Tea for the Boys

We first reported the trend for men’s afternoon tea on our catering consultancy site, Montfort (www.montfortconsultants.com) in May 2011, see Men’s Afternoon Tea. Gentleman’s afternoon tea is now suddenly all the rage within hotels, restaurants and bars. The offer varies in each location but can include pork pies, fish finger sandwiches and real ale. Amongst those establishments providing men’s afternoon tea are The Swan brasserie at Shakespere’s Globe, Dean Street Town House and Prism.

Claridge’s Named London’s Best Venue for Afternoon Tea

Men’s Afternoon Tea – The Mandeville Hotel

Art Deco Afternoon Tea in Yorkshire

Improve Your Visitor Experience with Afternoon Tea

Innovative Café Marketing

Spotted directly opposite New Scotland Yard. It’s simple but an effective way of letting customers and potential customers know that you do more than lunch and coffees. Breakfast has always been a great way of increasing revenue and offsetting your fixed cost base.

Contact Montfort Consultants to speak to a catering consultant.

Creating Demand for Your Café or Restaurant

Whether you operate a café, restaurant, take away, employee catering, university refectory or any other catering operation, one sure way of increasing the attraction and demand of your produce is likely to be through scarcity.

The Doughnut Vault in Chicago opens Tuesday to Friday at 8.30am and Saturday at 9.30am. The incentive of getting there early is that when they have sold their last doughnut they close for the day. That’s how you sell 1,142 doughnuts in 2½hrs when it’s raining.

The approach can be applied to any food and beverage outlet and works especially well when you have multiple menu items, as well as being a great way to control food costs.

www.montfortconsultants.com - Commercial & Practical Catering Advice

The Doughnut Vault 

Independent Café Tours

Independent cafés and coffee stalls are popping up all over London at a faster rate than even the most proficient coffee connoisseur can keep up with. If you run your own café or catering operation and are looking for ideas; are keen to keep up with what’s happening or just a have a love for quality independent cafes, London’s Best Coffee app by Blue Crow Media (iPhone £1.49) is probably going to be of interest.

Notes

Over 100 independent cafés and coffee stalls in the capital are included, along with details of the type of beans each place use and where you can buy them.

Montfort Catering Consultants – Catering Advice & Support

Catering Advisory Service

An advert from the Catering Advisory Service placed in the Caterer & Hotelkeeper, October 12 1970.

Catering Advisory Service advert in the Caterer & Hotelkeeper, October 12 1970.

Open Restaurant Kitchens

Open restaurant kitchens, designed for customers to watch the chefs at work do add an extra dimension to the restaurant design and appeal to a lot of customers.

Dinner by Heston Blumenthal

Previous articles: Napkin Ring Reinforces Brand Positioning

Fernandez & Wells – Lexington Street

Fernandez & Wells – Lexington Street

While each one is different, and they only really have a handful of catering outlets including one of the visitor catering operations at Somerset House, their operation on Lexington Street is our favourite. Described by F & W as a ‘European market stall in an English setting’, the view from the outside with hams on display in the window looks fantastic. But the inside is even better, including the oak counter piled high with ciabatta buns. The range includes English ham with mature cheddar and piccalilli as well as the likes of chorizo, roasted red pepper, rocket and olive oil.

www.fernandezandwells.com/lexington.php

Art Deco Afternoon Tea in Yorkshire

If you prefer to book your afternoon tea rather than queue with the masses outside Bettys, York you could always book a table in the Belmont Room (just upstairs via a ‘less obvious’ doorway). Available Saturdays and Sundays from 1-6 pm, afternoon tea is the only option. The art deco design is a fantastic complement to the great food and service.

See also previous articles regarding Afternoon Tea:

Improve Your Visitor Experience with Afternoon Tea
Different Cafe Design

Men’s Afternoon Tea – The Mandeville Hotel 
Claridge’s Named London’s Best Venue for Afternoon Tea

Drip Brew Coffee

Monmouth Coffee’s drip brew coffee has been a firm favourite of ours for a number of years. A great alternative to the plethora of different espresso based coffees.

www.monmouthcoffee.co.uk

Read Montfort's Independent Coffee Houses articles: 

Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V

Recent coffee articles here on Food Shorts: Coffee on the Go! | The Counter Café

www.montfortconsultants.com - Catering Consultancy

Restaurant Manager Required & Staff Canteen Vacancies

Below adverts for Restaurant Manager and Staff Canteen vacancies placed in the Caterer and Hotelkeeper, October 12, 1970...

Caterer and Hotelkeeper, October 12, 1970

...and also, ‘two sensible girls’

Outside Smoking Options for Restaurants

There are many options that restaurants, cafes, bars, hotels and visitor catering facilities have introduced in recent years to allow customers to smoke outside. This is one of the more luxurious that we have come across aimed, predominantly, at cigar smokers. Flooring, leather chairs, tables, lamps, heating and a chimney make the ‘Churchill Cigar Bunker’ a comfortable option for those wishing to enjoy a cigar.

www.churchillhotel.com

Hot Chocolate Back in Vogue

Hotel Chocolat

Have your hot chocolate in the style of a latte, cappuccino etc. 

For full article see Wake Up and Smell the Cocoa.

Café Merchandising

Impulse purchases can only happen if you have the products properly displayed at the appropriate points on the ‘customer journey’. Bettys, or to give them their full name, Bettys Café Tea Rooms, have been doing great café merchandising well for decades.

They are also good at reminding you where you are.

www.bettys.co.uk