Supermarkets and food staples have a family feel November 24, 2009 BrandIndex asks general questions about brands, but sometimes it’s useful to look at more specific qualities. YouGov recently conducted research on the associations between brands and family values. The recent Family Brands report, conducted for advertising agency Isobel, suggests that association with family values is a useful differential by which we can measure different types [...]
BILL OF THE WEEK November 22, 2009 THE show-stopping lunch is back with a bang, if this short-but-sweet receipt from the restaurant at The Capital hotel in Knightsbridge is anything to go by. Our pair of well-heeled diners chose the £33 three-course lunch menu – including such gems as a tiger prawn and coconut risotto, seared scallops with calf feet and braised [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING November 17, 2009 FINANCIAL TIMES BARCLAYS RETAIL CHIEF WARNS NEW ENTRANTSThe new head of global retail banking at Barclays has joined the backlash of traditional bankers against the entry into banking of supermarkets and other consumer companies. Antony Jenkins said the new competitors may be under-estimating the difficulties of breaking into the market. APOLLO SETS SIGHTS ON NYSE [...]
FOOD & BOOZE NEWS November 16, 2009 SERPENTINE BAR & KITCHEN GOES FESTIVEHyde Park’s Serpentine Bar & Kitchen has opened a Christmas restaurant to coincide with the park’s Winter Wonderland. The restaurant, in its own festive marquee, will offer traditional English food and drink – hog roasts, stuffed guinea fowl and the like, with mulled wine, ciders and cask ales – from [...]
O2 tops rivals and grows in third quarter November 12, 2009 Mobile operator O2 said yesterday that it was the only UK network to grow its revenues in the third quarter, as it benefited from its since-expired deal to be the exclusive seller of Apple’s iPhone. The UK arm of Spain’s Telefonica said that it saw demand for its mobile data services – customers accessing the [...]
Tesco looks East for growth and plans new Chinese stores November 12, 2009 TESCO yesterday announced a £100m tie-up with Asian investors to build three shopping centres in China as the first stage of a larger building programme. Britain’s biggest supermarket has signed an agreement for a 50-50 venture with investors including HSBC Nan Fung China Real Estate Fund, Singapore’s Metro Holdings and Hong Kong’s Nan Fung Group. [...]
Japanese whisky, the spirit of Christmas November 11, 2009 IF JAPANESE whisky sounds like a joke – something akin to the Jamaican bobsleigh team, or Indian wine – then you clearly don’t know very much about spirits. At last year’s World Whisky Awards, Yoichi 20-year-old was voted the best whisky in the world, while Suntory’s Hibiki was voted the best blended whisky. If you [...]
Professional services are a bedrock of City success November 11, 2009 AN insurer talking to accountants may not sound like much of a crowd-drawer in the traditional sense. But when Lord Levene, chairman of Lloyd’s of London, addressed a breakfast briefing at Chartered Accountants Hall yesterday, his comments were enough to spark real interest among the audience. Levene’s salient point was that we cannot allow one [...]
ORANGE BREAKS IPHONE RECORD November 10, 2009 ORANGE sold more than 30,000 iPhones yesterday, just hours after it became the first network to break O2’s two year UK monopoly on the phenomenally successful Apple handset. The France Telecom-owned firm said that the level of sales booked by 4pm set a new record for a mobile phone launch in Britain. It is selling [...]
Koffman’s pop-up proves that he’s still the king of London fine dining November 9, 2009 NOSTALGIA is a wonderful thing. When it was announced that Pierre Koffman would come out of retirement to run a restaurant on the roof of Selfridges for one week only, the phones rang off the hook with former customers who remembered his Chelsea restaurant Tante Claire, which closed several years ago. But the crowd wasn’t [...]