Landmark Issue 19 2021 SINGLE PAGES

50 LANDMARK RAU ALUMNI The 24 hours after thefirst lockdownwas announced. WhenBoris announced lockdown our website sawa 500 % surge in traffic as themove from high street shopping into our onlineworld seemed to happen in amatter of hours.Wewere being inundatedwith emails, social mediamessages and phone calls askingwhether we deliver to all corners of theUKas well as internationally. For every phone call we answered, ten voicemails were lefton our answerphone. Orders were being placed every ten seconds. As founders we had two priorities, ensuring the health of our teamwasn’t compromised at work and prioritising our existing customers with the level of service and quality of product they have come to expect. Late- night calls weremade to our website agency to expand server capacity to respond to order demand and to impose delivery day caps which prioritised subscription customers and their preferred delivery day. No turning back. Order forecasts were challenging as basket size grew, and discussions were had around howmany scotch eggs could feasibly be rolled in a day and how long chorizo took to mature.We decided that rather than cancel orders, we’d invest in ensuringwe got orders to our longstanding customers. Our small-scale farmers and producers tried to increase product stock as quickly as possible to fullymatch orders increasing, but some substitutions were inevitable. Feedback fromour longstanding customers was that theywould prefer an order with a substitution rather than not at all.We're very grateful for the level of understanding we received fromour customers in these cases. Our farmers lost a lot of restaurant trade andwere grateful for the additional orders – our customers played a pivotal role in supporting them. ATimes journalist asked us how we’dmanage to continue fulfillingmore orders during lockdown. Put simply, it was down to the relationships we’ve forgedwith our farmers and the short supply chain that field&flower was founded on. For example, therewas a national shortage of chicken for several weeks. Our relationshipwith Stu at Castlemead ensuredwewere well supplied throughout. With ourmission to get orders to customers (many of whomwere shielding, NHSworkers or in remote locations) came significant financial investment. As a small business, we didn’t take this decision lightly. Such consideration for this level of financial investment would normally have takenmonths, we had hours to decide. What did that investment look like? We neededmore refrigeration, staff and space. James Mansfield & James Flower ALUMNI IN THE PANDEMIC International Equine and Agricultural Business Management, 2002. Having featured 'Field and Flower' inLandmark a fewyears ago, we return to see how the business duo are adapting their business in the light of the global Covid-19 pandemic.