Back In The Office

The excitement and glamour of the Hotelympia show is fading to a memory now as we get back to the office and the hard grind. I would class the show as a success in that we had a lot of very positive feedback on the new range, we won a prize for excellence and we got to meet some of our new colleagues from Zip. We had a good quantity of leads.Although the majority of them were from existing customers it was an opportunity for them to see the new features and for Marion and me to say our goodbyes.The show ran without hitch with the only snag being my failure to bring a pair of cuff links. I bought a few posh shirts for the show and didn't realise that they were so posh that there were no buttons on the cuffs. Fortunately Nick (who wears them all the time) had a spare pair. (We must be paying him too much).



Our Zip colleague yesterday was UK Group General Manager Chris Binnie. Chris is a very keen sportsman. He loves a lot of sports but especially enjoys playing cricket and golf. He is a devoted father to son Kieran and tells me that Kieran, who is just four years old is already playing golf. Before I went to Hotelympia I was talking to Chris about driving to the show. I said that I thought I would be driving about 500 miles. Here is my dashboard trip reading for when I arrived home last night. Talk about accurate forecasting!



I mentioned the glamour of Hotelympia at the start of today's blog . If you had seen Marion at 10 last night unloading the car, glamour would be the last thing that you would be associating with the show. She had taken her shoes off during the drive home and her feet had swollen so much from being on the stand that she couldn't put them back on again had to help me to unload wearing a pair of my slippers. And the glamour continued as we sat on the bed and ate a Tesco pasta salad at almost midnight when all the unpacking was finished.



Like Lewis Carroll's whit rabbit, I'm afraid that we have been a bit late with orders this week. We ran down all our stock of the old models last month but unfortunately underestimated demand and, as a few suppliers also underestimated demand we have not been as well stocked as we would have liked and a few customers have had to wait a few days. We always pride ourselves on holding good stocks so please bear with us. Everything is on schedule for us to start getting the new products out within the next ten working days and then we should be back to normal. Apologies if this causes any inconvenience. (Mind you our BSI quoted aim is to get all machine ordered out within ten working days and here I am apologising for doing just that).

Apologies to Paul at Calomax for my calling him Michael the other day on the blog. Where did I get Michael from? (I know where I got it from but I'm not saying. Let's just say I've got a memory like a sieve).

Remember when YouTube was just becoming popular and OK Go and their treadmill song was all the rage. Well, the OK Go boys have done it again and this one is quite spectacular (shame about the song).

So Now The End Is Near

Yes, today we are approaching our final Hotelympia curtain.It has been a very good show. The tales of impending doom that spread when major manufacturers like Lincat decided not to exhibit have proved unfounded and our stand has been busy with a steady flow of customers for most of the time. We've met a few new potential customers and have had the opportunity to show the latest models and new catalogue to lots of our existing ones.





We also had the chance last night to visit newlyweds Josephine and Paul. It was good to catch up with them and hear about the honeymoon in Cuba. It sounds a brilliant if slightly quirky destination and will certainly be on our wish list for a holiday when we retire. They had a great time and are both looking well and relaxed.



It has also been great to see the amount of publicity Sky have poured into Paul's show "A League Of Their Own" which launches a week today on Sky1 at 8pm. Paul has been involved in developing this show for many months and we are all looking forward to seeing it. We've got a small gathering coming round to watch at our house and we hope that it's the success that the effort deserves.



This week has flown by but it has been good to catch up with old acquaintances (sometimes for the last time). We went out for dinner with Dave and Amanda from City Servicing on Monday. They are a super couple and they run an outstanding service company. We will be back at Instanta tomorrow and then on Saturday we are travelling to Langar Hall near Nottingham for the social event of the year (or the second social event following Paul's wedding). Our dear friends David and Janet Wareing's daughter Lizzie is 21 and they are hosting a black tie dinner in her honour. It promises to be a wonderful affair. It's hard to believe that Lizzie is 21. It's a cliche but it really does only feel like five minutes since she arrived on the scene. She's got a great sense of humour and we are really looking forward to the event.

