A great idea - surely a piece of cake……

The idea was in motion - I’d planned the contents of my welcome packs, the first recipe cards and found a good place to advertise. So I figured, I had it made…….it was about the time Jamie Oliver started on his School Dinners campaign so kids and food were being propelled into the media spotlight.

The ads went out and I waited eagerly in anticipation for the first phone calls and orders. And the phone calls came - 20 os so queries in the first week which wasn’t bad as I’d advertised locally. But it wasn’t what the parents wanted.

Call after call came requests for somewhere to send the children to learn to cook. Excuses for not wanting to help them learn at home were varied - “…not enough time”; “can’t cope with the mess….”; “I just want someone else to teach them…”. And therein was my biggest stumbling block. Parents simply didn’t want to spend one afternoon a month helping their child to learn to cook - a pretty essentil life skill.

On the next round of enquiries, I made a point of saying that the recipes were for the whole family - Baked Cod with Three Cheeses, for example. This wasn’t a course teaching kids to make Krispie Cakes, it was about seasonal wholesome food. And people gradually started to enroll their children on our postal cooking course.