Speaker 1 (00:00.226)
Hello everyone and welcome to the My Local Marketer podcast. I'm Maria and today I'm speaking with Pete Hefferan, co-founder of Shed Cafe along with wife Lydia. Pete, thank you so much for coming on. How are you?

good yeah I'm nice this is a nice break from my usual routine so it's nice to be here and do something a bit different

Well, we're sitting today here in Shed Cafe, which, well, it's actually a beautiful day given all the way we've had recently. And just say I had the tomato and aubergine soup for lunch. so tasty.

It's good isn't it, it's a nice one. Always the simple recipes are the best ones.

Well, it's the aubergine that threw me. That's why I thought, I've got to have that because you hear tomato, tomato and basil, but tomato and aubergine.

Speaker 2 (00:40.888)
yeah I find that you have to with soup you have to have a sort of you can't just say tomato soup because no one buys it you have to have something else you could just buy a load of aubergines and put them in the oven and then blend it up and it actually is really nice to add a different type of depth of flavour

about it. A lot of things will go with some art- I mean ketchup, people will have with a lot of things. Could you please give a little bit of an introduction to yourself and your background?

So I was born in Reading and I went through school really into drama and then later through that writing, poetry and then because of that probably I started learning guitar when I was about 16, 17. I went to university to do drama and ended up leaving just before I finished to start a band with my friends. We did that professionally for about 10 years and then I took over Shed in 2012.

And that's what I've been doing ever since. I've run it with my wife Lydia and a really amazing team of people.

Why is it called Shed Cafe?

Speaker 2 (01:40.864)
Originally, this building was used for two places. One was called Afro Bar, which was a really nice, cool rum bar and a cafe called Chan Cham, which ran for a really long time. And basically they were run by the same person. They, Chris and Chani, took the building. They split it into two separate businesses and they gave the bar to my friend Tim and he called it Milk. And then when it was time for us to take over, we needed a word that would sort of go with milk that was kind of looked like the building and we thought milk shared.

kind of looks like a shed, it's quite homely, it's quite humble, so it's just a word that we kind of thought was good and it's easy to remember.

I really like these stories with how names came about. That actually makes total sense when you said...

It was Lydia's mum actually who suggested it. She also suggested the name of my first child. So she's obviously got a knack for it.

So what made you want to take over chef and given your very creative background, it doesn't seem like a natural progression to go from that to West Coast cooking is creative.

Speaker 2 (02:43.47)
Well, yeah, it wasn't a natural progression really, because the band kind of stopped in 2012 and I was left in a position where I was thinking, I've got no qualifications. I was about to turn 30. I don't really know what I'm going to do with my life. And so Lydia said, oh, let me text Chan Cham. They message back straight away to say, send him in. And the idea was just that I would come in and I would work in a cafe and get some money basically to keep me going whilst I worked out what I was doing. then...

I just took to it and I think they realised I was interested in cooking. Actually it was a soup that brought the idea to them. I made a tomato soup and they both sat down and ate it and then a few days later they said right come in for a meeting and they suggested, they pitched this idea to Lydia and I. They looked at us and said you're not going to break up any time soon are you? And we looked at each other and I don't, I don't think so. So they said you should run the place.

I think within four months of me getting a part-time job at the cafe, we'd borrowed the money and taken it over. And then they went on to do their Chan Cham cooking sauces and hot sauces and they were able to devote their full time doing that.

So you could say this all started because of a bowl of tomato soup.

Well yeah, think that's definitely a catalyst. My boss at the time said it was to do with the level of seasoning because it was a big part of soup, I'd seasoned it right.

Speaker 1 (04:06.702)
Well, as I said before, there is an art to cooking.

Yeah, it is artistic. You can't science it out. think baking is different. Baking, you need to be a scientist really. You need to kind of be quite methodical and get everything right.

I really like baking, well, the one ball bakes. For me, the difficult thing is getting the exact right amount of time in the oven where it has the, you know, it's still cooked, but it has like that soft middle. That is such a, I mean, 30 seconds.

