Delivery Days

“The coffee machine only weighs 65kg”

Our lovely partnerships manager Ruby from Union Coffee casually informs us that the coffee machine weighs 65kg.

“Between you and Tom, you should be able to get it in.”

Excellent.

Tom deadlifts 100kg at the gym, which has finally given those hours spent lifting heavy objects up and putting them back down again some practical application. I provide moral support, logistical expertise and, when absolutely necessary, one end of the coffee machine.

To be fair, we manage to get the whole lot safely inside. Coffee machine, grinders, filters, various boxes and enough equipment to make it increasingly clear that operating a cafe is a real form of art.

But good coffee has always been a non-negotiable for the facility. If we’re asking people to spend a few hours playing pickleball, working, socialising or simply hanging around the club, then giving them something decent to drink feels pretty fundamental.

Right on cue, another delivery arrives.

Our custom nets have made the long journey over from China, and we’re delighted with them. These are the real deal: fixed posts, sturdy nets and, importantly, a white strip running across the top that allows us to add our own branding.

It’s a relatively small detail, but we’ve become slightly obsessed with these sorts of things.

A lot of what makes a venue feel genuinely good isn’t necessarily the most expensive features. It’s the collection of smaller touches that people probably won’t consciously notice but which make the whole thing feel more considered. Branded nets. Custom coffee cups. The signage. The lighting. The way everything fits together.

“Soil samples? You’re kidding me”

No Directors’ Diary would be complete without an update on our ongoing courtship with the council.

Things had actually been progressing rather well on the environmental side. Our Urban Greening Report was received favourably, with the proposed foliage outside the venue and our other suggestions getting the thumbs up.

Wonderful.

Then came the request for soil samples. For those unfamiliar with the layout of our warehouse, there isn’t exactly a vegetable patch sitting conveniently outside the back door. The entire floor is concrete.

So to obtain the requested soil samples, we would need to drill through the concrete floor of the building to reach the earth underneath it. You can imagine our enthusiasm.

The argument appears to be that the soil beneath the warehouse could potentially contain contamination from historic industrial activity. That’s not impossible. This is, after all, an industrial site where companies have been operating for decades. What we’re struggling slightly more with is the practical relevance of soil buried underneath a substantial concrete slab to people playing pickleball several metres above it.

Unless one of our members arrives with a pneumatic drill, we feel the risk of exposure is relatively contained.

So we’re contesting the request.

Ordinarily, this would simply be another amusing planning anecdote to add to the increasingly large collection. Unfortunately, it has practical consequences. We can’t confidently proceed with laying the floor or routing certain pipes until we know whether someone is going to ask us to drill holes through everything we’ve just installed.

This is the particularly enjoyable part of opening a venue: spending large sums of money while simultaneously being prevented from spending the next large sum of money.

As I mentioned in an earlier Directors’ Diary, sometimes you have to laugh or you’d cry.

We’re still laughing. Mostly.

“Next stop Athens”

Thankfully, there are considerably more enjoyable things happening away from the building site.

We only have a couple of spaces remaining for our next club away trip to Athens in October, which is suddenly only seven weeks away.

After the UK’s summer heatwave, I’m actually rather looking forward to some pleasant late-summer sunshine in Greece. Although given our recent experience of playing outdoors in 36-degree temperatures, “pleasant” is doing quite a lot of work in that sentence.

Athens follows our previous away trips and is another step towards something we’ve always wanted the club to be about. Yes, people join to play pickleball, but the ambition has always been to create something more social around it. Travelling somewhere with a group of members, playing another club and then exploring a city together is a pretty good example of that.

And things may be about to get considerably bigger.

We’ve already been approached by a prestigious club in New York about heading over next spring.

That would take things up another level. UK versus US has a nice ring to it. Europe versus US perhaps sounds even grander. We’ll worry about the geopolitical classification later.

Funnily enough, Athens also coincides with World Pickleball Day on October 10. We’re currently thinking through a few ideas for those staying back in London.

More on that soon.

“Get the tuxedo ready”

Most of the time you’ll see us wearing tennis whites, shorts or something that has acquired an unexplained layer of warehouse dust.

Every once in a while, however, we’re required to prove that we own proper clothes.

Thursday 22 October will be one of those occasions.

The Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Chamber of Commerce recently got in touch to tell us that we’ve been selected as a finalist for New Business of the Year.

Which was a rather nice email to receive.

We’re still only a couple of years into the journey, so being recognised externally for what we’ve managed to build so far is genuinely flattering. What started relatively small has grown into a sizeable community, multiple venues, international trips and now, assuming the council eventually permits us access to the terrifying soil beneath Fulham, our first major indoor facility.

It’s easy when you’re in the middle of it to focus entirely on the next problem. So it’s nice occasionally to have a reason to look backwards and realise quite a lot has happened.

Of course, we’re not in the business of counting our chickens before they’ve hatched. There are presumably some other very good new businesses in Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster, and only one of us gets to take the trophy home.

But win or lose, there are worse ways to spend a Thursday evening.

And it’s always useful to dust off the tuxedo a few times a year, if only to conduct the increasingly important annual test of whether it still fits.

See you soon.