Homely brands keep Premier's home fires burning

Good, old fashioned, homely brands are clearly the best around – who needs supermarket own-label products? Think back to cosy childhood times and famous names like Birds Instant Custard, Atora Suet and Paxo sage and onion stuffing. The list is endless.

Well, it seems as if homely, established brands, including Mr Kipling cakes, have been exceedingly good for Premier Foods. The company has seen sales of its Branston pickle rise by 41 per cent, Hovis sales are up by 17 per cent, Batchelors soups by 14 per cent and Hartley's jams and spreads by 12 per cent.

Premier's group turnover has risen by 3.5 per cent to £1.24 billion and the company's net debt has fallen from £1.8 billion to £1.48 billion. That's the good news. The bad news is that Premier has reported a pre-tax loss of £30 million in the six months to June 27 2009.

The company ran into financial problems after purchasing its rival, RHM (Rank Hovis McDougall) and parts of Campbells food business.

For full details, click here.

Daylight robbery – £2 for a cup of tea at Costa

Photographs show my bill for a small bottle of mineral water, the Eat & Drink Co and the Costa at a Moto service area on the M3. Let's get one thing straight here: paying £2 for a cuppa is fine if the environment is something really special, but a motorway service area? I don't think so.

I wouldn't call myself a communist or a Marxist, but there are times when capitalism really stinks. Normally, I get a little cheesed off when I discover that to travel by train to, say, Huddersfield, at 9am in the morning, will cost me in excess of £200. Why, when a hour or so later the fare is more than halved? The answer, of course, is exploitation.

Train travel is one thing, but how about a cup of tea for £1.99? That, in teashopandcaff's opinion, is daylight robbery when you consider that a cup of tea costs only pennies to make. I should know. Many moons ago I was the editor of a catering magazine. I was often told by the brand managers for PG Tips or Twinings that tea only cost 3p to make so that selling a cup for 50p was, in itself, a good mark-up.

Fast forward to Sunday August 2nd 2009 and even assuming, hypothetically, that the price of producing the Great British Cuppa has rocketed to, say, 12p, £1.99 is still extortionate. But that is the price of a cup of tea in a Costa Coffee on the M3. Why is it so expensive? Because they have a captive audience and can charge what the hell they like. Disgusting. It's the same price at an Eat & Drink Co outlet in the same Moto motorway service station where, incidentally, a small bottle of mineral water is also £1.99 (normally it's around 60p in shops).

Nobody should be expected to pay £1.99 for a cup of tea. Sort it out, Costa, your tea is not THAT good. For £2, I'd expect free biscuits at the very least.

The Buttery at the Brock & Bruin, Brockenhurst, New Forest – a teashop and caff in one building!

A spot of camping in the New Forest makes a teashop or caff a welcomed sight after a night under the stars, and what better than the Brock & Bruin Teashop, a kind of hybrid between a teashop and a caff. Why? Because the place looks and feels like a quaint teashop (and offers some excellent home-made cakes and pastries) but also offers good old caff food, like the Big Brock, a full English breakfast if ever there was one: two of everything – two fried eggs, two sausages, two fried tomatoes, two hash browns, a hearty portion of baked beans and two slices of toast. Fantastic. Wash the lot down with a large white pot of tea and a few extra slices of toast and you're made up for the day.

The Buttery at the Brock & Bruin has a thing about teddy bears. There's a huge one sitting in the window and various others dotted around on shelves inside, plus a few badgers for good measure.

This is a great teashop and caff bang in the middle of Brockenhurst, which is bang in the middle of the New Forest.

Teashop opens inside a windmill!

What sounds like an amazing tearoom has opened inside the Tuxford Windmill (pictured above) in Nottinghamshire.

Local MP Patrick Mercer was on hand to cut the cake, as opposed to the ribbon, and it looks as if the teashop has a bright future.

Most of the food and drink sold at the teashop is locally sourced, including the chocolate cake, which is made using wholemeal flour milled at the windmill.

With regular visits from the Women's Institute, gardening clubs and historical sites, the teashop was crucial to the future success of Tuxford Windmill.

