Why we skipped Black Friday - some quiet morning musings

It’s quiet.

The kids are still asleep. Scott has gone to work. I’ve already had my tea, followed by my coffee. I drank the first while reading a book in my favourite spot, glancing through the trees as the sun came up — the light touching their leaves as if to whisper good morning. I love this part of the day. It’s the time I get to miss my kids, without really missing them.

I wander down to their room and watch them sleeping for a minute. Their bodies under a spell, limp and heavy. Anouk’s blonde hair covering most of her face. Zan’s arms stretched across the mattress, his chest bare, his sheet gently draped over his lower body. I couldn’t love them more.

In a minute they'll wake and chaos will ensue. I’ll have lunchboxes to pack, clothes to fold, breakfast to make. But right now, this space and time is mine — and it’s perfect.

We didn't participate in Black Friday this year. We considered being part of it, but also considered the reasons we might skip it, and I wanted to share those with you.

As a small business, big sales are easy to get swept up in simply because everyone else is doing them. It’s assumed that if you have a business, you join in. And for many businesses, it genuinely makes sense — without the discounts, sales during those days can be low. With all the offers flying around, people’s attention is elsewhere. So it makes complete sense to jump on the bandwagon. I totally get it.

But here’s why we chose not to. Food margins are not like apparel or beauty — they’re significantly lower. For us, the only real reason to discount stock is when we’re making room for new meals and the freezer is at capacity. We still make our meals in small batches, by a small team, from scratch. Very little is wasted; the food is high quality, grown and made by people who care.

Every week we rely on making enough sales to pay every single cent that keeps our business running. Amazingly, we have managed to avoid debt and we have no shareholders. I believe part of that is because we make slow, conscious decisions. We've grown a lot, but never beyond our capacity. And yet, the truth is, some weeks paying all the bills are hard! We can’t afford to discount our meals just because there’s a big sale happening everywhere else.

So we’ll continue to do things in our own way, in our own time, when it genuinely makes sense for us.

Right now, the freezer is packed with our catering and Christmas meals. Thank you for getting behind these — they’ve been selling as we hoped they would. We have a few meals leaving the menu with a small discount. This will be their last run, and they’ll be replaced with more seasonal ones after Christmas.

Also, I listened to a podcast yesterday (Diary of a CEO) that I want to share with you. It resonated with me even more after all the Black Friday emails and texts that came pouring in over the weekend. I really loved the messages in it. Link here.

Love, Til x