progressing, the bar was filling nicely. But then it changed, murmurs of discontent, the chippie had run out of chips and fish!! They had calculated their requirements based on previous years and then loaded the van with double what they thought they would need. They ran at out 7.15 which was earlier than they would previously have even been here.
Fortunately we carry plenty of stock so my evening of no cooking very quickly changed and we ended up cooking 15 meals. Everyone that was in the bar was fed but we know that some people turned up and were dissapointed and didnt even get into the bar as they tried to order, failed and went home

whilst this meant we had a good day, it is a pity that people who came out couldn't get their dinner. Last year the customers could only queue in a cold car park and buy take away, this year they have a warm bar to eat in at no extra charge. It is bound to change the demand but working how much is required each week is going to be a learning process for the guys.

I hope they get it right next week as i too missed out on my large cod and chips with mushy peas!!

Valentine

Just a thought, why did Tesco do buy one get one free on their large valentine cards?
what next buy one get one free on wedding dresses

February

Tomorrow is one year to the day since we came to France looking at cafes. We had accepted an offer on the house and were out looking for a business and a new life.
As you know we opted for the bar in Champniers and our story has been told on this blog. I haven't updated since the new year so here goes.
We were told that the winter was long, cold and boring and business would be awful.
We were told wrong!! December was cold and we have had to get used to not living in a double glazed, fully insulated home but the heating works and you just pull on a jumper. January was a mixture of cold and ok but no snow. February has been excellent so far, even to the point that I have been able to sit on the terrace in the afternoon reading a book in shirt sleeves
The work is never boring, we have times that we don't have customers but we use these to read, to catch up on the sky plus, to go for a walk (not together) or to do bits around the house.
We opened Christmas Day for a couple of hours and have been open as normal since with the exception of New Year's Eve and a couple of weeks holiday when we closed the bar.
Business has not been awful, we have had some slow days and some very good and in general are very pleased
We have had two quizzes so far this year and have had over 70 people each time. We think that we can squeeze about 85 people max into the room so still have some potential. The Top Hat team who run the quiz and supply the food are very professional, stress it's for fun and not really about winning and have a very good banter with the participants. We have really hit lucky with them as partners.

We have restarted line dancing, with a group here every Friday morning, lots of stamping and yee hahs
we have Social (ballroom) dancing two evenings a month and again this is growing in popularity
Last night we had a charity Ceilidh in the function room. 45 people "danced" to a great band named Shoestring who are from Falkirk but on a short break in France. They had donated their services to the evening which raised money for a charity working with street children in Romania.

Fish and Chips starts again tomorrow and our partners in this, David and Suzanne, have now committed to us every Monday. Up until now their time was split between two locations, they will now spend all their time with us.

J and I took a break for two weeks to re-energise. The holiday was excellent but the high point was the enthusiasm with which we were greeted on our return. We could not believe how many people wished us a good holiday and said how much they missed the bar on our return.

A year ago when we were looking at cafes, one of the criteria was to be the hub of a village and to have a bar that would be important to people. I think we chose well

new company car

Reveillon De la St Sylvestre

Reveillon de la St Sylvestre is the French celebration of New Year's Eve

We closed the bar early and went to the salle de fete (village hall) for the celebration. 120 places all sold out a month ago. This is organised by the village Fete committee, but catered by a local hotel. The cost was €50 a person VIN COMPRIS
The start time was 8.30 pm but as this is France people were still arriving at 10.30
The evening commenced with a grapefruit kir, well actually a couple of them!!
This was served with some canapes, to wet the appetite at about 9.45

The starter was served at 10,30, foie gras together with a large glass of Pineau des Charente and 4 bottles of Muscadet between the 12 of us on the table

Fish course next getting near to midnight, salmon on a bed of leeks then up onto the dance floor for a dance where the disco guys did a countdown to celebrate the new year.



Back to the meal after midnight with a Trou Campenois, a glass of sorbet with a unknown strong alcohol floating on the top

Then at half past 12, 4 hours after the start, the main course arrives. Duck breast stuffed with mushrooms and veg. And well worth the wait!!
served of course with four bottles of red

Only two more courses, assortment of cheeses and salad and then finally at 2am dessert, a passion fruit pyramid with a red fruit coulis, served with bottles of sparkling wine.



Coffee, with cognac or eau de vie followed and dancing into the early hours.
we called it a day at 4am as the bar had to be opened this morning.
I have no idea of the time it finally ended but as we left they were atking orders for onion soup to be served around 5am!!

a great night, and it is suprising how you can communicate in a foreign language as the wine bottles empty

Cold and Icy England

A view of the bar and terrace taken this morning

cold overnight but a beautiful day today

To answer your concerns

a couple of our kind readers have suggested that J and I are much more amateurish in our approach to business than we were in our previous roles.
I want to take this opportunity to assure you that this is not the case. In fact J and I have just held our
STAKEHOLDER BRAIN STORM for STRATEGIC STRATEGY and HOW TO HIT THE GROUND RUNNING IN 2011
We discussed our strategic position, how we could get a win win from our unique service proposition in our exclusive location. We looked at how best to harvest the low hanging fruit, how to be more customer centric, the introduction of focus groups for feedback, innovations for value added perceptions all to be available in real time.
We have a state of the art, best in class set up and need to be proactive to get consumer buy in to best sweat the assets.
Our customers are offered a well positioned, value proposition that will make our business more sustainable. By being customer focused, putting ourselves in the customer's shoes, and being individually empowered and by using scalable best practices, constantly monitoring the business dashboard will enable us to be market leaders.

At this point we realised that we were talking absolute bollocks and ordered another bottle of red