Bring your cat to work day

(and: a Boxing Week discount code!)

I got a handful of new subscribers over the past couple of weeks, which is always super exciting. With each new subscriber however, I felt increasing pressure to make an online update, especially considering the potential of added holiday sales. People buying things from our online shop makes a tangible difference in the viability of our whole … lives, really.

At the same time, I felt like I should be:

• Making a bunch of Xmas decorations for the store.

• Updating our website to put all the new things on there.

• Finishing this paint by numbers kit so I can hang it up.

(I love all of these so much!)

In case that to-do list wasn’t stressing me out enough, sometime in early-November, I had the lofty idea that we should stay open until 9pm for the Saturdays leading up to Christmas.

I had visions of local student musicians performing holiday classics while seasonal movies were projected onto the wall behind them. I thought we’d have tables overflowing with baked goods and candy, and a big Christmas tree tucked away in a corner covered in twinkling lights.

But in all honesty, whenever I talk about things that “we” can do in the store, it mostly means I’m adding things to Haritha’s huge to-do list of shop-related tasks¹.

Haritha’s day often starts at 7:30am, when he has to do an 90-minute round-trip drive to a nearby bakery to get the baked goods we sell in the store. And it often ends at 9pm, after he’s wrapped up one of the many cleaning and minor renovation projects our old building needs.

In the middle of that, he’s working nine hours a day, six days a week behind the counter — fetching parcels, ringing in orders, restocking shelves, making chitchat, and creating a selection of fresh-ground high-quality tea and coffee drinks people are beginning to recommend us for.²

It’s all things he enjoys, but it’s also a lot. And as we got closer to December, I could tell he was burning out. It got to the point where every time I cancelled or scaled back some plan we had, he would visibly uncoil.

So we decided that instead of extending our hours for four Saturdays in December, we’d do it for just one. And instead of going all-out and layering a bunch of expenses and logistics and expectations onto the event, we’d keep it super low key — just a few special hot drinks, and a movie playing.

The Sunday before, I put this promotional image on our social media channel:

I didn’t know what to expect, but the night ended up being one of the most delightful of my life! Haritha made us cinnamon hot chocolate and we watched Muppet Christmas Carol via a borrowed projector from our friends Max and Izzie. And our increasingly-less-grouchy cat Evie decided to join us, which of course made it all feel even more magical.

The vibes were A++ and it was overall our busiest day in the store yet (the post about the event got a lot of shares). Our handful of late-night-shoppers seemed to have a lovely time — and bought things, which is so helpful!

I'm so proud and happy and thankful for all the choices that resulted in us having that kind of evening, and we are already scheming a more over-the-top version next year (I have no "moderate" setting).

The rest of the month was lovely and busy, and we were so happy when our lovely friends Jairus and Natalie came to hang out with us on Saturday. They were instrumental in us being able to buy this building and get it open, and it was really restorative to get to show them around the shop and see how excited and proud of us they are.

That restoration momentum continued as we closed for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day (today).

Having these three days off has felt like such a gift, and it’s helped us realize that Haritha can’t keep working six days a week for much longer. It would make a huge difference for us to be able to be closed on Mondays in addition to the Sundays we are closing now. But we are also the post office, and Canada Post requires us we have to be open every business day³. This is also why we can’t just close up for the winter or drastically cut back hours — like a lot of other smaller-town businesses do in the winter.

It’s kind of wild to me that the choices they leave us with are:

• work an unsustainable amount of hours, or

• close the town’s post office (we will never do this!)

I’m not sure everyone would choose the first option, but we are really committed to it⁴ — despite the extra seven hours it means Haritha has to work a week. But between that requirement from Canada Post and the grocery price issue that I talked about in my last update, it really feels like the system is rigged against us in a lot of ways (even as we feel so fortunate to be living our dream).

But amidst all of the overwhelm, there is much excitement and joy!

Like on Christmas morning I got weepy with happiness when I realized that dozens⁵ of people across were about to open presents that were chosen for them at Rosefinch Mercantile and Tea Room. I truly hope those gifts made the recipients feel seen and celebrated for who they are.

To keep those good vibes going, I’ve set up the code BOXINGWEEK to give 15% off of any purchases in our online store⁶ between now and January 2nd. To help inspire you, here are a few things that we’ve got on offer that I think are really special:

1. This Star Map embroidery kit.

2. These composition / notebook scarves.

3. This Maeve paper doll, and this Wordsworth Collectors Edition copy of Little Women.

4. This True Levellers tea towel (of which we might only have one left).

   rosefinch.store

   

   A post shared by @rosefinch.store

5. These Kidamento cameras with built-in printers. (They are marketed as being for kids, but I also think they'd make a great gift for any zinesters or scrapbookers or collage artists in your life!! Or even teens who wanna take pics with pals that exist outside of social media. Each camera comes with regular printer paper and sticker paper too! Fun!)

Thanks so much for reading all of this, and don’t forget the BOXINGWEEK discount code if you do decide to do some online shopping!

Please feel free to let me know in the comments what sorts of things you’d like to see more of in these updates. And if you enjoy these posts, it would mean a lot if you subscribed! Most social media channels suppress Substack links, so you can’t count on getting updates via other platforms.

As a thanks for getting this far, please enjoy this pic of Evie enjoying movie night:

1. There are of course lots of ways I work on the business. I have a full-time day job, and do a solid amount of freelancing on the side — without that income we wouldn’t be able to sustain any of this yet. And I know I’m contributing my talents in other ways, like selecting and ordering items for the gift shop, running our social media channels, and writing this newsletter. 

2. I know theoretically I could learn to make these drinks. But it would not be a short or simple process on the the Nuova Simonelli Mac espresso machine we use in the shop. It would take a lot of Haritha’s time and a lot of my time, and the drinks would be inconsistent while I learned.

3. Being closed Saturday would cost us our busiest sales day of the week, which we can’t really manage right now.

4. Before we got the store back open, folks in Port Medway had to do an 18 minute round trip drive to Mill Village and back to pick up their parcels. Being able to walk to our store is so much more accessible for most people.

5. Maybe hundreds?

6. Can also be used for in-person pickup!