Procurement Fun 2. Pretty Tables

October 2010

Wombling

My favourite two methods of acquiring furniture for my Tea Room make use of the on-line organisations Free-Cycle and Gumtree. +I currently have the luxury of time and a lovely large spare room to cram full of goodies.

Free Cycle - Cardiff

Gumtree

Both of these sites have their pro's and cons but used together they are a wonderful tool for finding the great bargains.

How to Right a Business Plan Wrong - 10 Top Tips

For the regulars visiting this blog you will know that I am in the process of setting up a traditional tea room business in Cardiff, South Wales, that celebrates home made, fair trade, fabulous cake, coffee and loose leaf teas. I started this mission in June last year (2010) and am focussing the next few weeks on bringing you up to date on the story so far as I build up to open in Spring 2012.

August - October 2010 

Anyone can start a business, you see that happening every day. I notice usually when I think that someone is doing a bad job of running a business particularly bad tea rooms, café's and coffee shops. When you sit down to a sticky table, or get told to clear your own tray, or people there to provide a service to you are plain rude, I just think how do you people make any money? I could do that better! Have you ever had the same thought?

Watching Mary Portas giving what seems to me like pure common sense to people in business always ignites the entrepreneurial fire in my belly. Why do these people go into business?

So two interesting points here, anyone can go into business and do it badly and most of those people don't seem to have a passion for what they do. To make my tea room business a success I would need to be thorough in the start up and entirely committed to seeing the vision through.

Some Links I Love

April 2011

Some Bogs that I am loving at the moment, take a moment to have a look at them. There is some great information here I have yet to start sourcing my tea suppliers so drop me a line if you have some ideas.

The Pink Whisk
15 Gift Ideas for Tea Lovers
Mellow Monk's Green Tea Blog: A temple founded by a mellow, tea-loving monk
The Great British Bake Off Series 2

Just for you a very special Sunday recipe! Let me know how you get on.

Melting Chocolate Pudding Recipe

Captain Janeway Lives in Wales

August 2010

At the risk of losing you

I realise that a blessay about Star Trek is likely enough to make one half of you beam with joy while the other half leap to force close your browser. This is about my story and nothing to do with increasing power to the pattern buffer, inverting your tachyon beam through the deflector array or ejecting the warp core.

This is not a picture of Captain Kathryn Janeway of the Intrepid-class USS Voyager. The devout amongst you will know that this is a photo from the filming of the pilot episode of Voyager featuring the actress who got the gig before Kate Mulgrew made the role her own and that this character played by the French Canadian actress Genevieve Bujold was named Captain Nicole Janeway. Luckily for the series she walked out after day one of filming.

16 years later I took it as a sign of divine providence that my newly assigned Welsh Assembly Government business adviser is named Jane and that this Jane married a gentleman named Way.

Jane Way Captain of Industry

I met Mrs Jane Way upon registering my interest to receive free impartial business advice via the Welsh Assembly Government. Being fortunate enough to live in the Celtic red corner of the UK known as Wales (see map) and being forthright in my desire to create jobs (for myself), the government is keen to make sure that good business ideas flourish. They fulfil this desire by subsidising the commercial business support entity Business in Focus.

Procurement Fun 1. The Welsh Dresser

This little beauty came courtesy of Anthemion Auctions of Cardiff who provide a rather fantastic general auction on every 1st Wednesday of the month.

This is a traditional Welsh Dresser. There are two things I was determined to have in my tea room which I was prepared to splash out on.  A beautiful Oak Welsh Dresser was one and now I own it.

But can you guess how much I paid?

a.) £240 b.) £440 c.) £640

I can't tell you much about this one, other than it has been hand crafted clearly with a lot of love.

To a Mouse ... about that weekly update ...

April 2011

For the more observant of you, my last post was 263 days ago.

No Excuses

I certainly remember feeling, as I was composing my introduction to this story, that it was something best communicated live as a weekly Blog and despite the effort involved that this was indeed an interesting enough life gamble which merited documentation in my own bungling, bumbling, this, that and the other way.

I did not however write my story weekly. Looking back I can not think of an excuse although I do have an explanation for why I missed the first week. Upon finishing the introduction and hitting PUBLISH POST, I realised that in telling you what I was going to do I also risked telling my employer my plans before time.

After flamboyantly venting my intentions in a blog I had a vision of my story going a bit too public a bit too quickly (See http://goo.gl/fattr). It was then very easy to not write, with the thought in the back of my thinking space **blog? yes very important, must prioritise this, no wait, time not right, besides time better spent writing business plan/eating/sleeping/distracted ooh a pretty flower**. Missing week 2 meant missing week 3 and I could go on, but promised not to, you get the picture?