Yeah, and you've gone too far. My colleague listens to the cakes when they come out of the oven. I sort of understand it. She puts them into her ear and you can hear by the way it's fizzling if it's finished cooking. I'm the worst baker in Shed basically. I can't think of another way putting it. So I listen to their expertise with cakes.

I haven't tried the listening thing. I'll have to give that a go. What's your favorite part about running Shed then? You've been doing it for, what, 13 years?

Speaker 2 (05:01.294)
Yeah, I often think about this. I guess having a team of people that you're with all the time, obviously because we're in charge, we can kind of handpick people that we want to work with, but you often don't know who you're going to get when you hire people. So we have been quite lucky with all the people we work with because we work in really close proximity with each other. It's a really small kitchen. It's a small team, which means people do more shifts. There's less sort of one day a week, two day a week people.

So we're in each other's pockets and it is a bit like having a housemate. A lot of people have stayed with us for a few years. It's become a bit like family. And now I've got two little girls as well. And a lot of the people that I work with are all safe females, really good role models for my children. The building itself has become a bit like a safe place, somewhere I can come, let's just go to shed and we'll go and my children feel comfortable there. They say like there's that adage about it takes a village to raise a child.

And I think we have got a bit of a village here. We've got all the people that work at Milk Bar who are really amazing and supportive. We've got all the people who work at Shed. And then also, without wanting to sound too sycophantic with customers as well, that we've got to know a lot of real regular customers that we've got to know. And it's got that feeling of sort of cheers. know, do you remember Cheers, where everybody knows your name? it's that. think that's the community of it is the thing that keeps us going.

I think that's so important in life. think nowadays there's this endemic problem of people being very separate from each other. Everyone leads separate lives. They don't have that community. So having these spaces where people can come and see each other and have that sense of community is so important.

Yeah, and it's a massive part of our life really. It's like, you know, like if you have a shed, they call it the garden room. It's kind of like that. It's like an extra room of our house. There's an extra place to go. It's a breakout area. I'm quite picky about some of the things I have, so it's quite nice to be able to make my own coffee and, you know, make my own lunch. So that sort of thing's good.

Speaker 1 (07:07.022)
So, what have you found difficult over last 13 years then?

I guess running a business is difficult. Running a business with no business experience with your girlfriend has its own sort of problems where you were learning on the job, you learn what potentially could go wrong, but you only learn it when it goes wrong. And it is the same as anything you do in life. can warn you about it, but until you've actually found out for it by yourself, you're in the dark really. So yeah, I think we've rolled with those kind of challenges quite well.

and we got married after a few years of running the business so obviously we've managed to negotiate those kind of things about working together. I think probably the main problem for us is the cost of living crisis. Everything that's been happening with the economy in last sort two years has stretched every business owner I'm sure and there's loads of people that dealing with a lot worse stuff than us but specifically with the problems that we've found is things like cost of

electricity, the cost of food and the cost of staff has gone up massively and they're like the three things that we spend money on most. But what's good about it is that we're able to kind of, because we're a small, we're like a sapling, we're able to bend through these storms. We can change our suppliers, we can change our products, we're agile. It's the sapling in the storm as opposed to the big oak tree that means you've got more flexibility there. So we're quite lucky that

And because we're quite small scale, the big changes affect us in small ways.

Speaker 1 (08:44.652)
Staff electricity and food, they're your main costs. How have you been able to overcome them? And I know you said you're agile, but for example, I know some businesses change their opening hours, they're not open so much, they don't have to worry about the electricity so much. Have you had any thing that has worked for you?

Well, I guess the main thing we've tried to do is to kind of streamline how we actually do what we do so that we can do more of it quicker but still retain the quality. Because a lot of what we do is over lunchtime, it's between 12 and 2. It's people who work in offices, they come in, they want their sandwich, they don't really want it in 15 minutes, they want it now. But the reason they're coming to us over one of the high street chains is that we make all the food to order. They know it's fresh.

