Twelve months, six numbers
Six numbers from a small business, each with the story behind it. Read down and the number beside you changes as you reach the next one; the one you are reading is the one that is lit.
4,212
deliveries
One
Four thousand two hundred and twelve boxes went out of the door this year, and every one of them was packed by somebody who had tasted what was in it. We do not run a line. We run a bench with six people at it and a radio.
The busiest day was the Thursday before Christmas: two hundred and nine boxes, one broken jar, one apology, one replacement on the next van.
11
growers
Two
We buy from eleven growers, down from nineteen. The ones who stayed are the ones we visit, whose fields we have walked in February, and who ring us when a crop is early rather than when it is late.
Three of the eleven have been with us since the first year. One of them is now our landlord.
0
flights
Three
Not one ingredient this year travelled by plane. The citrus comes by ship and arrives a fortnight later than it could; the coffee comes by ship and arrives a month later. Nobody has noticed except the accountant.
The saving went into the growers’ prices, which is where it always should have been.
38%
returned
Four
More than a third of our jars were returned to us, washed, and filled again. The deposit is fifty pence and the postage is ours; the arithmetic works because the jars are the expensive part and the glass survives about nine trips.
We would like this number to be sixty. The thing standing between us and sixty is a van route through the north of the city, and it starts in March.
1
recall
Five
A batch of the plum went out under-set in September and we had it all back within four days. Eighty-one jars, every customer telephoned, every one replaced. It cost more than the batch made.
It is on this page because a number that only counts the good days is not a number.
212
words
Six
This report is two hundred and twelve words long, not counting the numbers. It used to be forty pages. Nobody read forty pages, and the six things above are the six things that mattered.
Next year’s will be shorter.
The whole report
The accounts, the growers and the van route, with the numbers above in context, are in the full report.