Here's a dedication to Lizzie. It also goes out to Mario at Instanta who was also celebrating earlier this week.

The Sun Shines On Us At Excel

Spring is really in the air here in London with the Excel exhibition centre swathed in brilliant sunshine. This makes a great change to previous years when we have battled the elements to arrive at the show. Perhaps putting the show date back a couple of weeks was a good idea as attendance has certainly been better than expected.




And the sun shone brightly on us as I picked up one of the Caterer and Hotelkeeper awards for excellence. Our sous vide digital water baths won in the ancillary category and I went along to pick up the very nice plaque. It was good to win a prize at our last Hotelympia (me and Marion's that is not Instanta's). That bloke's giving me a funny look in the picture. Perhaps he didn't like the aftershave.




Continuing our daily introduction to some of our new colleagues from Zip, yesterday we were joined by National sales manager Nick Taylor. Based in Yorkshire and married to Louise, keen family man Nick is a proud dad to his little girl Emma who is just 18 months old. Louise is expecting their second child any day now and Nick is waiting for the important phone call to rush to the hospital. He couldn't do much when that call came last time. He was in Australia!



Yesterday we had a double visit from our friends at Zip when London Regional Sales Manager Graham Crisp popped in for a flying visit (quite appropriate as he lives in Biggin Hill).I didn't have chance to have a long chat with Graham but he told me that he is a keen golfer but not very good at it (false modesty I bet).

As I am late uploading the blog I might as well get today's Zip visitor in as well. Marketing Manager Malcolm Townsend has driven up from North Walsham to join us. Malcolm has been with Zip for eleven years. He tells me that he is a keen guitarist and has a collection of guitars at home. He once performed in a duo with his wife doing the singing but he has retired from that now. When he retires from Zip he hopes to take up finger picking banjo using a five string banjo. A nice interest and one that he is clearly passionate about.


I'll close with a dedication to Malcolm.

Hotelympia Day Three

The exhibition is at its halfway point today. Yesterday was fairly quiet but we had some interesting visitors and I think that the day went well. Marion and I had five minutes to spare and had a look at the prize winning cakes. Here's an amazing fishing tackle box cake - quite spectacular.



And this Simpsons cake was pretty impressive too.





Clearly no longer interested in cake is the new slimline Northern Area Sales Manager Peter Brindle who joined us yesterday for the rest of the show. Peter has lost so much weight lately that his clothes need alteration. If the exhibition goes quiet Peter's trousers falling down might attract a crowd. And if that doesn't happen we hope to have a laugh tonight when we go to London to the Comedy Store.





Yesterday's Zip colleague to join us at the show was Marketing Director David Bradbrook pictured here with Nick Neal. David was telling me about his mum and his mum in law who are in their late eighties and nineties and still active and pretty independent. With our retirement on the horizon I found that quite comforting although looking at the pile of pills on the bedside table in the hotel room I'm feeling pretty mortal (and the chambermaid probably thinks she's got a junkie in the hotel).

I'll leave you today with an appropriate video from a very funny guy. Old people rock. Of course they do.

Another Job Well Done By Silverwood Exhibtions

As you can see, our stand at the Hotelympia exhibition here at Excel is pretty eye catching once again. So another thank you to Barry and Mike of Silverwood Exhibitions who designed and erected it for us (and will be taking it away on Thursday). They are a very hard working team and I'm sure that, with their non-stop wisecracking, if the exhibition business every dries up, there would be a new career for them on stage.




This is our first exhibition as part of the Zip group so we are going to have a Zip colleague with us every day of the show as we have a Zip under counter boiler and chiller on show and we need to listen to the experts so that we can learn about it. Jason Lee drew the short straw and did the Sunday stint with us yesterday. Keen Milwall fan Jason lives in Sidcup and covers the SE London area for Zip. It was good to meet him and get to learn a little bit more about our parent company's methods and operations.



