Meat Free Week in Australia
20-3-2013
“Lamb chop move aside, it’s MY time to shine,” (said Mr Beetroot). This week is the ‘meat free week’ in Australia (18-24 march). During this week Australia needs to think about how much meat they consume, because as a nation they consume way too much. The land-based food sector and also the seafood industry are under pressure. With the meat free week the organisation hopes that people realize that they need to contribute to a brighter future for their environment, animals and farmers by eating less meat and more vegetables. On the website of The Sustainable Table you can download a recipe booklet with meat free recipes.
Easter: Marshmallows and cocktails
20-3-2013
Easter is in the air! In the coming weeks we will occasionally publish remarkable recipes or action on horecatrends. For example, the trend of the last year ‘chocolate room‘. Do you have a special recipe or does your restaurant or hotel plan a special activity, let us know by mail via tip@spronsen.com. Who knows your company might be on horecatrends.
During Easter, you do not just make the dishes special, but also the drinks you serve. Very simple yet fun, decorate a cocktail with a bunny or a chicken made of marshmallow. You can choose to make your own marshmallow, or just buy them. While the kids search for eggs, the adults can enjoy their Easter Cocktail….
Google Birdhouse
20-3-2013
The designer Shu-Chun Hsiao in Taiwan developed a number of birdhouses inspired by the Google Maps icon. Shu-Chun Hsiao creates the Google Birdhouse a merger between the physical and virtual worlds. Today people find their way through technology, the designer wanted to make the birdhouse become the destination as Google Maps does. Actually every hotel or restaurant in the country needs to have a birdhouse like this on the outside.
Pay the bill with an app
20-3-2013
How often did you get a great service at a restaurant and as only point of irritation had to wait too long for the bill? With the new app ‘Cover’, that will be introduced soon, you can walk out of the restaurant without physically paying the bill. The payment is taken from a credit card stored on the app. Guests do make their reservation through the app and enter the payment information. The ‘Uber’s payment experience at restaurants’ according to Clover. It’s a new way of paying that is in particular useful for restaurants, it saves time and turns tables faster.
Cyclists get a free salad
19-3-2013
Bistro ‘Le Repas’ in Brazil is offering a free salad for any guest who rides his or her bike to the bistro in reward for being green. Sommelier Karen Ferrari was inspired by the number of cyclists she saw on a trip to Paris en introduced this action. The French-themed restaurant hopes that the reward will stimulate visitors to come by bike and also to inspire other companies to do something similar.
A note in a lunch bag
18-3-2013
Class up your simple brown lunch bag with the waxed canvas lunch bags from ‘Peg and Awl’. The bags have sewn-in spot for handwritten notes to make it more special. Especially the handwritten notes or sayings are great to put even in a a plain brown lunch bag. And if you add a “free” item occasionally, your customers will know this rapidly by either word-of-mouth or through the social media.
Carlsberg put friends to the test
15-3-2013
A phone call in the middle of the night: your best friend is in trouble. Would you go out and help him? Carlsberg tests some friendships. What would your friends do? Are they true mates?
Urban Coffee Farm in Melbourne
15-3-2013
The Australian design firm HASSELL designed the ‘Urban Coffee Farm and Brew Bar’ for the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival. A total of 125 coffee trees have transformed the ‘Red Stairs’ (a popular public Amphitheatre in Melbourne) into a terraced coffee farm. Shipping containers, packaging crates and timber pallets have also been added to demonstrate the journey that coffee beans take. This will creates a unique experience while visitors sit among the trees sipping their coffee. More pictures at PSFK.
Floating vending machine
15-3-2013
Enjoying the sun, swimming in the sea and in between drinking an Ice Tea.. That’s possible in Cape Town. At one of the trendiest beaches of Cape Town, Lipton Ice Tea has introduced the first driving vending machine in the world.
Culinary cocktail lab
15-3-2013
A nice new concept of molecular chef cook José Andrés. The cook has several restaurants in Washington and opened a cocktail bar named ‘Barmini’ in the space adjoining restaurant ‘Minibar’. More than one hundred artisan cocktails are crafted and served with the combination of art and science as well as tradition and technique. Earlier we saw that José Andrés applied his innovative style to the American cuisine at restaurant America Eats Tavern.
