Meet at Strawberry Grove
Open for business for nearly ten years Strawberry Grove started as a small grocer in Lane End, a picturesque village just outside of Marlow.
With a growing customer base and a real appetite for coffee, their three locations in Maidenhead, Marlow and Lane End are the perfect places to start your morning.
Whether you’re looking for a brunch spot, want to enjoy a delicious lunch or indulge in a slice of cake, Strawberry Grove is committed to quality produce, sourcing goods from local suppliers and artisan bakers. Pups and pooches are always welcome, so come in, grab a seat and settle down with a coffee and your canine by your side.
We caught up with Stuart Downs, the owner of Strawberry Grove as he shares his business insight and lessons learnt from the Covid-19 pandemic.
How did the pandemic or lockdown impact your business?
Having been forced to close, we sat down one evening and discussed how people couldn’t get to the shops, whilst we still had access to food supplies from our existing distributers. We therefore came up with a solution - to transform our business and turn it into a grocery delivery service. We started providing customers with a much-needed support while keeping our business afloat, and more importantly, both our suppliers and staff’s employment.
What did you do in response to these challenges?
We set up a website and online ordering system and launched the new business with an announcement on Facebook. Within seconds, orders started coming through and by the next day the post had been viewed 30,000 times and we had 300 deliveries to fulfil!
What were your greatest challenges?
The greatest challenge was turning our cafes overnight into supply depots and getting to grips with a logistics business within just 12 hours of launching it. We advertised on Facebook for drivers and had to take down the post within ten minutes such was the overwhelming response from people who had found themselves out of work. A lot of it required thinking on our feet and learning as we went.
Meet Strawberry Grove
Open for business for nearly ten years Strawberry Grove started as a small grocer in Lane End, a picturesque village just outside of Marlow.
If you could do it over again, would you do anything differently?
One of the other things we did later in the pandemic was turning our café in Marlow into a physical farm shop. In hindsight, this was not the best thing to do - it required us to completely break up the shop and spend a lot of money on shelving and adaptations. When we were allowed to open again, we had to change things all back, so it took a lot of time and effort for not huge amounts of reward. We should have just stuck with the online business.
What did you learn about your customers, your community, your business, yourself?
We learnt that our customers were absolute stars - incredibly supportive and understanding of the steps we had taken to safeguard the business and carry on operating. We learnt that times of crisis can be the greatest catalysts for innovation, and for bringing out the best in people. We learnt what real gems our staff were, who went over and above the call of duty to ensure food supplies got out to the local community and those who needed it most. It was a crazy time, and a situation that never in a million years we would have thought we would be in!
If you could give words of advice or encouragement to others, what would you say? Never stop believing in what you can do. Never sit back and let events overtake you. Understand that everything is in your power and you hold the key to your future.
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Follow Strawberry Grove on social:
Facebook: @strawberrygrove
Instagram: @strawberrygrove__