Keeping up with Demand

I write to update you on some changes we have had to put in place to our order system for the Priors Flour to enable us to continue to deliver great customer service and manage increasing demand for our products; also to advise that the mail order team will be taking a holiday in early October, so the service will be offline between the 1st October and 9th October.

We have been overwhelmed (in a positive way) by the increased interest and demand for our products over the last six months. For very understandable reasons, the changes requiring millers to add folic acid to flour have resulted in many new customers searching out mills such as ours (who benefit from the “small mills exemption”. Our mail order business is now operating at well over 300% more business than the same time last year and customers to our shop have also increased significantly. We are very grateful for your business and for the comments and reviews that you have left us.

This level of demand has, however, presented a few challenges for us. As some of you will have seen in recent weeks, we have had to encourage you to hold off ordering to enable us to clear backlogs of orders which have built up. Our usual fulfilment time of between 3 and 5 working days has been pushed out as we have constraints in terms of milling time and packing time. We’ve learned a great deal about running an online business and managing our levels of stress! These are good problems to have, but we have to make sure our business is sustainable and that, equally, we continue to give you good customer service including a reasonable turn-around-time from order to delivery.

Weekly Stock Updates

To enable us to manage the current levels of demand through our website, we have now introduced a weekly stock update process. This has been active for 3 weeks. We now have a maximum number of units for each product which are available each week through the online shop. These numbers are based on what we can realistically mill and pack each week given our trade orders (bakeries, restaurants and retail outlets), available milling time and our stock of grains. You may, therefore, find that occasionally a product is out of stock. That will be because orders have exceeded what we can produce in that week. Our stock levels will be updated each Friday early evening ready for our new week. We continue to do most of our packing and dispatch on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

Improved Courier Services

We are pleased to advise that APC Couriers are now handling most of our shipping (other than single 1.5kg orders and those to Highland & Island areas). Their service is a 24 hour service to England, Wales and Lowland / Central Scotland and we have had very low levels of parcel damage or loss.

Mail Order service offline 1st to 9th October 2026

Please note that our team members who pack flour for mail order dispatch are taking a break between the above dates. Stock will therefore NOT be available to order between these times on the online shop. The mill shop will remain open as usual for those of you close to the mill and flour will be available for sale as usual.

We hope you understand…

We hope you understand our reasons for making these changes. We pride ourselves on giving you a personal service, providing first rate quality products and sharing our passion for great artisanal flour. We will continue to innovate and work to improve our production capacity whilst working within the constraints that our historic machinery afford.

We look forward to serving you soon!

Jon Cook