Some Final Toasts

Here's Marion raising a glass on Saturday evening as we toasted everyone at Instanta using one of the crystal glasses that were amongst the kind retirement gifts given to us by our generous staff. Friends joined us for a meal at home and we used a very fine vintage bottle of wine given to me for my birthday by son Paul and his wife Josephine - thanks it was absolutely fabulous.

Others who we must praise in this penultimate Instanta blog are Simon Smith of Dunk Ink who travelled all the way from Tunbridge Wells to be at our retirement meal on Friday evening at Ho Lee Chows in Southport. Simon has been doing PR work for us since way back in the early 90's and has hundreds of excellent contacts in the catering trade. Thank you Simon, your presence and generosity at the meal was really appreciated by both of us. Best wishes to you and to Sue.

Silverwood Exhibitions who have designed and built all of our exhibition stands for many years must not go without thanks. Barry and Mike are two of the most genial Yorkshire men you could ever wish to meet and their stands promoted the Instanta image to brilliant effect making us look much bigger than we were at first. They are the most professional exhibition stand designers that we have ever worked with and we can strongly recommend them to everyone.


I had hoped to put a photo of the Jackson family from BJ Eurosell Ltd on here as my final tribute for today but unfortunately, as I write, the photo has not arrived. Jim Jackson together with his wife Barabara and son Paul have been supplying Instanta since 1989. They source all of Instanta's boxes and insulation material and you couldn't meet a nicer bunch of people. Paul and Jim are regular fellow sufferers at Anfield and I sometimes see them on the trek up to the home matches. Sorry that your photo was too late to appear here but at least all your packaging always arrives on time. If you need to source any packaging materials BJ Eurosell are a wonderful supplier.

Of course our friends on Saturday had to eat early so that we could watch X Factor. All my money is on Cher Lloyd but her odds have drifted so other punters disagree. Watching this I simply don't understand why she is not favourite. If any of the contestants has the "X Factor" rather than can sing well look no further than this.

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.