It was an inspiring day for our September Marketing Workshop. As we enter the last quarter of 2018, our Marketing Workshop brought together our food, CSR initiatives, supplier updates and marketing and merchandising information for the next three months.
Our management, chefs and customer service teams attend our quarterly workshops which look at the upcoming trends and concepts our café and hospitality sites can implement. With autumn and the festive period approaching, there was plenty of ideas and inspiration available.
Food
Our team of chefs, led by our new Food Development Manager Candice Webber, designed a delicious offering of the upcoming food and seasonal days. Mark Robinson presented his Halloween offering which included witches fingers made from shortbread biscuits and toffee apples dripping in blood red icing. Our guests were treated to peanut butter treats for National Peanut Butter month and Christmas impulse buys. Shane Cooke designed the 12 Days of Christmas canapes, which included creations such as the Partridge in a Pear Tree - pine smoked partridge breast, mushroom cracker, pear pickle, hazelnut & bacon. Sweet hummus, which is said to be the next growing food trend, was on offer from Ben Mable alongside the grab & go vegan snacks and salad bar.
CSR
Yeshna Mistry, our Sustainability & CSR Manager, was joined by Alice Williams from Luminary Bakery as they discussed the importance of having a charity partner. Our recent Le Tour de Vacherin challenge raised £18,000 for Luminary Bakery and Alice discussed the impact this will have on the bakery and the women involved at this social enterprise.
Innovation
Creativity and innovation is key to our Vacherin marketing workshops. Anna Morris our Creative Director and Sam and Ella from Goodfellow & Goodfellow presented their concept book which displays the crockery and equipment on offer to our sites. These concept books are designed to give practical ideas and inspiration for our managers to style their sites.
Suppliers
We were joined in our supplier room by Town & Country, Free Range Dairy and Marrfish.
Vacherin is the first contract caterer to have introduced free range milk across all its sites and Free Range Dairy were on hand to discuss the importance of the Pasture Promise logo and the difference it can make to cows and farmers.
Marrfish explained how important it is to educate our customers that it is okay to put the best quality, fresh, sustainable but less popular species of fish on our menus. Contract caterers can act as the gatekeepers to what fish our customers enjoy; for example, using chalk stream trout instead of salmon can make a difference to our oceans.
Town & Country displayed their festive supplies ahead of the Christmas period to give ideas and inspiration for our sites.
Thank you to Brakes for hosting our marketing workshop, we are already looking forward to the next.
