Perkin Harvey, the Grey Cat Father, runs the Supermarket. He takes a lot of pride in ensuring his store is filled with the freshest seasonal fruit and vegetables, and bread and cakes straight out of the oven each morning. In fact, nothing is too much trouble for Perkin in his drive to sell the best of everything. So, on the morning Perkin announced he was going to drive up into the mountains to collect some special mushrooms, no one was surprised!

“Austin, Zara, you will both have to look after the store for me today!” Perkin told his son and daughter.
“I’m off to collect some delicious large mountain mushrooms I have heard about and I may not be back till early evening.”
It just so happened that Freya, the Chocolate Rabbit Girl, and her friend the Walnut Squirrel Boy, Ralf, were shopping in the store that morning.

Ralf thought it would be great fun to help his friends, Austin and Zara.
“Can I help you run the store?” he asked.
Not wanting to be left out of the fun, Freya volunteered to help too. “If you want to help in the store we would be pleased to have the help,” said Zara.
Freya and Ralf’s first customer was Holly Golightly, the Silk Cat Mother.

“Have you seen our wonderful display of fresh fruit and veg?” asked Freya.
“The bread is freshly baked and smells delicious!” Ralf piped in.
Holly, who had only popped in for a small bag of flour, left with a very full shopping basket.

“I make a great storekeeper,” Ralf bragged.
“I can sell anything!”
“I sold the most to Holly Golightly!” Freya corrected him indignantly.
“I bet I can sell more than you!” Ralf insisted.
Austin turned to his sister, rolled his eyes and said “This is going to end badly!”

Ralf then spotted Hilda Hamilton, the hamster mother, struggling with her shopping. She had her two little darlings, Neil and Christine, in the pram and was having great difficulty carrying a large shopping basket and pushing the pram at the same time.

“Let me help you there,” Ralf offered, taking the shopping basket from Hilda.
“What else do you need? Some apples for these youngsters? How about some cheese for supper tonight?”
“Oh! I can’t do a big shop today, I’ll never get it all home with the pram and these two little darlings,” Hilda insisted.

“No problem,” Ralf said with a big smile.
“I will personally deliver everything to your house this afternoon.”
Some of the other customers in the shop heard Ralf’s offer of a home delivery and flocked to him for the same service.
“I am a genius!” Ralf said himself.

Not to be outdone, Freya thought hard.
“What can I do to get the customers to come to me for service? What am I good at? Cooking!”
Quickly collecting some ingredients, Freya dashed into the store kitchen.
“I’ll cook lots of tiny biscuits so the customers can taste the different cheeses and spreads, as well as cut up some pies and cakes so they can try those as well,” she enthused.

The tasting counter was a great success with all the store’s customers.
“The ingredients to make these delicious meals and snacks are all available in store,”
Freya announced from behind her array of taster plates and trays.

Austin had to fight his way through the throng of customers to reach his sister.
“Zara, I don’t think we have ever been this busy before! Dad will be so pleased!”
It was during mid afternoon when things started to go badly wrong for our two new storekeepers.

Ralf had so many deliveries to make that he got confused as to who had ordered what.
“Did the Periwinkles order the carrots or the cheese? No, the Lopez family ordered the cheese. Agatha Buckley ordered the carrots, I think!”
All the orders became a big muddle and as a result, no one received their correct delivery that afternoon.

Freya had a problem too! Wilbur Robinson asked to buy one of the apple pies after tasting Freya’s sample.
“Oh! We seem to have sold out,” was all Freya could say and Barbara Dale asked for the ingredients to make Freya’s biscuits, only to find there was no flour or butter left in the shop, poor Freya felt like crying.
“I used it all to make my biscuits!”

Ralf and Freya, rather crestfallen, helped Austin and Zara tidy and close the shop that night.
“We’ll be back tomorrow morning to apologise to your father,” Freya assured them.
“Sorry again,” said Ralf.
“Good night!”

It was therefore with great surprise and much relief for both Ralf and Freya to find a very jolly Perkin Harvey opening the store the next morning.
“Hi there you two!” Perkin beamed.
“Two very good ideas yesterday and our customers have all been talking about them! Home delivery and food tasting! I’ll be offering a home delivery service from now on and whenever we get a new product, we’ll do a tasting session.Thank you both so much for your great ideas.”

“You’re not upset we made such a mess of it?” Ralf asked.
“There are always teething problems with anything new,” laughed Perkin.
“You just had a few more problems than most!”
“So we can help again?” Freya asked excitedly.
“Because we did have fun!”
“Anytime,”replied Perkin
“Anytime at all!”

THE END