Really cheap food...however

why freeze them? we had a box in the cupboard 2 wks for packed lunches and they were fine

yes sounds a good idea - each item haveing the amount thats left in stock - and deducted when people order - so peps know what out of stock.

In order to get the best value and most out of the postage - as if out of stock, i'd order more of other things to make up for it. :@)

Argh - I'm getting baked bean withdrawl symptoms! Just waiting for that before I put my next order in! :T

Hi all, first post, as only discovered site recently.

Found this post on the 16th and made order same day. Not arrived yet, but knew going to be delay and understand the difficulties Dan must be having. Said 7 days backlog when I made order but not quibbling, I can wait.

On page 68 of this thread Dan explained one of the reasons he is going for the replacement item route for the website.

It makes sense that customers will want to get the best value for money by getting as close as they can to the weight limit for packaging cost. It works in Dan's favor ofc as people add a few items they didn't really want just to make up the weight.

This complicates things a little and will put off people if they feel they might not get what they ordered, The simplest answer is link the database of amount of stock to the order form, showing how much stock is remaining and stopping orders at zero. Would have to have a scanner at the cash and carry to update the database for local sales or some poor sole would have to manually update the database for each local sale. So spend more cash for scanner or exhaust your staff; tough choice if not already invested in scanner and trying to keep costs down :rolleyes:

As Dan pointed out the risk of buying stock that doesn't sell cutting into profit due to the way he buys, makes it a little risky and a change of price suddenly on an unpopular item is not a good idea, as it alienates customers who just bought the item at higher price.

I have one suggestion for Dan that you could think about. As I understand it (correct me if wrong) you often make a small order initially and then purchase more (if any left) if the line is popular. Now what if you made the small purchase, and then put it up on the website as a special offer with limited stocks, but only as a pre-order. This might best be done if for members only, which would unfortunatly might mean setting up a proper account system on the website and the complications that would entail.

The idea being that a regular customer sees the special offer (percentage off price, extra item, signed picture of Dan, cuddly toy, whatever) with the knowledge that when they make their next order after a certain date they will have saved more money. This would be a good indicator of demand so you could decide how much stock to purchase.

If you made the special offer a standard one that applies to all items it would simplify things a little although you probably would have to make clear on the offer that you are only giving an estimate of price that the same items are going to be on the main site later, so that people don't feel cheated if they later see the item on the site for a slightly lower price.

The offer would be on a separate system to the main store. Input of amount of item for the database, and then a generated code to be inputted on the order form when the customer makes his order after the specified date.

You make the initial small order to cover the orders for the special offer, make the offer available, and you have a few days to look at the demand before you make a bigger order, enough time so stocks don't run out of the item but you have an idea on how well it will sell.

This could allow you to phase out the replacement item scheme as you have a way of assessing demand for an item without having to hedge your risk as much.

I am no business expert, so I'm sure there are numerous flaws that could conflict with the method of your business that I do not know, but I thought its worth thinking about, and im sure my fellow forum members will have picked out its fatal flaws before you get to read it

Btw I really like the way your site calculates the postage, I presume there is a database of weights of items and a script to add them together. Is there any reason why you don't link the running total of weight to the shopping basket? The total has to be available for it to update the postage costs, so it can't be hard for the script to output the data to the website. It would make it much easier for customers to figure out exactly what items they can shove into the basket to get as close to the weight limit.

Bit of a long winded first post, but I usually am verbose so I might end up with a gagging order on me if I keep posting here :whistle: