Eid Mubarak to all our customers!! I guess, after the long silence, you have all been wondering what has happened to us at Rouqayahs Ranch? Well, I am finally back in Egypt after a prolonged stay in the UK, due to the backlog at the passport office, who look nearly 6 weeks to issue my new passport, alhamdulillah. I arrived back the day before Eid and have been extremely busy since with a consistent stream of guests and also getting the place back in order. One of the down sides of being away for such a longtime, particularly when unplanned, is that the farm pretty much goes to pot! Hence, on my return, I have been immersed in the mammoth task of cleaning and tidying, stocktaking and restocking, and forward planning in general. I have also been very busy in the kitchen producing a few delicious items to add to our list of produce, including a tantalisingly tasty spiced aubergine chutney, our formidable fig and fresh ginger jam and brilliantly beautilicius bone broth cubes, as well as salsa and passata for our own use. A large bowl of green tomatoes are patiently awaiting transformation into chutney too. The other news, product wise, is that we currently have NO dairy products available, although Hannah blessed us with a daughter, Zaynab, a week ago and so we should be able to start sharing milk with her in a few weeks time, in sha Allah. Also NO beef until we slaughter in about 2 weeks time, though you can preorder your favourite cuts. In short, we are back in production, with limited stock for now, but hoping to be back to full availability in the coming weeks. Please see the website for latest list of products and prices rouqayahsranch . However, now read on!! One of the upsides of my extended sojourn away, was that it gave me much needed time to really think about what we are doing and how. As many of you know, the preparing and delivery of orders, often to customers who are late or even do not show up at all, along with the miniscule profit margins we have been operating on, have been sources of huge stress and worry for us. Hugely time consuming, it meant that the other side of our business, hosting guests and school groups was becoming marginalised. After a great deal of soul searching and prayer, we have made the decision to focus our main efforts the latter, which we most enjoy and is more profitable. In addition to what we already offer (day visits, weekend breaks and longer stays, camping, self catering and full board, horse riding holidays and lessons and more), we would like to extend the hosting side of the business to include themed holidays and trainings, and to that end we are hoping to partner with educationalists and therapists to offer a variety of activity based breaks, covering such topics as parenting skills, teenagers camps, Arabic intensives, electronics detox, and more. We are also interested in hosting your seniors, to give regular carers a break. So what does all this mean for the foodies? It means that you can still avail yourself of our products (see website for current lists) and that you will (soon) have 3 options on how to get them. 1. Book yourself ( and your family) a stay at the farm at a discounted rate of 25% on advertised prices subject to availability and take your order home with you. A MINIMUM of 4 days notice is required 2. Arrange to collect your order from the farm. In the interests of the environment, we want to encourage networking so that people living in the same area can take turn to pick up for each other, so customers are asked to give permission fro their contact details to be shared with others in their area. Please confirm that this is acceptable. Again a MINIMUM of 4 days notice is required 3. We are currently negotiating to include our products at a Cairo based real food hub. If this is successful, you will be able to order our products, along with a range of other items for home delivery from the hub. We will let you know as soon as we can about developments. Finally, in order to keep up with demand, we are thinking of outsourcing some of our products, much in the same way that Nawaya do. Thus, we would recruit our immediate neighbours to produce, for example eggs and milk, under our DIRECT SUPERVISION, with full training and regular spot checks made to ensure our standards are adhered to. We hope that you will agree there would be clear benefits to the customer, in terms of a more reliable supply, to us in terms of work load and to our neighbours in terms of guaranteed income and animal husbandry advice. Please feel free to give us any feedback on this newsletter. Additionally, if you do not object, we will assume we have your permission to share your email with others in your area.Stay tuned for news on the Cairo Hub! Thank you for your support and interest in Rouqayahs Ranch, and our efforts to supply you with good clean nutritious foodstuff Peace (In sha Allah) Rouqayah
Posted on: Thu, 07 Aug 2014 14:18:30 +0000
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