Thursday Cottage People.
The production team
There’s a wonderful team of around ten people working to
make and hand-fill Thursday Cottage products. Between them they are experts
at every single aspect of making jam Thursday Cottage style, from getting
the right fruit and sugar, to knowing how long to cook for (it varies
from one product to another), right through to how to thread the labels
on the applicator and put a date code on the back. We have the greatest
admiration for every one of them.
It’s usually Glenda who answers the phone at Thursday Cottage. With seventeen years involvement in jam, she can answer quite a few of the questions, advise on product range, take orders and lots of other things besides. Glenda’s knowledge of those important little add-on bits like prices, bar codes, case weights and so on are almost encyclopaedic.
Carol has been helping to make jam for fifteen years and spent time with Pam Corbin, finding out all those essential peculiarities about Thursday Cottage jam and marmalade. Carol says the most difficult product for her to get right was lemon curd but nowadays she can’t understand why it was ever a problem. That’s what experience does for you!
Donna does UK sales. It doesn’t sound much but it’s where most of our business is in fact and she knows lots about shops, wholesalers, farm shops, tearooms and department stores. She started selling jam when she was just eighteen. Like Glenda, Donna doesn’t work on Fridays, which may well be why we’re called Thursday Cottage. Donna made the tarts in the picture on this web site.
Pam
Corbin
Pam has been involved in Thursday Cottage for longer than anyone,
so long in fact that we think she must have started straight after leaving
school. Pam still works with Thursday Cottage as a consultant, agreeing
recipes, helping with sales and marketing issues and generally watching
out for the brand. Pam seems to us to live a life of only superficially
organised chaos and smiles a lot. Does she know something we don’t?
Walter is the managing director, although as in most small businesses, titles are less important for us. We all try to make Thursday Cottage products just as you want them at a price that’s still affordable. Walter has spent a lifetime in the food industry and jam is his speciality. Given just half an opportunity he will talk about jam all day long but we usually walk out after an hour or so.
What can we say about the finance director? Sometimes we find it difficult to take the financial side of things seriously. We like making jam and we enjoy working together with our customers. The rest just seems to follow on. Stuart makes sure we have money to spend when we need it and he sorts out all the legal and financial areas for the business. He plays classical music on the PC in his office and thinks the rest of us don’t worry enough about money.
Sales and marketing director. Ian has been selling jam for twenty five years. Hand made production techniques mean that we can’t have any huge increases in sales and as a result of that, we can focus on quality – so Ian says. He has ‘healthy’ debates with Pam about the label border, the gingham lid and which tone of cream to use as a background. He has a weird picture of a dog on his office wall.
Chris is our newest director and we’re not sure what adjective should apply yet. He knows lots about fruit and specialises in growing strawberries. Chris is one of those people who never stops – if you want to talk to him about some extra quinces, you have to run alongside. It’s really handy to have someone that as far as fruit is concerned, knows his onions. Well you know what we mean.