Visitors to the teashop can enjoy filled rolls, old fashioned hearty soups, jacket potatoes, a selection of cakes, cream teas, toasted teacakes, tea and coffee. There is also a bake-to-order service.

For the full story, click here. For more information on Tuxford Windmill, click here.

Recession forces US caffs to ban laptops

Cafés in the USA are beginning to ban the use of laptops because of the recession. To be fair, they have a point. Somebody using the place like a library is definitely not good for business as the table could be taken by those wanting to use the café for its rightful purpose: eating and drinking.

Some cafés, like Naidre's in Brooklyn, NY, are simply not allowing laptop usage between certain hours of the day. Others are covering up power points to discourage usage.

This new trend seems to be gaining ground in the independent sector. Coffee chains like Starbucks and bookshop Barnes & Noble are not planning to ban laptops. In Barnes & Noble WiFi is free while many Starbucks charge for the service.

The last word, however, must go to chef Ty-Lor Boring who works at Café Grumpy in NY. "You can isolate yourself behind a laptop, but look at this place: Almost everyone is having a conversation."

Source and full story: Wall Street Journal.

Teashops and cafés shortlisted in Coventry & Warwickshire's regional food awards

Photograph shows a Warwickshire breakfast, served up in McKechnies in Stratford.

The Coventry & Warwickshire Food & Drink Awards are well underway and the shortlist of finalists has been announced. It goes without saying that teashops and caffs have a category of their own in the awards (Best Coffee House/Teashop) and that there are three worthy contenders for the title.

The three finalists are Bread & Co in Leamington; McKechnies, an independent tea and coffee bar in Stratford; and the Hatton Locks Café in Hatton.

The main objective of the awards is to recognise and reward quality, and where the coffee house and teashop category is concerned, it's all about those committed to providing their customers with fresh, local produce, a wide range of beverages (hot and cold) and a good range of cakes, biscuits and light snacks.

McKechnies looks like an interesting place. It offers its customers 17 different types of tea for a start, locally sourced food and an award-winning coffee in Formula 6 supplied by James' Gourmet Coffee Company. The food looks amazing too and if you log on to the café's website (www.mckechnies-cafe.co.uk) you'll notice that a Warwickshire breakfast is well worth ordering. It consists of dry cure bacon, Hatton sausage, field mushrooms, fresh beef tomatoes and a free range egg. It can be served with thick-cut granary or white toast, home-made strawberry jam or three-fruit marmalade.

The Hatton Locks Café looks good too, although its website wasn't quite finished when teashopandcaff took a butchers. This canalside restaurant, which used to be a stable for barge horses, must be a hit with those on canalboat holidays. According to owner Lynn Drane it's also a hit with walkers.

Bread & Co in Leamington Spa is a fine foods and bakery shop offering artisan breads, cakes and pastries plus sandwiches, salads, 'delicious' coffee and treats. "A warm welcome awaits you,' claims the company. Bread & Co, incidentally, is also shortlisted in the Champion of Local Produce (retailer) of the awards.

If you want to know more about the awards, click here.

Conveyor toasters. Don't you just want one?

Not sure about you, but whenever I stay in a hotel – especially when I'm on holiday abroad – there's always a conveyor toaster in the breakfast room. I love them and wish I could have one at home. This one (see photograph) is from a company called Hatco and is part of the Toast-Qwik range of conveyor toasters which can toast between 400 and 800 slices of bread per hour. That's a lot of toast!

But have you stopped and wondered just how bad conveyor toasters are for the environment? Think about it: they're on all the time, that conveyor goes round and round for hours, using up unnecessary electricity, it's just not right in these environmentally aware times.

Hatco thinks it has the solution. Hatco’s UK managing director Mark Poultney said: “The new, ‘green’ automatic power-save models will switch the toaster automatically to 'power-save' after 30 minutes of inactivity. There is no additional charge for this option. Models on which power-save can be included are theTQ-405 and TQ-805.”

Nice work, Hatco. You can read more about the company's new range of toasters by clicking here.