Also with us on the stand for a few days is Anton Scoones the young head chef of the General Tarleton near Knaresborough. Anton is helping us to demonstrate the benefits of sous vide cooking and using our SV38 digital water bath to do so. I can now report that this product has won an award in the Caterer And Hotelkeeper new product awards and we are going to be presented with our prize tomorrow.



Here is Aton's sous vide signature chicken dish that he cooked up yesterday. We can't serve the food as we didn't want to go through all the hoops necessary to do so but it certainly looks mouth wateringly good and the aroma attracted a few hungry visitors to the stand yesterday. We weren't overly busy but we had some good leads and a very nice visit from the lads from Calomax who tell me that they read the blog. Thanks Tony and Michael that made my day.I always wondered who the reader was. But Tony, your web site says "You cannot do better than a boiler by Calomax". Now come on. Poetic license?


Isn't it amazing that when there is a horrendous earthquake in Chile the newspapers and news bulletins lead with two grown men one of whom wouldn't shake hands with the other. You couldn't make it up.

Hotelympia The Final Countdown

Don't forget to make time to come and see me, Marion, Peter, Nick and perhaps one or two of our new Zip colleagues at the Hotelympia show at Excel next week. The show starts on Sunday at 11am and runs until Thursday. We are on stand 1959 and it will be the last opportunity for me and Marion to see some of our customers before we retire at the end of the year. It will be a strange feeling doing our last ever exhibition.



Before I started working for Instanta I would take a week's holiday from the bank and help my mum and dad out on the Instanta stand at the original Hotelympia. In (of all places) Olympia. I can remember in the seventies when times were hard in the catering industry and, in order to save on exhibition costs, I shared a room with my dad and my sister in law Val who, for her modesty, had part of the room in a B&B partitioned off with a curtain. We could not have dreamed then that thirty years later we would actually have a hotel room with its own en suite bathroom.



Then the show moved from Olympia to Earls Court.We had moved up in the world by then and could actually afford to stay in a nice hotel in Kensington and even go out into London one night. But exhibitions were still a grind in those days as, on the day before, my poor dad and I would be lugging heavy boxes and exhibition materials up flights of stairs to get the stand ready and then when the show finished we would have to do it all again in reverse. No fun at all.




Now, thanks to the wonderful Barry and Mike of Silverwood Exhibitions, we arrive to a fully set up and ready stand.I can't stress what a difference this makes as, instead of starting day one exhausted and fed up, we are relaxed and ready to meet the customers. We can also leave the minute the show closes and Mike and Barry dismantle the stand and take everything away.I can't recommend them highly enough.

One thing I am not sure about is how I will cope this time in view of my need for a hip replacement. We don't have any seats on the stand so I may be skiving off from time to time to take the weight off my hip.


We met Paul's bride Josephine's uncle Ric at the wedding. He is operations director for Opera North and he has kindly invited us to see their performance of Ruddigore at the Lowry tomorrow.Here is the audience reaction from when it was performed in Leeds.

Brrrrrrrrrrr

Don't know about you but me and Marion are sitting here shivering today. We haven't got the heating on at Instanta yet (you know we are very green)but it just seems so chilly. Maybe we'll have to get it switched on soon. In the meantime we've got our coats on and I keep looking at the photo at the top of the blog and wishing we were back in Italy.



Bad news on the shop floor as our super Finn Power green punch press (yes I know it's blue but it's also very green) is on the blink. It's only five years old (which is young for a machine like this) but it seems that the on board computer keeps throwing a wobbler. As with all intermittent faults it's proving very difficult for engineers to spot the cause but they're coming next week and will see if they can solve the mystery. In the meantime we are getting as much as possible made on it while it is still up and running.



