Meet the adopted businesses
You've read the articles, now meet the people behind them. Caterer & Hotelkeeper, in association with Pritchitt Foods, invites readers to a season of Adopted Business Open Days.
Our Adopted Businesses are a special selection of independent businesses in the hospitality industry. They are original in their approach, ambitious in their targets, but in many ways typical of all businesses. Their problems are probably your problems. If an idea works for them, perhaps it will help you.
For a token price of £10 a ticket, you get to tour the business or one of its contracts, hear a presentation by the proprietors and their advisers, question the operators and sit down to lunch with them.
This is a unique opportunity to visit seven businesses which have been brave enough to reveal everything, warts and all, to Caterer readers. Places will be strictly limited, so apply without delay. The season of Open Days is as follows:
- 27 March: Spaggo's Restaurant & Bar, Slough, Berkshire.
See the lively pizza and pasta restaurant; hear Tammy and Claude Mariaux on their operation and Naomi Arnold on public relations.
- 28 March: The Well House Hotel, near Liskeard, Cornwall.
Tour the house and gardens. Hear how PR man-turned hotelier Nick Wainford has turned a business round and listen to chef Wayne Pearson talk about his food.
3 April: Westminster Meals Service, London. Brian Smith tells how a how a meals on wheels service can operate in the commercial sector; consultant Bob Kingsbury talks on the background work. Lunch at the nearby London Regent.
7 April: Charlton House Catering Services.
Meet contract caterer Robyn Jones and the team at Brooklands near Weybridge in Surrey - and take a look around this famous racetrack.
- 10 April: Hotel du Vin & Bistro, Winchester.
Hear Robin Hutson on the business plans; test your wine palate with Gerard Basset.
- 24 April: No 6, Stratford-upon-Avon.
Owner Sue Gray looks forward to this restaurant's second exciting year.
- 2 may: The Rising Sun, near Shaftesbury, Dorset. Tenant Catherine Chauvet and a representative of owner Gibbs Mew on repositioning a drinking pub to a pub/restaurant.
