“Not the summer we planned”

“In amongst the veg”

Fruit & veg boxes + Our own frozen meal delivery service

Having finally cleared out at Hopleys (very sad to say our final goodbyes) and accommodated a huge amount of equipment into our premises I was looking forward to being able to get my office organised and smart with everything in its place….and then lockdown!

Our office became a greengrocer’s shop + dry goods store as we embarked on sharing our relatively uninterrupted food supply from our excellent wholesale suppliers with our customers. In March, April & May alone we made over 450 deliveries of veg boxes, our own prepared frozen meals, cakes (an important morale booster) + fresh meat & fish, flour, toilet roll and practically any other ingredient you could think of. The surprise hot property was yeast! We suspected that a favourite customer was trading in it at one stage he was buying so much, but in actual fact he was giving it away to neighbours as a thank you for their help – Yeast, the alternative thank you gift for April & May.

We hope that we helped in a small way to make lockdown life easier for our existing friends and customers but along the way we have been lucky enough to get to know so many lovely new customers as well. Big thanks to all our customers for shopping local and staying loyal.

Well done to our lockdown delivery team of Jemima & Mollie who took their responsibilities for customer safety so seriously and navigated their way around Hertfordshire with a smile.

Our delivery service continues and so please do get in touch for more information or visit our website if you think we can help.

“Super Salads & Cakes - in a box!”

Copleys at Henry Moore

There can’t be many more Covid safe and friendly cultural venues than the wonderful Henry Moore Studios & Gardens. With excellent support and working closely with the team at Henry Moore we were able to open in early July. Like many other businesses we were faced with the challenge of radically adapting to keep customers and staff safe whilst still offering the best food and service. As such, we managed to adapt our “super salads” to create a tasty picnic and take away menu that can be pre-ordered through our website. You book your ticket and pre-book your lunch and we have everything ready for you at your chosen time – nice and easy!

We have been pleasantly surprised by the success of this new system, with almost 1/3rd of our business at the café moving online! Whilst this has come with new challenges like early morning cooking to prepare for orders each day, it has helped us to vastly reduce food waste (one of our targets for the year) whilst still providing our trademark fresh salads (by the way all our packaging is compostable as well)
Thank you to all the Copleys team onsite and behind the scenes involved in getting this project up and running and keeping it running smoothly - We’ve had lots of lovely customer feedback!

By the way there is still plenty of time to visit Henry Moore studios this season… we are open until Sunday 1 November 2020.

Buy Tickets

Pre Order your Picnic

"Events at last!"

Outside catering and event management

As you all know the events industry has been decimated this year and it has been particularly hard for our customers who have had to postpone their weddings or could not properly conduct funeral proceedings.

In the absence of any events to get stuck into in May, June & July, we prepared special dishes, BBQ meals & salads, afternoon teas and all sorts of food for small scale home birthday and anniversary celebrations and continue to enjoy cooking and preparing for dishes for our customers revised plans! By the way, the feedback we have had is that many people have enjoyed really fantastic old school birthdays, back to a simpler way of doing things – perhaps this is just positive thinking?!

July and August saw the continuing rollercoaster of the “will it won’t it happen” scenario for weddings or significant occasions but…. at the same time, there was the promise of the rules relaxing. Finally, the big day came and we were so excited to celebrate with Hannah and Luke at our first wedding of the year! This was such a wonderful day and we loved being able to provide the planned (albeit slightly adapted) menu to the wedding guests in an intimate setting of Hannah’s mother’s home.

We also had the honour of catering for the Mayor of Bishop’s Stortford’s handing over ceremony at a lovely Garden party held in aid of Isabel Hospice.

It felt very good to polish up the glassware and get back to what we know and love – outside catering.

What's in the pipeline?

Coming Soon to a Village Hall near you!

Looking ahead to autumn, we are soon reacquainting with old friends in Much Hadham (where our café Hopleys used to be) planning pop ups at the village hall for lunches on Sundays and Mondays. We are excited to be re-joining the local community in this way and we are sure that our delicious food, combined with BYOB will be a lot of fun!

Our range of frozen meals is expanding

In late October we will be introducing our Autumn/ Winter ready meals menu which we are excited about. Our aim continues to be to provide good food, generous portions (you can actually find the meat!) combined with a personal approach to customer service.

You will very soon be able to order and pay for your meals entirely through our website.

We hope to see you all soon, love from the Copleys team.