186 Du Cane Road, London W12 0BJ Company 17428571 One street, two ends
Trading on Du Cane Road
Du Cane Road runs east to west between Wood Lane and Old Oak Common Lane, with a hospital along one side of it and open land along the other. It is not a parade of shops and it does not behave like one: the people on it are going somewhere specific at a specific hour. A take-away counter on this street is set by those hours, not by a retail habit.
The street, drawn flat
What stands on the street matters more than what passes along it. The north side is hospital ground, including Hammersmith Hospital and Queen Charlotte's and Chelsea Hospital, which means the street has shift boundaries in it rather than a lunch hour. The south side is the prison wall and then the open land of Wormwood Scrubs, which means there is nothing on that side to walk into and out of. At the western end East Acton station sits on the Central line; at the eastern end Wood Lane meets White City. The Western Avenue runs parallel to the north and takes the through traffic away.
The hours the door is set to
| Day | Door | Why the hour is there |
|---|---|---|
| Monday to Friday | 06:30 to 18:30 | Open before the first shift boundary and closed after the last one. The deck oven is lit an hour before the door. |
| Saturday | 08:00 to 16:00 | A later start and an earlier finish; the street is walkers and the Scrubs rather than a working day. |
| Sunday | Closed | The run is cleaned down on Saturday evening and the deep tasks on the monthly schedule are done with the door shut. |
| Deliveries | 06:00 to 09:00 | Taken in before the counter is busy, so a chilled delivery is read and put away rather than left by the door. |
These hours are a starting position, written down so that changing them is a decision rather than a drift. They will be reviewed against a count, not against an impression, and if they change this sheet changes with them.
What gets counted, and what does not get claimed
No footfall figure appears on this sheet, because none has been measured. The counter has not traded, so any number here would be a guess dressed up as research. What is set up instead is the counting.
- A tally in half-hour blocks kept at the till from the first day, counting orders rather than people, because an order is a thing that can be counted twice the same way by two different people.
- The withdrawal count at close, from sheet 02, read against the tally. A block with no orders and a withdrawal at the end of it is telling you about the par, not about the street.
- A weekly read of the two together, after which the par board is rewritten and, if the pattern is clear enough, the hours in the table above are moved.
The point of counting in blocks is that this street almost certainly has two or three narrow peaks rather than a broad middle, and a daily total hides exactly that. A bake order set from a daily total will be wrong twice a day, in both directions.
The kerb, the bins and the pavement
A delivery van stops at the kerb and the stock comes in by hand; nothing is wheeled across the pavement at an hour when the door is busy, which is why the delivery window closes at nine. Chilled and frozen goods are read with the probe at the door and refused there if the reading is wrong, because a refusal is simple at the kerb and a disagreement once it is in the freezer.
Waste leaves from the bin store, not from the shop front, and the food waste stream goes out before the door opens rather than standing on the pavement through a morning. The pavement itself is swept at open and again at close; a counter is judged on the metre of ground outside it as much as on the run inside.
Getting hereC1
- On foot
- Du Cane Road itself, from Old Oak Common Lane at the western end or Wood Lane at the eastern.
- Underground
- East Acton on the Central line for the western end; White City and Wood Lane for the eastern.
- By bus
- The stops on Du Cane Road, both directions, close to the hospital gates.
- By bicycle
- Stands are a street matter, not ours to promise; the Scrubs side is the quiet approach.
- Written to
- 186 Du Cane Road, London, W12 0BJ, or the order line below.