Just Say “Yes”

Sometimes, the path of least resistance is to stay in the place you know well. It’s easier to take your inspiration from close to home rather than stretching your horizons and testing your boundaries with a little leap of faith; an unexpected journey to a place less familiar, to try things you haven’t tried yet.

Back in the day, we created a high street delicatessen. Convention has it that if you are doing retail on the high street, you should pretty much turn up there most days and sell stuff. There should be opening hours, and coffee … some cakes; probably a cheese toastie or two to showcase the produce. Yep, we did that. A whole lot of that. Just the two of us.

Doing that retail thing in the place that we knew well.

It was good. Really good. People came in. They bought the stuff. They hung around for coffee and cake. To be fair, we’d gone to the trouble of making the cakes and brewing the coffee; it was the least they could do, right? No real need to push the boundaries; keep doing that thing. Get more folk to do all the buying.

Then someone asked us to help out with a thing they were getting involved in.

Which brings us to the conversation.

That conversation we had not long after Mr Fables took the call from Arran Cross of Department Two.

It was a conversation that went a little like this:

Fables: So, we’ve got an outside catering gig.

Feasts: We don’t do outside catering.

Fables: Yeah, but it sounds cool.

Feasts: Where is it?

Fables: Oh, Scotland.

Feasts: But we’re in Wales.

Fables: For sure, but it sounds really cool.

Feasts: OK, I get that … but how many people are we cooking for?

Fables: No idea, but Arran said he’d send an e-mail; are numbers important? Did I mention it sounds super-cool?

Feasts: So you said ‘yes’?

Fables: Um, yeah … more wine with your tapas, Mrs Feasts?

Just like that, the uplifting power of saying “yes” brings itself to bear.

The opportunity?

Spend the weekend feeding up to 40 folks at Walking Whisky Wellness. Yep, a business conference with a difference. A weekend in the lea of the Cairngorms at Inshriach House, a beautiful Edwardian shooting lodge.

The gathering?

Open-minded, imaginative souls taking what-they-call-work into the great outdoors. Walks to inspire thinking; whisky to set the networking apart from all those conference room/name badge/bad coffee occasions we’ve all been compelled to attend in our professional lives. Energised, enthused, out-the-box speakers getting you thinking differently; a location to lift you away from your norm — it was transformative (just ask the guys who were there); we can’t wait until it is back.

And what did we bring to the party?

Great tastes; a menu curated carefully — in partnership with our talented friends Rob and Chris from With Love Project — a menu that shouted out loud of place and provenance. Meals that celebrated the four corners of the British Isles from which attendees gathered. Food at the heart of a gathering, binding a loose collection of attendees, drawing them together around a single table.

Venison from the Highlands; cheese from Wales; foraged treasures from the hedgerows of the Black Mountains; barrel-aged beers from mid-Wales; and locally-sourced treasures.

We could just have stood behind our cheese counter being shopkeepers… we did a whole lot of that. We could have just perched in front of the coffee machine and knocked out even more amazing specialist Welsh-roasted brews. Yep, no question, there was a time and a place for that too.

But that’s not all we do.

Sometimes, the only way to grow is to grab life by the horns and agree to do something you don’t normally do, in a place you’re not familiar with, to a scale you’re slightly scared of.