Sales are running well at the moment with the 1500LCDs going out of the door as soon as they are built. Have a think about trying the CT2000. It has a two year guarantee, full service diagnostics and an energy saving eco mode (which is going to be so important in years to come).



As you can see, there's been no expense spared with our stand for The Restaurant Show at Earls' Court in London next week when Nick and Craig (above) are going to be showing our superb sous vide equipment on the CEDA stand. We've got a square metre of space so as long as Craig and Nick squeeze close together they should be OK.They're sharing a bedroom too. Cheapskates us? There's a recession on.

I'll finish to day with a fun viral. OK it's a deliberate plug for Volkswagen but it's an interesting take on how to encourage people to take more exercise by using the stairs instead of the escalator.

Dan Brown A Publishing Phenomenon

It would have been nice if it was my novel "Give Your Tomorrow" that was grabbing all the headlines this morning following it's massively successful launch. But, sad to say, it wasn't. No, it was Dan Brown and his new book "The Lost Symbol". According to the reviewers in the posh papers it seems that the book is a load of rubbish but, with Tesco reportedly selling nineteen copies per minute and ASDA shifting 18,000 yesterday, I doubt that Dan will be losing much sleep over the reviews. I haven't read any of Dan Brown's books but I believe that this one takes a swipe at the Freemasons and that can't be a bad thing.



So what have I got against the Freemasons? It's a long story so I'll try and keep it short. I once worked for a bank. It was full of Freemasons. I had a very nice manager and one day I had a heart to heart with him and told him how much I disliked the way that the masons were getting business by scratching each others' backs. It was a way for mediocrity to rise to the top and all the top jobs in the bank were being taken by them. My manager nodded sagely in agreement.

A few weeks later it was my annual appraisal with my manager. I was gobsmacked when I had was given a C rating having only ever had A ratings throughout my entire career. I complained to head office who were sympathetic. My manager was apologetic but stood by his appraisal with no valid explanation.

A few weeks later I was working late and the manager's door swung ajar. He rushed to shut it but not before I spotted him dressed in full masonic regalia, apron and the lot. I didn't spot if his trouser leg was rolled up but the mystery of the C rating was solved.



Along similar lines, the Harper Collins Authonomy website seems to have developed a mutual support mentality. Budding novelists such as me upload their books onto the site and wait for constructive comments. The more support a book gets, the higher it rises in the rankings. The prize at the end of the month is an appraisal by the Harper Collins editorial team. But members are inundated by fellow eager novelists asking for comments on their books in return for comments on yours. Are you going to write "This is worse than Dan Brown" if you think that they might support your novel? No. So the upshot is the person who writes to the most members asking them to look at "The Book Wot I Wrote" is more likely to be at the top at the end of the month than the new (but very quiet) William Shakespeare.



If you are new to this blog and are asking yourself "what the hell has this got to do with boilers?", here's our best selling 1500LCD just for you. We sold out of these for the first time last Friday but Jason got the lads together and with a big effort we were back in stock with another 100 plus yesterday leaving customers boilerless for just a couple of days. I'm hoping that production is running to target as Factory Leader Tony Mercer is back from his holiday next week and we'll never hear the end of it if we miss targets in the only month that he's off for a fortnight (again).



We are supporting the 10:10 campaign - the campaign to save 10% emissions in 2010. As usual for Instanta we aren't doing the obvious like saving on lighting or heating, we did all that years ago when we got our ISO14001 accreditation from BSI. No, we are making our contribution to 10:10 through extra energy efficiency measures in our new ranges to be launched at Hotelympia in February. We aren't going to tell you what these are as we know that our competitors are regular blog readers but all will be revealed at Hotelympia. Lincat will have plenty of time to come and have a look as they won't be exhibiting this time.




Got to fly now to go and get Marion and Jane tickets for Orange Wednesday's showing of Julie and Julia. I'll leave you with an appropriate tribute to the wonderful Patrick Swayze. R.I.P Patrick.