The food standards agency are currently trialling nutritional labeling for caterers. Manufacturers are already printing their products with labels showing calories, fat, sodium content etc, but catering companies have not had to do this. At the moment its a voluntary scheme being tried by a limited number of companies and overseen by the FSA. However many trial schemes tend to be ramped up to compulsory schemes at some point, so we have decided to adopt nutritional labeling on our own initiative. All of our carts, (with some 12 different products) have been issued with plaques containing the vital statistics. The next step is to add this data to our main catering website, Candy Floss Crazy.
As the website runs to some 490 pages, it is a reasonably lengthy procedure. We have started already, and candy floss, popcorn and hot dogs have had a small button added in the top right hand corner of the screen. This is labeled INFO/NUTRITION, and when clicked displays the data for that particular cart. We hope to have had all of the pages altered by the end of the month, but as we are currently operating around a dozen websites amounting to over 3000 pages, its a job that is being farmed out to some of the companies we use occasionally to update our sites. The button is shown below.
March has started even better than the first two months of the year. In the 6 days to press, we have received 80% of our total inquiries for the WHOLE of March last year. Add to this another half dozen bookings for March (two thirds of which are in central London) and we are starting to see levels of business that we don't normally receive until around June/July.
We are also due to announce a new concept in carts (along with a number of new lines), this will be designed for smaller events such as dinner parties or weddings which are attended by smaller numbers of guests than a typical corporate event, (for some reason folk in London seem to throw an awful lot of dinner events, but being designed for large numbers of people, our usual cart services are a little bit overkill), this will enable us to offer a better value service in this particular market and we aim to increase our London based workload substantially.
The other news this week is that we have finally sourced a reliable, provider for Kulfi Ice Cream, this is an Asian delicacy, very similar to ice cream, but with a much creamier texture. As we attended a high number of Asian weddings last year we hope that this will prove to be a popular choice.
|
As the website runs to some 490 pages, it is a reasonably lengthy procedure. We have started already, and candy floss, popcorn and hot dogs have had a small button added in the top right hand corner of the screen. This is labeled INFO/NUTRITION, and when clicked displays the data for that particular cart. We hope to have had all of the pages altered by the end of the month, but as we are currently operating around a dozen websites amounting to over 3000 pages, its a job that is being farmed out to some of the companies we use occasionally to update our sites. The button is shown below.
March has started even better than the first two months of the year. In the 6 days to press, we have received 80% of our total inquiries for the WHOLE of March last year. Add to this another half dozen bookings for March (two thirds of which are in central London) and we are starting to see levels of business that we don't normally receive until around June/July.
We are also due to announce a new concept in carts (along with a number of new lines), this will be designed for smaller events such as dinner parties or weddings which are attended by smaller numbers of guests than a typical corporate event, (for some reason folk in London seem to throw an awful lot of dinner events, but being designed for large numbers of people, our usual cart services are a little bit overkill), this will enable us to offer a better value service in this particular market and we aim to increase our London based workload substantially.
The other news this week is that we have finally sourced a reliable, provider for Kulfi Ice Cream, this is an Asian delicacy, very similar to ice cream, but with a much creamier texture. As we attended a high number of Asian weddings last year we hope that this will prove to be a popular choice.
|