Just for the listener, it's important to understand that shed is incredibly small. It's like working on a barge or like a longboat. So what we've had to kind of do is really focus on exactly where everything is, where it goes, where it comes from, physically in the space of the kitchen where we are, how we can do the most of it, how we can do it quickest. It's the standard of what it is we do. So I mean, it's like building cupboards. It's literally like...

putting an extra shelf in, putting things in the right size bottle is weirdly massively important. Stock control, all that kind of stuff. If you get it right, it all goes smoothly. And if you don't get it right, then they're like speed bumps. They slow you down.

That reminds me of the film. Have you seen The Founder? No. The guy who set up McDonald's. yes. In the film, he has this thing that's where he sees the people who actually start at McDonald's. And then when he gets involved, it was so streamlined. People were standing in the right place. It was like a conveyor belt. So exactly like you were saying with having everything in the right place because it's so small. Having that conveyor belt, having things in the right place, that makes such a difference. Processes.

Speaker 2 (10:44.084)
It's interesting that we share with Milk Bar because their thing is that they make cocktails, they make them really well. And it's interesting when someone orders a sandwich, our kitchen staff are on view, they're being seen, they're making stuff and every sandwich has got four, five, six ingredients have to go on a specific order. Some of them are cooked, some of them are not cooked, some of them are on specific bread. So it is like, you you get the order, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, do the thing, wrap it up. And even to the extent of wrapping up how it's wrapped.

I remember I used to live opposite a place called the New Ocean Chinese Fish Park opposite Palmer Park and I used to watch the way they wrapped up the chips like in about four milliseconds they would wrap up this packet of chips I just think it was amazing and after 13 years I kind of think there's certain bits like that where we're doing stuff fast and we're doing it well it feels like it all works

And it's the small tweaks that all add up to make such a difference. So what are some of the highlights that you've had from over the years at Shed?

There was one time when we were just packing up, we'd been packing up for about two hours. We were all extremely tired and kind of elated. It gets after a busy shift, you're full of adrenaline and you're packing up as fast as you can. And my friend and I went out to the bin to throw the bin into the sort of Grunden. She did a big twirl around like a windmill with this bin bag to throw it in. And as she did it broke and the bin bag broke and it was full of soup. It was full of soup and it went all over me.

I was unhappy about this and she was extraordinarily happy. She was the happiest I think I've ever seen anyone at Shed. Really laughing, crying with laughter. That's probably the best thing that's happened. I can't really think of anything else. That's the only thing I can think of.

Speaker 1 (12:29.9)
I suppose it's the processes because it's so streamlined every day is very similar, is it?

No, yeah weirdly no it's not similar. It's never the same. It's probably the least boring job I've ever had. It's always different. Yeah that's interesting. I haven't actually thought about that before. You can never predict what sort of a day you're going to have or who's going to come in. People don't make appointments.

We said before about how the food is delicious and it's freshly made. You use local produce, don't you? that right?

where we try and use local businesses and we try and source things responsibly. We kind of always went into it from that perspective that Shedd would be like your fridge at home but really, really well stocked. Think really carefully about where we buy things from and what we buy.

How do you source your local produce then? Is it just you actively going out and looking for things?

Speaker 2 (13:21.484)
Yeah, like we, think when you've got your ears to the ground, you're always, you're always looking for new products and stuff. But I think the main focus for us has been rather than reducing kind of air miles and like food miles. I think it's something like three times the amount of greenhouse gases are created by methane from cows than they are from food miles. So the focus has been over the last three years, rather than trying to reduce that carbon footprint in that way, more trying to reduce

the amount of red meat we're using and try and replace things. instead of having, know, traditionally you'd have like four sandwiches and one of them would be vegetarian. We've sort of gone to have like two vegan sandwiches and then, you know, just one meat and then one fish. Trying to sort of very gradually steer people into eating more vegetable matter and less animal matter. I think that's probably the best thing that I can do at the moment.

I think that's a great idea. And to be honest, when I eat the vegetarian stuff, actually just feel healthier normally. It's not so stodgy.

Yeah, think balanced diet is important. think there's, at the moment, we as a society, I personally think we're slightly too far towards, you know, what meat are you going to have and then what you're going to have with it. And also I think I'm not a vegetarian or a vegan, but I do occasionally get infuriated when I look at menus and there's only one vegan option and it's the, because I'm also, because I'm quite fussy, I think, well, maybe I wouldn't want that. You know, maybe I don't want an asparagus risotto.

every time I go to a restaurant so I think yeah like sure where you source your ingredients from is really important but what you're choosing to eat is a big deal for us I think.

