Alice and Chris Rendell were already expanding their family tea and coffee business when Covid hit. Then 70% of their business disappeared overnight.
Their customers wanted them to stay open. The challenge was finding a way to keep serving them when the usual ways of doing business were suddenly unavailable.
For Edgcumbes, that meant a café window, a new website and a wider range of things to buy.
Watch the full conversation
Alice shares how Edgcumbes adapted during the pandemic, and how working with Inspiration Space mentor Nigel Scarfe helped her and Chris make decisions about what came next.
A family business with room to grow
Edgcumbes began as a tea and coffee business in West Sussex. Chris’s father, who’d worked as a tea trader in Calcutta, established it around 40 years before this interview.
By the time the pandemic arrived, Alice and Chris were already exploring how to build on that foundation.
Working with Nigel, they’d identified opportunities to convert redundant farm buildings into a café and increase online sales. Both gave customers more ways to buy from them, alongside the business they’d already built.
Then the pandemic changed what was possible.
Listening to the people who wanted them to stay
“The pandemic hit us hard, as 70% of our business disappeared overnight,” Alice said.
But customers urged them to keep going. Alice and Chris turned the café into a takeaway window and put more attention into online sales.
They invested in a new website and expanded their range to include locally produced food.
The core of the business was still tea, coffee and serving their customers. What changed was how people could buy from them, and what else they could pick up at the same time.
Those changes helped Edgcumbes continue trading and grow during a period when much of its existing business had fallen away.
Having someone to work through the decisions with
Alice credits Nigel with helping them identify opportunities and bringing in additional expertise when they needed it, including financial support to inform their decisions.
“Nigel has been an invaluable resource for Chris and me.”
That outside perspective mattered before the crisis as well as during it. They’d already been considering their buildings, website and sales opportunities with someone who could help them look beyond the day-to-day demands.
When circumstances changed, they had an established relationship to draw on.
Alice’s account is a reminder that support doesn’t have to mean handing over the decisions. It can mean having someone to question an idea, spot a possibility or bring in knowledge you don’t have yourself.
What could work differently in your business?
Alice came away optimistic about small businesses’ ability to adapt, and about customers’ willingness to support them.
Edgcumbes’ response started with something specific: people still wanted to buy, but the business needed different ways to reach them.
A café window and a better website won’t be the answer for everyone. The useful question is where your own customers might be struggling to buy from you — and whether something you already have could help.
What could you change about how customers find, buy or receive your work?
Keep exploring
How to assess your business environment
Identify outside changes that could affect your customers, costs and delivery, then decide what needs attention. Get the guide in the Library.
How to create a simple B2B sales strategy
If you sell to other businesses, choose where to focus your effort and build a practical plan around one offer and buyer group. Get the guide in the Library.
How to read your company balance sheet
Make sense of the main figures and identify what to ask your accountant or bookkeeper before making your next decision. Explore the guide in the Library.
