Little sister to Harrogate’s award-winning Mrs Smith’s Café, The Weekend Factory delivers everything from hot breakfast dishes, homemade ready meals, cakes, afternoon teas and celebration packages.
Owner, Phillipa Smith, set out to create a family online delivery service for Harrogate and the surrounding areas to keep the business visible during the Covid-19 pandemic. Phillipa says –
‘As a café, we couldn’t trade in the usual way, so we decided to move to a new service focussing on an element of the business we had wanted to develop for a while. At the time, because of the uncertainty and the urgency to keep trading, it was important that the process was straightforward for both us and our customers.
We had seen other businesses offering phone orders, social media services and bank transfers but we wanted something simpler to reduce the admin and make it as easy as possible for customers, to avoid losing vital orders.
We looked at several options to be able to take orders and payments online and Handepay’s online shop offer in partnership with EKM ranked well in terms of value for money. Setting up the website was very straightforward and the functionality of the EKM interface is excellent, we were up and running within days.
The free trial period has been brilliant for us, allowing us some breathing space at a time when things were so uncertain. Now that we have a successful service, the small fees to keep it going in such an easy and effective manner are excellent value for money.
By setting up our online shop we’ve been able to keep trading safely during the lockdown and stay visible, giving us the edge against our competition. The support from Handepay and EKM has been superb, everyone has been polite, knowledgeable, friendly and – most importantly for us – quick!’
