When Miss Becomes Mr

15th June 2020

I'm getting paranoid. Jeff is getting too good. Not only is he doing all the making, baking and serving each week but he's now doing what I used to do. He comes home from a long day at the shop and launches straight into a discussion about the business and next week's plans and what did I think about X and was it worth trying Y. When I used to do this he would roll his eyes at me and tell me to 'just forget about MMB for a while'. Or when I would come up with one of my many crazy ideas for MMB he'd respond with 'why make life so hard for yourself Megan?'. Oh how the tables have turned. Don't get me wrong, MMB is still at the forefront of my mind for, on average, around 85% of every day, and I do still have to force myself to take down time from it for the sake of my brain hamsters running round and round in their wheel, rarely stopping. But it's just so strange that for the first time since the first inklings of an idea for MMB came about, I am now joined by an equally obsessed business partner.

I actually caught myself saying to him yesterday 'why make life harder for yourself Jeff?' This was in response to his suggestion of doing a Russian Roulette loaf this week resulting in 10 (un)lucky customers discovering a whole red chilli running through their Cheese & Chilli Sourdough (yes that will be this week's special). What I didn't mention to him was that it simply struck an immense amount of fear through me imagining one poor customer who received this loaf was bound to be the one person that had some awful allergic reaction, they'd end up in hospital, MMB would be sued and the business would be no more. Can you imagine?

'So how come you haven't got MMB anymore, Megan?'

'Oh you know, one of those things, we nearly killed someone with a chilli'.

'Oh.'

So that won't be happening. I promise. But apart from putting a stop to that madness of an idea Jeff really is firing on all cylinders and my role feels ever more redundant. He's even got his own Instagram account now. Mini Mister. The logo is the same as the MM logo but turned upside down. WW. He even threatened to invert the Ms on the shop sign. Or scribble out the 'Miss' in Mini Miss BREAD and replace it with 'Mr'. He's got a nerve. It wouldn't surprise me if you turn up for bread this week and he's inverted our giant MM logo on the back wall.

So for those of you heading to the shop this week can I ask you a favour? Will you all please ask him how I am? Feel free to say how much you miss seeing me. If you like by all means mention in passing that his bread is very nice and all that but we all know that you can't beat the original Mini MISS Bread, no offence Jeff? The place just isn't the same without Megan is it, there just isn't the same vibe... you get my jist. Basically big me up and massage my ego a bit. That way when he returns after the Saturday morning shift he may reveal that lots of our customers are missing me as opposed to his very kind 'joke' last week that someone thought we'd got divorced. Rude.

Moving on. I'm very pleased to confirm that at the end of last week we managed to reach our £5000 target for our MMB: Soil to Sourdough Crowdfunder. £5000 in just one week? Incredible. We really are very grateful and hope that those of you that pledged will enjoy being part of the project and being involved in the development of our TWO fields of MMB grain. Next step will be me getting you all your Duchess Farms flour and then I will update you all on discussions with the farm about what grain we decide to grow, when and how it will happen. I plan to set up a separate mailing list so that I'm only updating those that wanted to be involved. Not everyone gets excited about grain! But for those of you that did pledge or donate, thank you again for your generosity. This will be fun!

This week at the shop we are going to try something new. We understand that a number of you are still not comfortable queuing up on a Saturday morning to get bread, and we don't like the thought of you missing out. So we are going to offer a limited number of loaves available to reserve for collection on Thursday. We'd really like these to be for those customers that can't queue on a Saturday so please, if you can continue to queue and leave these loaves for the less able or more vulnerable, we'd appreciate it (we really don't take your queuing for granted, quite the opposite, I promise).

The loaves will be available to collect from the shop on Thursday. They will be Walden Whites only and you can reserve a maximum of two loaves per household. If you'd like to reserve a loaf or two just email me on info@minimiss.co.uk, stating how many you'd like to reserve, no later than 5pm on Tuesday 16th (tomorrow). The loaves will be allocated on a first come, first served basis. I will email you back to confirm whether there is bread still available to reserve and if so, it will need to be collected on Thursday, between 12pm and 3pm. Payment will be taken upon collection (contactless or card payment only please).

We really hope this may be beneficial to some of you. If it works well we will aim to do it again whilst we're all still negotiating lockdown and protecting the more vulnerable among us .

For those of you that are able to go to the effort to queue on Saturday you will be rewarded with Cheese & Chilli Sourdough as the special, along with Walden Whites, Wholewheat & Ryes, Rugbrøds and White Tins. Open as usual from 11am, contactless/card payments only, exemplary social distanced queueing (none of that Primark rioting malarkey, I know what you lot are like) and don't forget to mention how much you're missing Mini Miss. I may even give a prize to the best compliment that makes it back to me. In the form of a whole red chilli. Ha!

Have a good week everyone.

Megan x (the original and best founding partner of MMB)

#minimissbread