Stock
All of our cheeses need an average of about 3 months' maturation, because of this, we need to start planning our production schedule early enough to have sufficient time to mature. Cheviot is more difficult; that cheese takes 9 months to mature. So we have to look at last year's figures, current demand, and adjust the production schedule accordingly. Poor Martin has the lovely job of sorting that!
Ordering
If you have a retail shop like we do, and an online presence, then often, you're ordering products from many different sources. The biggest wholesalers (such as ones which sell crackers and chutneys) often need Christmas orders in by the end of August. If you're creating a new hamper, it can be quite difficult to predict how many you will sell, and when!
Mail order day
One of the trickiest things we need to negociate at Christmas is Mail Order Day. Every year, on the last Saturday before Christmas, all of our despatch and dairy staff will come in on a Saturday and prepare every single mail order ready to be shipped the following week, on Mail Order Day. Mail Order Day is during the last week before Christmas, and it's generally a few days before Christmas eve (it allows us to have a few days following that to sort out any parcels which haven't arrived, which unfortunately is unavoidable at this time of year!). Our website allows you to pick at forward delivery date, which is useful for the customer, but we have to be so careful to ensure forward deliveries are despatched on time!
A note of smaller local producers
Where we can, we like to use local producers. Firstly, it's important to support our fellow food producers and contribute to our local economy. Secondly, it'd convenience; if we received more orders than we had anticipated, a local producer will often work that bit longer to get you a second order, or have some surplus stock from one of their farmers' markets which they can give you. But when using a local producer, they quite often make stock to order, therefore they need plenty of notice for packaging, and to make the product.
Cutting
We cut all of our cheese by hand. If we have a few large orders for 600 wedges say, that's enough to tie-up our staff for a few days.
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