09/01/2023
Hi All,
Seems to be plenty of stories going around lately and happy for everyone to have an opinion but let me clarify a few things before you all cast judgement on what you’ve “heard”.
I’ve deliberately avoided adding fuel to the few posts I’ve seen but will finally address all the talk this time and share some truths that I’m sure I’ll still be judged on and that most other business owners wouldn’t usually admit in public.
In 2022 we completed over 250 events, from parties to weddings & major events.
A lot of these events were booked pre COVID, rescheduled multiple times or were booked already before having other weddings rescheduled on the same date, which is something we don’t usually do.
Just like many other vendors, a lot of the bookings had been booked at prior price points & some paid in advance so that meant in reality we made little to no profit or even lost money in more then half of the events due to the increased cost of almost everything and money having already been spent on overheads & keeping the lights on for 2 years.
However despite all this, we chose to honour our original bookings at the original prices and take the hit for our customers. At a great personal cost we still managed to make it through all the bookings and 2022 with minimal core & experienced staff as just like every other business in hospitality at the moment, staff shortages are a major issue.
We’ve had new staff not show up or let us down at the last minute much to our frustration.
Now for the part you can go to town with….
As a result but not with any deliberate intention we did f&$k up ! Not just once but on a number of occasions, while I could try and justify it by saying it’s still a small percentage over the total events we completed and I’ve got an inbox of positive reviews to back it, I still don’t think it was a good enough result and won’t expect you to either because anything less then 100% means we’ve let someone down.
So yes, we did unfortunately deliver a level of service that was less then satisfactory & unacceptable that we weren’t happy with at all. We even had staff involved in a fairly serious accident partly due to fatigue which meant we actually missed catering a whole wedding for the 1st time in 10 years and provided a huge reality check. Additionally our communication in the last half of 2022 was ridiculously bad to say the least and there is no excuse, we just simply didn’t have the staff & mental or physical capacity to do any better with the amount of work we had going on. So once again, there is no excuse but we still battled on to the best of our ability with what we had in front of us.
I have no intention of hiding the mistakes we made in 2022, thanks to COVID it’s the 1st time we have found ourselves in that circumstance and to be honest there are times where everything felt out of control but we persisted. So at the end of it all regardless of what people want to say we did the best we could with what we had and it came at both a very high personal & financial cost. So I promise you all that no comments (true or false) can have a bigger impact on me then the moments of self loathing and dark holes I’ve found myself in while casting my own judgement on myself in the past 6 months have…..
I’ve suffered mental & physical health issues with the stress of it all, had weeks where I worked 80+ hours just to get through it and then even when I stopped couldn’t sleep because I wasn’t happy with the results. But look I don’t want sympathy, just some understanding.
So yes we do have other business interests that we have started and are involved in, but not to run and hide from this business as some have suggested but to create balance and to help support Williams & Co. so we never find ourselves in the same situation we did in 2022 again.
So while I’m sure it will be disappointing to the vultures that are circling, Williams & Co. isn’t closing up shop, we’re not running away, not changing our name and pretending nothing went wrong like other businesses have done.
We are still very much in business and intend on sticking around. So no I’m not going to try and convince anyone we haven’t made mistakes.
All existing bookings are still valid and will be honoured just like all future bookings. However we will continue to learn from our mistakes and lessons we’ve learned and as a result we are limiting the number of booking we take each year, we are changing the way we do things and reviewing what we offer in 2023 so we can put our focus back in to Quality Services to all our customers like we have for the past 10 years and starting from next Monday when our office opens back up we will be focusing on improving communication between us and customers.
So by all means, take as little or as much of this post to heart as you want but at least now you’ve heard it from the horses mouth not the horses ass.
I’ll be putting a post up on our page to help arrange times to talk to our existing customers that have concerns by booking in times to call and chat.
Regards
Rob
