An apprenticeship with Lipton the Grocers part 3

An apprenticeship with Lipton The grocer part 3,

The door to door deliveries that the likes of Ocardo, Sainsbury and Asda are doing at the moment are nothing new. Back in the mid sixties, as part of my apprenticeship with Liptons the Grocers, I had to complete a wide variety of tasks and one of the most frightening was the time I was sent out to work with Bud who was our delivery man.

It was quite common for customers to come to the shop in Exeter town centre, walk round the store doing their shopping and then having the luxury if getting a personalised deliver later that day. This job was carried out by an aging guy by the name of Jasper who suffered with chronic asthma. His daily routine was to fill his dark green Commer van with orders and then drive round the devon countryside dropping them off.  He was incapable of doing anything at a normal speed and consequently he drove everywhere at high speed and ran from van to customer and back again. As you can imagine this left him rather stressed and did not help his asthma.

On the occasion I was with him he had a very bad attack and I was forced to take over driving the van. This was no mean feat as I had not long passed my driving test and manoevering a big van down some of Devon’s country lanes was not easy. We successfully completed the day with Bud wheezing and  gasping in the passenger seat and I am pleased to report he did recover.

One of Jasper’s passion’s was milk chocolate and judging by the empty wrappers in the van he got through substantial quanities each day.

An apprenticeship with Lipton The grocer part 2,

An apprenticeship with Lipton The grocer part 2,
One of the great advantages of being a bit older is that you tend to have far more memories (at least until the mind goes). During the course of thinking about my early days working with Liptons the Grocers it also brought to mind some of the other retail grocers around at that time.
I remember that just down the road from the Exeter High St branch of Liptons I worked at was an International stores or ITC as it was known. There were also others lke MacMarkets, David Greigs, Keymarkets, the Co-op (the only one still around today) Fine Fare, Maypole and Home and Colonial, Victor Value and Kwik Save.
In those days working in the retail trade gave every young man the opportunity to learn a trade and then if they were good enough they could progress up the management ladder. In fairness, you did not need to be all that competant as the  number of boys entering the trade had already started to decline and you could often achieve success by default. I completed my apprenticeship by the age of nineteen and almost immediately I was managing shops for holidays and within a year or so I had my own small store. The shops in those days were much smaller, 1000 sq ft was a reasonable size, and as we had complete control it was very satisfying.
All buying was done at store level other that the odd HO Special Offer and bribes by suppliers to get you to order were rife. As managers we were responsible for losses incurred though pilferage so getting freebies from suppliers as an inducement to take stock were commonplace. Most of the big biscuit manufacturers, soft drink firms and soap powder suppliers happily encouraged you to place big orders. In fairness, we had the skills to feature these specials in such a way that we could clear the stock and it was fun!
A lot of the skills that I learned then have helped me build a successful business selling chocolate.

An apprenticeship with Lipton The grocer part 1

Back in the mid 1960′s the name of Lipton the Grocer, along with Home & Colonial Stores and Maypole would have been been well known. At that time they were part of a large combine of 1000+ small shops that were operated by a company known as Allied suppliers. In 1964 I had a Saturday job in my local Liptons shop doing menial jobs like stacking shelves and serving on the till. In those days scanning did not exist and we had to press buttons on a huge till to enter every item that was purchased. Fortunately the variety of goods available was quite different to today’s supermarkets and average orders were much smaller.

In those days big supermarkets were quite rare and most of the business was done in small stores that were only 500 sq ft to 1000 sq ft.  At the age of 16yrs I left school and went automatically to work in the shop on a full time basis. I was issued with a white coat and a huge apron and put onto the provisions counter. Here I learned my skills from an elderly gentleman called Gerry Tolman and he showed me how to display cold meats and cheese, and to how lay out bacon. I also learned the importance of product display and presentation and these skills remain with me today. I remember vividly some of the less pleasant lessons he also provided, his habit of taking snuff (often while on duty) frequently lead to me scraping snuff off the cheddar cheese! Blow flies eggs on the bacon and cold meat and mould on cheese were minor irritions and I was encouraged to simply remove the offending eggs or scrape away the mould from the cheese.

At the age of sixteen I decided that as my future was going to be in the grocery trade (and a better qualification would lead to higher wages) I would sign up for a two year apprenticeship. This would involve me learning everything about running a store from the paperwork, staffing, skinning cheese and boning bacon. Sadly many of these skills no longer exist in the retail trade as everything is delivered in plastic bags but as a result of my training I am still able to bone a joint of bacon today. My proudest possession is a boning knife I used at that time.

My apprenticeship was overseen by another elderly gentleman called Mr (Bud) Bowdon although I suppose that with me being just 16yrs old anyone over 30yrs would have been old. On the 1st December 1965 I signed up for the apprenticeship and spent the following two years learning lots of things that were to lead me in good stead in my future.

At that stage, of course, I had no idea how my life would develop and that today I would be running a multi million pound chocolate company. I am sure, however that the disciplines I learned then have helped me today.