Deli routine
Former graphic designer Laura Salas Ortiz, 35, is a food buyer for Villandry, the gourmet grocer and deli in central London. In her 13 years with the company, she has followed its growth and its move in 1997 to larger premises, where it has a 100-seat restaurant and bar.
I get up at about 6.45am. My day starts at 8am and I live about three minutes' walk from the office. When I get there, I have a cup of Yorkshire Gold - it's like truckers' tea, strong and sweet - and that gets me going.
I do a shop-walk three times a day, at 8am, 11am and 3pm. I think it's important to have a feel for the shop as well as being downstairs in the office. I come up to the shop maybe 10 times a day, to talk with people on the cheese counter or with somebody in the charcuterie. It's like a constant touching base.
Lunch is around 2.30pm. We have lunch prepared by the chef - couscous, feta cheese and tomatoes, or wild rice with broccoli and a salad. The caf‚-bar is a smoking area, but the rest of the building isn't. I don't smoke, but I go out with the smokers for a chat and a cup of tea. My office is windowless, underneath the shop and the restaurant, so if I don't go out I don't see daylight very much.
We do our tastings towards the end of the week, starting around 11.30am and continuing throughout the day. We're quite large, but not a supermarket, so there's that slightly deli "feel", where you know your customers. I think customers like that interaction.
We have a core Marylebone clientele, as well as customers who come from further away. We get trendy 25- to 30-year-olds, and older ladies who will send their housekeepers. It's a very broad mix. Ten years ago we had an older, wealthier clientele, but now, with the food revolution, a lot of younger people are interested.
On some days I travel to food shows in Birmingham or London, and there are also lots of smaller food shows, such as the Kent Agricultural Farmers' Market. I go to the USA once or twice a year, to a big food show in New York, and to Europe - Paris, and Parma in Italy.
On my shop walk, I see what I need to order (I generally do the ordering after the 11am stint). We're made up of hundreds of different suppliers, which is quite unusual for a food store our size. Somebody new may come along with a product and, if it's better than something we have, I take it. It's not a case of being fashionable - it's about quality and trying to get the best of the best.
I usually get home around 7pm and often take work home.
Last year I went to stay with a friend in Whitstable and we sat on the beach choosing the products - I was asking her to pick one out of six mustards. That was fun, getting a bit of consumer feedback.
When I get home I don't like to eat that much as, in my job, you get a bit of food overload. So I try to keep it simple. I love baked potatoes and you can do anything with them. But sometimes I'll have just a bowl of cornflakes.
I've been going to the gym on and off. You get so many food samples that you have to do something to balance it. If you don't have a daily routine when you can exercise, you have to make one up, and the gym is there whatever the weather. I find it relaxing and very de-stressing.
I used to be a freelance graphic designer, working for a silk-screening company. In a fallow period, I went and worked in the original Villandry, expecting to be there for maybe four months, and I enjoyed it so much I just stayed. We're about four times the size now.
I did a two-month stint in the kitchen, because I was thinking of becoming a chef, but I found it too restrictive. It's very lively upstairs in the shop, and not quite so pressurised. You get the creativity of working with food and also the chance of speaking to people.
I'm usually in bed by around 11.30pm.
interview by Veronica Groocock
Just a minute…
What message do you have for Tony Blair? Sort out foot-and-mouth; stamp it out. It affects too many people.
Whom do you most admire? The Dalai Lama, because he's trying to fight oppression.
Who would be your ideal dinner partner? My mother. She lives in Yorkshire, so when I see her it's always special.
Villandry
Great Portland Street, London W1 Tel: 020 7631 3131
Opened: 1988, in Marylebone High Street; relocated to its current, larger premises in November 1997; now owned by Martha Greene and a group of private investors, who bought it in March 1998 out of receivership
Managing director: Martha Greene
Head chef: Steve Evernett Watts
Staff: about 100, including waiters, bakers and sales assistants
Projected turnover: £3.5m
