Further Developments

We are considering a limited home delivery service to commence in 2012 but I am concerned at the vehicle insurance implications for volunteers who will undertake such deliveries,  given that their policies will be "social,domestic and pleasure" or its equivalent only.

Would be interested to receive comment/advice from other shops

Many thanks   Harry Taylor   Longborough Village Shop

Has any member got experience with securing music rights for a community cafe or shop?

I sit on the committee of a Village Shop and Cafe. We are considering having radio / CD music for our Cafe customers but have first to deal with the 'rights' issue. I've done some research but the situation is confusing - any advice much appreciated.

Concerns about selling alcohol.

We are exploring applying for a licence to sell alcohol - a small amount of wine and local beers and cider.

The volunteers have expressed some concerns regarding security (we'll need bars at the windows) and possibly dealing with aggressive members of public, those intent upon stealing alcohol or underage.

Has anyone had to deal with such issues? I have spoken to a couple of other community shops already selling alcohol and they say that it is very successful and they have had none of the problems outlined above.

We are re-arranging things in our shop - and in the proess, are wondering whether we might get rid of one of our card racks.  We have two full-height 1.2m wide card racks and one carousel - room for roughly 300 card positions.

Do we stock the right amount of cards?  Sales amount to about £6k pa which is 2% of our turnover.

Do we have the profit margins right?  Some are at 100% margin, some (local ones) much lower.  Overall we achieve 43%.  We sell about 330 cards per month.  How well are everyone else's cards doing?

We have just got stuck in to a piece of work to look at the wider impact of our shop's existence. Using a methodology called Social Return on Investment (SROI), we are very fortunate in having the support (funded by the Community Shares project in which we have been participating for some while now) of leading SROI guru Jeremy Nicholls from the SROI Network.

 With the support from the 'Making Local Food Work" programme we have recently held a "Taste of Local Food Fayre" with the objectives of promoting the shop, showcasing our local suppliers, identifying any gaps in our product range and building future sales through the shop.

Our village, Eardisland is in North Herefordshire on the beautiful Black & White Village trail. The parish has a population of approx 430. We opened the shop on 31 March 2010 in the ground floor of a 17th century Dovecote. Our selling area is 15 sq. mts.

In June this year, the Plunkett Foundation organised a national networking event for community owned shops at which 25 community shop representatives were present. A motion was put forward for a national membership scheme to be created - with Community Shops in the driving seat and Plunkett administering the scheme.

Is anyone selling CDs and DVDs produced by Partner PlusLtd and sold through newspaper wholesalers?  If so how much do you sell them for and what advice have you please?

Tim Taylor

We were recently surprised to be quoted £173 for Public and Employee Liability Insurance to cover a small half day fundraising event consisting of a small table top sale and open day at a potential future (and currently vacant) premises. This would have made a massive dent in any potential income. Does anybody have any similar experiences or advice on what to do in such circumstances?

We are looking to upgrade our 2 year old epos system fromiTouch.

Any advice as to good intergrated software being used?