One Year Ago I closed Cheeky Food retail

Two part series to share my story one year on…

Year 1 - new love

For those who have seen Cheeky from it’s early years, I started this business as a retail condiment brand making chutneys, pickles and savoury sprinkles using my family recipes.
It was my little 8pm project - once the kids were in bed, I’d spend my leisurely hours in the kitchen cooking, packing, labelling at our tiny West London home kitchen.

I remember weekends of carrying boxes to every food market within West London. Together my family, including my little girls, braved the British weather and stood behind that table selling our Cheeky jars proudly - ahh so proudly. Every £3 sale was to be celebrated and it was 🙂 

Year 2-3 Treading uphill

Things ticked along fine for a while - even successfully in glimpses. Along came a grand launch at Selfridges (read more here - Launching with Selfridges - gain or pain? ), more stockists, some great press and a few more stockists. But it always felt like an uphill climb, a constant struggle to keep quality high, costs low and sell more!

Year 4-5 Dragging my heels

And then came Covid! And Lockdowns! And what started with a 3 weeks closure spiralled into a never ending rollercoaster for the food industry being hit bad and hit hard. My stockists were closed and/or went out of business. I pivoted online briefly but never had the cash (or stamina or skills) to support the demands of digital marketing.

At the same time of watching my retail dream (nightmare) unfold, I was doing a lot of business development to enter the quick serve foodservice. I had experience of supplying to a large sushi manufacturer in the UK, so had some data on the demand and viability of the product at large scale

Year 6 - Cheating on Retail

In March of 2021, I bagged my first big foodservice listing with Wagamama and for one year I continued to run two (largely different) businesses in retail and foodservice by myself.
Within 6 months it was clear to me that one had to give. I was a cranky mum, haggard wife and just really no fun to even my own company. Everything I had set to do in the business - a good work life balance was everything I was not achieving.

It was time to change.

Time to Choose

The choice was between a dream I had envisioned when I started Cheeky - to get my Instagram shot in front of Waitrose with my Cheeky jars, by lugging the business on shoe string bootstrapped budget and practically no skills in marketing and possibly no chance of ever realising that dream.

OR

Pivoting both in terms of product (condiments to sprinkles) and market (retail to quick serve) by banking on my strengths of customer relationship management, NPD, operations and supply chain.

To anyone reading this, the choice would have felt simple and easy - the latter. But at the time, letting go of the first meant facing a very dark truth of admitting failure.

No matter how much loved ones tell you it is learning and experience,
truth is failure always feels like failure.

Admitting to myself

I spent most of October’21 to March’22 working on myself.
Letting go of Cheeky Retail - one step at a time.

I stopped the sales efforts
For the first Christmas in 6 years I did not make my pickles
I turned away customers
I sold left over stock to other businesses
I opened up about closing retail to close friends.
To each one I admitted a part of the story. A bit more and then a bit more, till 6 months later I felt I was ready to admit to myself and to the world.

So in March 2022, after a rather exhilarating week of featuring on BBC1 with Marcus Wearing, I admitted to the world that Cheeky retail was closing.

Next Week-
5 takings from closing my retail business and going full time into foodservice

Last Week -
Be The Best At What You Do - Be The Best In The World At What You Do

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