Heather and Luke meet Mary

14th June 2012

Heather and Luke were very fortunate to be in the audience at the sold out Mary Portas talk at the Hay Festival on Saturday, Mary gave a passionate and engaging talk on her plans for the Portas Pilots and the state of the High
Street.

The key points that resonated with the audience were the fact that Independent Shops could differentiate themselves from the chains by offering excellent service and customer experience, and crucially that the Supermarkets will only stop building massive out of town stores and destroying our town centres when we as the shopping public stop shopping in them and use our local independent stores. Truffle is the perfect vehicle for you the shopping public to spend your money with local Herefordshire businesses, and get a great deal at the same time!

Not ones to miss out on an opportunity to tell Mary a little bit about Truffle Heather and Luke caught up with Mary after her talk and presented her with a beautiful bouquet of British Flowers from the Wiggly Florist and plenty of literature on Truffle Herefordshire.

Truffle Herefordshire is the first and only scheme of its kind in the UK and cardholders get exclusive treats and offers only available to them, along with invitations to new product launches as well as exclusive Truffle Cardholder events.

Truffle now has about 10,000 cardholders across Herefordshire who are receiving a weekly email on the latest offers and treats. These people are actively using their cards and businesses across the county are reporting big uplifts in sales of products in their Truffle Offers!

Whilst working on Truffle both Luke and Heather has realised that they no longer need to shop in one of the big four Supermarkets we can get all our shopping from Independent businesses and it is of better quality and in most cases at a better price.

For every £10 spent with Independent businesses in Herefordshire £8 stays in the county for every £10 spent with the National Chains only £2 stays in Herefordshire.

The Truffle Card is designed to offer customers exclusive treats and offers across a wide and varied range of Independent Herefordshire Businesses, as businesses we know our customers can shop anywhere we want them to shop with us. Truffle will promote Herefordshire Independent Businesses and help them to flourish. It works by emulating "Martin's Money Saving Tips" and "My Voucher Codes".

In short there will be a weekly email of offers from the participating businesses which are collated by Truffle Herefordshire, and sent to cardholders, this is backed up by a website and viral marketing using Twitter and Facebook. Customers are able to sign up for the scheme at any of the 600 and growing fast! Shops, restaurants, bars, pubs, nightclubs... the list goes on! Right across the county. Customers are also able to sign up on line at www.truffleherefordshire.co.uk and their card will be sent to them in the post. They are also able to fill in the application form in the comfort of their own home and post it to Truffle Herefordshire’s Free Post address; it really could not be easier.