Cakes, pies and milk: the products behind our year of success

The results are in after our first full year of operating as a Community Benefit Society (CBS).

Trading within restricted hours, we achieved magnificent turnover of £108,000. This is less than the old, predecessor shop when it was in private hands, but we generated £7,700 profits whereas the old shop was loss making and had to close.

That is of course down to our wonderful volunteers – everyone works for free. But the figures are testament to what a community can do when it pulls together and reflect the marvellous support we have had from our customers too.

It was on June 18, 2024, that we transferred ownership from the two directors who previously owned Perranwell Community Stores to our 125 local shareholders in the CBS. These accounts, which you can read in full here along with our Corporation Tax statement and FCA return, apply from that date to June 30, 2025, and so reflect the performance when we were still trading from a temporary building in the village hall car park.

Our main supplier – Youings – provides more than half our total turnover and gross margin and is the mainstay of our business.  Many of their products are price marked from the manufacturer.

What sold well…

In terms of best sellers, whether by sales or margins, a number of locally produced products feature regularly in the management accounts (which you can see on the website):

·       Bon Appetit cakes and pies

·       Fresh milk (two-litre semi-skimmed is particularly beloved by our customers)

·       Fresh carrots and parsnips

·       Fresh Eggs

And what didn’t fly off the shelves…

The standout non-performer was newspapers where our annual losses were running at over £1,000.  It was impossible to ever make a profit on these and many newspaper purchasers bought nothing else from us. Reluctantly but inevitably we decided not to sell them any more.

A PS for the financially-minded…

A slightly strange tax law dating back to the 1950s enables us to reduce taxable profits by 9% of our revenue (representing the notional cost of our volunteers) and thus reducing tax from the 19% small company rate to less than 6%.