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.

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.