It’s without a doubt, that COVID-19 has shaken businesses around the world to their core, causing many doors to shut, millions of staff without a job, and millions of business owners on the brink of despair.
We won’t sugar coat it, Real Peas was hit…hard, and it has absolutely sucked. However these blogs will not be about dwelling on the unfortunate situations we and the rest of the world have been placed in. Instead we will share the raw lessons we have learnt, the tough decisions we have had to make, how we are adapting the business and how we plan to ensure the business comes out the other side stronger.
We will give you an inside view on the ups, downs and everything in between in this blog series. There is no script, and we are not sure what each blog will bring – but we will improvise on the go – we’d love your thoughts along the way!
Who are we?
Before diving into our blogs, for those of you that are getting to know us for the first time, here’s a quick rundown.
We are a fresh food and coffee business with 4 retail stores in the Sydney CBD and North Sydney. The idea for the business was formed by our Founder, Eric, who came across “grab and go” food concepts whilst working as a lawyer in London. However these were not like the “grab and go” rubbish we are used to in Australia from servos and supermarkets. It was fresh, healthy, tasty and affordable!
Upon moving back to Sydney, Eric, being sick of the corporate world, and adamant this type of business would work in Australia, launched the business in October 2017 opening our first store on Pitt St, in the Sydney CBD.
The launch of the first store was….a complete disaster! We found Aussie consumers questioning the freshness of our product because it was packaged (we’ve all had a horrible servo sandwich before!), but not knowing we made our products fresh everyday, by hand, in store, using the best ingredients, with love (ok enough of the sales pitch sorry).
It took time, however with a relentless commitment to freshness and quality, and thousands of hours speaking to customers (and even showing them inside our kitchen to prove we made our products fresh!), we gained the trust from our customers. Customers told their friends, who then told their friends and suddenly, we actually had a business on our hands!
We saw quick growth, saw the team growing rapidly, managed to raise some investment, 3 more stores launched, created a new business for corporate catering, and even moved into our first tiny head office just a few months ago! There were a crap load of mistakes in between, but overall the business was tracking in the right direction. Then COVID hit….
View other blogs in this series: