Morning, guys.
We're at the Donation Center.
It's unit number five opposite Sainsbury's in Pontlum Frife petrol station.
It's not at the top by Sainsbury's but we are on the Sainsbury's estate.
Right, we need more customers, okay?
That's Dan's car.
This is my car, okay?
And he literally has to get in the Donation Center today to make us a path, okay?
We are very popular as we are.
You know that.
We need more customers.
It's not about the money, guys, right?
The more money we make, the more we can help the community.
The more nappies, the more food.
You know, we've done loads of stuff for free this year.
You can come in and you can have takeaway drinks.
You can have hot drink in the shop while you're perusing.
You can take it away with your own cup.
That's not a problem.
I'd like to have our own cups but obviously that's an expense that could be on nappies, couldn't it?
So that's the way I look at it.
It would be nice to have our own cups, you know, and give them to our mothers as well.
But that's an expense that we don't really need because most people have cups.
So we need more customers.
I need more staff but we need more customers ASAP, right?
Because this is coming out now from just in by the doorway, okay?
We're going to need to take on a bigger unit as well.
I'm already looking... I've got a shop I've got to go and view in Bridgend, okay?
I've got a couple on my listing carefully, you know that.
And I'm looking at a second location at least in Pontypool, even if it's just to store the stock in at the moment for Pontypool.
The more customers we get, the more stock I can take on because I need to get rid of the stock, okay?
Now you're all excellent at recycling and we've got fantastic customers and our sales are really good.
You know our sales are really good because I post the graphs, okay?
So it's not about us needing customers because we haven't got customers before they hate to start.
That's why I said turn the commenting off on your page because... on your shared post because you'll get a hate to say no, no, no, we ain't got no money.
It's nothing to do with the money.
The bill's a page, right?
It's the amount of stock we get.
We need to increase the footfall because we're getting more popular again now.
We're getting triple the donations we were getting two months ago.
So I need staff and I need more customers to get the donations down, okay?
Because I can't get things like the bikes in Blackwood shop because I still got stock up there.
I need someone to open up the donation centre daily to take the donations, to take the pressure off the shops so they can concentrate on sales and serving customers and serving families that need help, okay?
So then then we can try and divert all the donations down here.
We need more footfall so that when we have a big donation because a lot of our donation comes in vans now.
It's not just a couple of bags, it's carfalls and van falls.
You know that.
So we need more footfall to get this stock out.
We're permanently on 50% off.
We've been on 50% off longer than the DFS sale, right?
Officially.
So we try and give everybody a bargain.
We can introduce other stuff like loyalty cards.
We do the scratch card.
Somebody had a £10 free shop this week, okay?
We've got the colouring competitions up, right?
That's a £30 stock for the child that wins the colouring competition.
They can spend £30 within the shop or whatever they want, okay?
That's a lot in our shop, £30.
We're paying our managers £30 in stock, you know, which helps them because it doesn't affect their hours or their taxes or their benefits or anything like that, you know, or their pensions or anything like that.
It means that they go second-hand stock that they can take, which means they don't have to buy it.
So they're saving them a bit of money, but it doesn't affect their tax.
But even with this, we still need more footfall.
So we're asking you guys word of mouth.
I'm a big believer in word of mouth.
And I'm a big believer in you guys sharing stuff as well, okay?
You are our reviewers.
You review us.
And yes, some people say, a bit expensive, don't like it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But that's a small minority of people.
We are here to rescue all of this from landfill.
And we are a not-for-profit business at the moment.
We are looking into becoming a charity or a CIC or whatever.
Whatever fits us at the time at the moment, a not-for-profit business is fitting us, okay?
We're doing really well.
The other thing is, if I can't get the stock levels down, I can't bring the food into the shop, the fresh food that we want to give away for free, that all the other churches and charities, registered charities, are selling back to you.
They're the yellow stickers.
I can't bring it in until I got a clear space to put the food, okay?
Because the food will be paramount because of health and hygiene, okay?
So I need a clear area in each shop to bring that food in, to give it back to you guys for free, to give it back to customers for free, okay?
Because I have picked up, see those crates there, right?
I have picked up two carfuls of those from Risca, and I've had to go back for the bread.
Three carloads a night from Risca, I get, right?
Now, I've had two carfuls like that from Pontypool, right?
I have got to get that in the shops for you guys to shop it.
Now, some of it will go in the fridges and the freezers, but the things like the can't be in the shops with all the stock around it, okay?
They need, it needs to have a clear area on tables for you to come in, use the hand sanitiser and put whatever you want in your carrier bags and go.
There is, will be no charge for this food, but I can't do it because our stock levels are too high at the moment.
Okay, now the the top of food bank behind the checkout is okay because it's packaged and it isn't classed as fresh.
So fresh food is classed as a bigger risk by environmental health, okay?
And it needs to be laid out when we want to lay it out nice.
We want to put it on tables.
We want to put a nice plastic tablecloth on there because we have some lovely posh plastic tablecloths, you know, that's been donated from Debenhams and they're the wipe over ones, you know?
So we want to lay it all out like that, you know?
And then perhaps somewhere down the line, then we can progress to doing toast and tea cakes when you turn up and you can have a piece of toast or a tea cake when you... But I can't do that until my shops are clearer, okay?
And it's the level of stock that we've got has tripled since... When was the last time you came in, Jan?
Jan's mother's not very well, guys.
She's had a nasty fall, so she hasn't been in for a while.
So we hope her mum gets better soon.
Jan came in, I think it was August, and it's tripled since then.
Jan will tell you that because she's been watching the videos.
We've literally tripled in stock, which is brilliant.
That's what we want, right?
That's exactly what we want.
But we need the stock gone.
So we need you now to promote our shops for us, please.
Because you are our main reviewers.
I can post it all day long.
I can go to the newspaper.
I got the newspapers contacting me all the time, right?
I'm a big believer in word of mouth, because it's your testament.
You go to them and you say, no, no, no, Jayne does this.
She takes all this stuff in.
They refurbish it.
They clean it.
They repair it.
They upcycle it.
They put it back in the shops.
They sell it at 50% off the price that they think it's worth, back to the customer.
And all the money goes back into food.
Nobody gets paid a wage.
We're not here for the money.
We're not in it for the money.
We're in it for this lot, this lot, this lot and this lot.
We're here to be recyclers.
We're here to stop it from going to landfill.
The more money we get, the more warehouses I can take on, the more shops I can take on.
The more I can put into food banks, the more I can put into nappies.
So we need you guys now to share our shops and tell people to get up there and say, this is where you're going to get good stuff.
We've got fantastic customers.
You know that.
Absolutely fantastic customers.
And they already spend quite a bit of money with us.
And we like to reward our customers with a lot of other things that we do.
