A calm December is planned in October

The hardest week of our year is the one before Christmas, and almost nothing that happens in it is decided that week. By then the stock is either in our cold store or it is not, the cutting list is either realistic or it is not, and the room for manoeuvre has gone.

So the festive season starts for us now, in October, and it starts with two conversations: one with our suppliers and one with you.

What we are doing with our suppliers

We buy on a rhythm rather than in bursts - our beef comes in weekly, for instance - and that rhythm is what we are setting for the season at the moment. The further ahead we can see demand, the more of it we can commit to, and the less of December depends on whatever happens to be available at the time.

That is the quiet mechanism behind a good festive season. It is not clever buying in the last fortnight. It is ordinary buying, arranged early, against numbers somebody took the trouble to produce in autumn.

What we need from you

Not an order. A forecast.

Tell us roughly what you expect to put through over the season - covers, weights, the lines you know you will want. It does not have to be right. It has to exist, because a rough number we can plan against is worth considerably more than an exact one that arrives too late to act on.

Revise it as often as you like. Every revision makes our buying sharper. What we cannot work with is silence in October followed by certainty on the twentieth of December.

Commit the slow things, keep the fast things loose

Some of what you will serve has a long tail behind it - whole birds in quantity, bone-in rib, large single-muscle joints, anything that has to be brought in rather than cut from stock we already hold. Those are the decisions worth making early, because by mid-December we are cutting rather than buying.

The rest stays flexible, and deliberately so. Portioning, mince blends, sausage, marinated lines: we make those in our own butchery from stock in our own cold store, which means they can move with your bookings rather than ahead of them. You should not be deciding burger weights in October. You should be deciding how many legs of lamb you are confident of selling.

Frozen is part of the plan, not a fallback

Held properly, a joint secured in November is not a compromise in December. It is a joint you are certain to have. We hold fresh and frozen on Buskett Road, and for the lines that tighten at the end of the year, that certainty is usually worth more than the last few days of shelf life.

Start the conversation now

Your account manager would rather hear a vague forecast in October than a precise emergency in December. Call them, or start an enquiry and we will come to you.

The smooth Christmases are not the lucky ones. They are the ones somebody planned while it was still warm out.