Not just a Corner Shop – innovative, caring and community orientated. PART TWO

Pratik Master and his wife Bhavini (known as Bee) have taken the local corner shop previously run by Pratik’s parents and turned it into something truly amazing.  Their innovative approach embraces the social needs of their local community as well as the material needs; it supports local producers which also makes it a sustainable business; it offers high quality foods including pies, bread, cakes, cordials and, of course, home cooked samosas, bhajis and curry pots.  At the heart of its business model is a desire to feel good by helping its customers feel good.  Here Pratik continues to share his philosophy and his mental health journey with the Business Gateway’s Peter Allen. 

The Deli does quite a few community events.  Tell me how that started.   

We got given a table so we thought we’d do coffees on there and people could sit if they wanted to but it was empty quite a lot of the time so we wondered how we could fill it.  Someone came in one day and said, ‘are you going start doing crafting here?’ so we said ‘yeah, do you want to do it?’ And the tables outside happened just last summer, and I painted them this year so more people notice them.

Also, two or three times a month we try to get producers along who make the products we sell.  It just helps to show people what’s inside.  The producers like it because they sell more, and we all win.

Any other examples where you’ve responded to community need?

We get involved with the community on Facebook, reposting notices about missing cats or things that people want to give away. That really helps people.  We also tend to do a giveaway every five or six weeks which is usually related to me feeling down. If I’m feeling rubbish and we’ve got some surplus stock, rather than sell it cheap we’ll just give it away like picnic boxes.  We’re just trying to get people to feel better and it brings them into the shop.

Tell me a little bit about any mistakes made on your journey so far.

Overbuying is the big one. I’m very much a person who likes to go with the wave and sometimes the wave stops.  We’ve overbought flour – like 100kgs which we had spare at the end of lockdown. So we sold some, we used some and we gave some away.

Another mistake I made was thinking that we could run two shops like this.  We did launch a second one, but it didn’t work because there’s only one of me and I’m not the type of person who can put systems in place to reproduce the experience in this shop at another site.  Other businesses have done it because they can create the processes to reproduce a simple product or service multiple times.

I sometimes try to do so much that I forget what the core is of what we do.  I think we’ve realised that our core is the 3 square metre display cabinet with the samosas, bhajis and cakes inside. That’s what people come in for.  They’ll buy other things in the shop but that’s what they really come for.

You do social media very well and quite frequently.  Where did that come from?  

I’ve always been fairly comfortable in my own skin, even with my insecurities.  I don’t find it difficult to do a Facebook live, for example.  If I was in front of a live audience, I would be nervous but not when I’m just talking to my phone.  I learned about social media when I ran my restaurant.  Like this shop, it was off the beaten track, so we had to generate interest.  Now we use social media like a virtual high street.  Our local audience engage with social media so we’re there too, engaging with them and taking on their suggestions as far as we can.  That’s how we decided to try a pop-up in Blaby, through a suggestion on social media, and we responded very quickly.

We’ve talked about mistakes so what have been the highs so far?    

Queues down the street on VE Day during lockdown.  We had 70 or 80 people in the queue waiting to do their shop, because we had a one in one out policy.  But they did it really nicely and politely.  And we also had a tea party which was very successful.

What kind of formal training or education have you had for running this business?

None.  It was all learned growing up.  I’ve got a degree in Geography from the London School of Economics but I don’t use that here.  I think people sometimes overthink this job, and think you have to understand business and margins and actually a lot of that is looked after for you; you buy at a wholesale price and you sell at a retail price.  The biggest part that we’ve learned from all of this is the psychology of understanding human beings.  I learned that for the first time when I was running the restaurant and had to understand hospitality.  Your customers are the most important people in your shop, and we are very much about greeting them as soon as they come in with ‘hello, is there anything I can help you with?’ especially if it’s someone new.  For our loyal customers, we greet them by name and usually know what they’re after. We don’t want to seem like we’re your friends, we actually want to be your friends. That’s why we hope they’ll choose to shop here rather than somewhere else.

Have you had support from any external organisations?

I ask for support from our suppliers to get customers to come here but that’s it.  I’ve never applied for a grant because I’m too disorganised.

And what does the future hold for you?

I’m not saying no to another shop if the right opportunity came up that countered the shortcomings that I have within myself. That’s the one thing I have to think about.

We’ve started doing pop-ups, offering cake.  We realised that people don’t necessarily want cake every day but if they can have it once a week, they almost appreciate it more.  So, we have a pop-up in Blaby on Saturday and we’re in our second week of doing that and then we’ll see.  If people keep buying, we’ll keep coming.

With Pratik’s energy and creativity – and Bee’s support – you can be sure that there will be more innovations along soon at Not Just A Corner Shop.  

If you missed Part One you can read it at this link.