Five dates, and what still works after each one.
The whole of December on one page, ordered by how late it is, because that is the only order anybody reads it in. The last useful date is the twenty-fourth at midnight and it involves an email.
Order by this date, get it by Christmas.
| Order by | For | Why that date | After it |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 October | 500+ corporate hampers | It is a production run at nine small producers | Fewer, or a different hamper |
| 7 November | 200–499 hampers | Six weeks of jar-making | Under two hundred |
| 28 November | 50–199 hampers | Three weeks | Under fifty |
| 12 December | 10–49 hampers | A week of picking | Individual orders |
| 19 December | Anything chilled, anywhere | Nothing chilled goes into the Christmas post | Ambient goods |
| 22 December | Everything else, tracked | The last courier collection that lands in time | A gift card |
| 24 December, 23:59 | A digital gift card | It is an email | The 25th, and it still works |
Why the shop is like this in December.
Between the first of December and Christmas Eve this farm shop does something close to a quarter of its year. The queue is real, the car park is a planning condition rather than a suggestion, and the nine producers who supply the jars are all small enough that a large order in November is most of their month.
Which is why the corporate deadlines are so early and so specific. A hamper is not a stock item that sits in a warehouse; it is nine separate small businesses making things in a fixed number of weeks, and a company that orders two hundred on the tenth of December is asking somebody to work through a night.
The individual deadlines are late because individual orders come out of stock that already exists. The gap between the two is the whole logistics of a small food business, on one page.
What people actually buy in December.
A hamper
Six prebuilt, from fifty pounds, priced at the sum of their parts.
A gift card
No fees, twenty-four months, and it works on Christmas Eve.
A box subscription
Three months from January, when everybody else has stopped sending things.
A patch
Bought in December, drilled in October, and it runs to next August.
If you are reading this on the twentieth.
Anything chilled is gone
The nineteenth was the last day. It will go in January and it will be better in January.
Ambient goods still work until the twenty-second
Tracked, and it will arrive. Order in the morning rather than at eleven at night.
After that, a digital gift card
Instant, or scheduled for Christmas morning, which is the better version.
Or a patch, which has no delivery at all
A card on the day and a field for eleven months. It is the best late present here.
Or a membership
Access opens at eight on the morning you name. Nothing has to travel.
Nothing chilled goes into the Christmas post. Ever.
The nineteenth is a hard date rather than a cautious one. A courier network running at four times its normal volume is a bad place for a cheese truckle, and a hamper that arrives warm on Christmas Eve is worse than one that arrives in January.
Christmas, questioned.
No. They are the real last dates and we will take an order at four in the afternoon on the twenty-second. A padded deadline is a way of buying yourself a quiet week at the customer’s expense.
Yes, until the twenty-fourth at two. The queue in December is genuinely long and it is worth knowing that before you drive.
Tell us on the day rather than after Christmas. We can usually do something on the twenty-third and we can do very little on the twenty-eighth.
It is the best time. Everything else has stopped, the weather is grim, and a box of food in the second week of January is worth more than the same box on the twenty-fifth of December.
And if it is later than that.
Four things that still work, and one that works at midnight.