Speaker 1 (15:09.038)
Like I said, you've been here for 30 years, you've been running it for 13 years. How do you promote, Shed? Do you need to?

No, we've never really advertised. We took over from Chan Chan who had their own community. They had customers that would use them that still using us now. When we opened the doors there were people ready to come in so we've always had people, local professionals, a lot of office blocks, lot of offices around and offices talk to each other. So you just have to feed one of them and then they talk to their mates. Yeah so

We've never really advertised. The new thing that's going on now is people are really involved in Google, my business. It used to be TripAdvisor was a big thing, but that seems to have, I don't know whether I've just stopped using it, but business reviews are really, really important. And I think probably because of where we are, we find that customers, by the time they've walked off the high street to come and see us, they're already a little bit invested in our business anyway.

think we end up getting more positive reviews because of that. But yeah, I think that's all the advertising we need at the moment.

I think it's sort of a hidden gem where Shedd is because I think I didn't know it was here for many years because you are sort of hidden down just by launch padded, just off the corner. So it is quite a hidden spot. So it is one those places where you're oh, once you found it, you know, it's there.

Speaker 2 (16:36.846)
Yeah and because of the way it looks as well it looks like this kind of, it's a really old building nestled amongst lots of new, you know, equally beautiful but in different ways high-rise offices and apartment blocks so I think by the time people get here they're like, that is the noise isn't it? And I do think that we end up getting treated better as a business because people aren't just walking past, they've come here deliberately.

What that enables us to do is it enables us to provide that extra level of service to them. You're already like involved in it and you're already part of the story and for cafes that is all about the story. You know, you can have a cheese sandwich anywhere. There's the holiday effect, isn't it? When you're on holiday and you have some food and you get home, you make exactly the same food and it isn't. So I think that's that's true of cafes. It's true of any anywhere that you go like this. I think we've got this lovely building. We're slightly off the

high street and I think that's it that just adds to the vibe.

I don't really thought it was the holiday, but you're absolutely right in the holiday food thing. Yes, it's definitely the location where you eat something makes such a difference to actually enjoying the experience.

Yeah, someone said to me, they said good coffee is 10 % beans. And I went, what do you mean it's 10 % beans? But what they meant is that you make a choice on the bean, but you also make choices on what chair they sit on, how you talk to them, how much it costs, how they pay, you know, all these different choices that you make when you're providing a coffee for someone.

Speaker 1 (18:10.272)
The customer experience that makes such a difference, which is brilliant. Now, what are your future plans for Shed?

At the moment, we're happy. There's always little things, bits and bobs where you think, oh, you know, we could have another one somewhere else, or we could broaden our scope and we could do all this different stuff. And actually, we have been offered little bits and bobs and we've found little units and we thought, oh, you know, could have shed two. Probably shed two about 25 times in the 13 years that I've worked here. But we, every single time we've, we've realised that this place is kind of taking up all of us.

There's two of us, you know, we both think about it all the time. We're both involved in it a lot and it's, you know, we've got two young children, we're working six days a week and it's doing what it needs to do for us. It's providing us with that bit of community. It's providing us with roof over our heads and stuff. So I think at moment, we're kind of happy. It's allowing us to spend all this time with our children and when they were young, you know, and so what the plans for the future keep streamlining, keep...

doing little tweaks, maybe put another shelf up, maybe do a new source. There's a new menu on the way which is going to be basically the same but with a few little different bits. There's like new things to put the teaspoons in on the tables. There's loads of little bits that we're into at the moment just kind of letting it run. Yeah just enjoying ourselves.

doubling down on where you are and getting it streamlined, I think is a great idea. Pete, thank you so much for coming on our podcast. I really enjoyed speaking with you and yeah, I'm really intrigued by this listening to cakes thing. I'm to have to go home and try it.

Speaker 2 (19:49.038)
Please listen to every cake from now on, that's my advice.