When life gives you lemons…

One year on from the first lockdown and I find myself sat at my desk (in an empty office), trying to make sense of everything that has happened. I vividly remember feeling numb with shock at Boris’s first announcement telling us all to stay at home and closing most businesses, schools, universities and non-essential shops.

 To be honest, it wasn’t the idea of staying at home that worried me, but as the owner of a business that supplies the food service industry, I was filled with dread! Our sector had collapsed overnight. Would I lose the business that I’d spent 10 years growing? How would I pay the mortgage? What was the impact on my family and families of the Tugo team that relied on me? I had far too many questions and not enough answers.

Tugo went from being profitable to losing ￡50k per week over night, we had ￡1.4m of stock and a debt book of more than ￡2m. As with many of my colleagues, I would tentatively listen to every government announcement on funding support, furlough and rewrite our strategy by the day or even the hour.

The insomnia kicked in, and I would stay up into the early hours thinking about how we could navigate the storm ahead. I didn’t have all the answers, but instinctively felt that we needed to look after our team and their families, whilst aligning ourselves to our customers to ensure that they survived too.

One particularly painful decision was to withdraw a number of job offers we had made. To this day, it sits uncomfortably with me. I take the commitment of employing people very seriously and understand that they rely on wages to support themselves and their families as much as I do. But, supporting the team we already had in place was the priority. After this, we reached out to customers and extended credit terms, working closely with everyone to keep our businesses afloat. I will always be grateful to them for that; it was a true partnership approach.

Sadly, at the height of the pandemic, when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, the relationship with my partner broke down too. I hadn’t seen it coming, and the potential loss of the business that I had worked hard to create, coupled with the breakdown of a long-term relationship, resulted in some very dark days. I wondered whether I was strong enough to cope with it all and will be forever grateful for my 3 beautiful girls, who even on the darkest days, I only had to think of to bring light and hope into my life. They will always be my number one priority over everything.

The team at Tugo have been phenomenal and continue to inspire me to do better. I was determined to keep everyone employed, and the full team without hesitation unanimously agreed to take a hit on our salaries to achieve this. Unbeknown to me, they also created a video for me at Christmas Zoom party, which is something I will never forget, even if I had to leave the room afterwards because I had something in my eye.

As I look to the future, the business is in a good position. We had never planned for a global pandemic, yet our stable foundations have enabled us to survive and keep the whole team in place. They are raring to get back out there and support our customers on the other side.

For me, I am also coming out of the other side and am ready to continue the next chapter of Tugo. I know it has been a very tough 12 months for most people, me included, but as Sir Captain Tom Moore said, “things will get better, and the sun will shine again.”