Merry Christmas from White Rose Coffee Roasters

2020 will be a year we all remember, even just 12 months ago nobody could anticipate how our lives and the way we shop and socialise would change so dramatically after March 2020. Coronavirus has bankrupt business big and small, the high streets of our cities are becoming a wasteland as store after store is boarded up because they can not trade under Covid restrictions. It has been heartbreaking for us to see customers, and friends of 20 years plus shutting down their business because they can not keep paying rent and rates bills while not being allowed to trade because of Covid restrictions.

White Rose Coffee Roasters has been one of the lucky one's though, with an established ecommerce base we were ready to face the challenge of a changing retail landscape that saw demand change overnight from hospitality to home users. In December 2019 we ordered a 30kg batch roaster to keep up with the demand from our commercial clients of coffee shops, restaurants and hotels. When it arrived on 1st April 2020 they were all closed because of Coronavirus, with some already bankrupt because of the sudden loss of trade. And we had to wonder, would we still use this investment in such challenging trading conditions - and more importantly could we withstand the cost if it did not pay it's way.

While installing such a large piece of equipment during the first full lockdown was a challenge, it quickly became our primary roaster taking over from the small 5kg batch roaster we started with - although for less popular origins we still use the 5kg roaster on a daily basis. The 30kg batch roaster however helped us handle the explosion in domestic orders caused by a sudden mass of people working from home - but still needing a caffeine fix. Coronavirus changed our business model of twenty plus years overnight, with orders rapidly increasing while the value of each order rapidly decreased.

More work for less reward, in difficult trading times we could not increase staff to cover the workload - and just worked harder for longer to keep up instead.

In September 2020 we welcomed UK members of the Hive account@hiveio blockchain to visit us, after a brief respite from Coronavirus since July the event date clashed with the new Rule of Six which meant many people who would have liked to attend had to decline. But it was still an excellent day with Hive account@nathanmars, Hive account@slobberchops, Hive account@shanibeer, Hive account@shmoogleosukami and Hive account@stevenwood attending. And we are thankful for continued coffee orders from our Hive account@hive friends including Hive account@slobberchops, Hive account@steevc, Hive account@chris-uk and Hive account@shmoogleosukami - plus even an order from Hive account@sgt-dan shipped from the UK all the way to America!

In 2021 we plan to run another Hive account@hiveio meetup for our #teamuk hiveians - Covid allowing we hope it will bring more of our UK based Hive Blockchain users together to discuss the Blockchain and increasing it's user base. Also the #hiveblockchaincoffee concept will grow as we brand more coffee origins with Hive and also work to onboard the plantations the coffee is grown on so they can post on Hive account@hive about the coffee they grow.

Hive account@whiterosecoffee runs a Hive account@hiveio blockchain Witness, and is backed by Hive account@hiveio Witness Hive account@c0ff33a who also runs a full API Node https://api.c0ff33a.uk - we really appreciate your Witness votes which help cover the costs of the servers we run to support the Hive account@hive blockchain and also enable us to run UK meet ups.