Blog posts tagged with 'platters'

Although this isn’t the 100th blog post (it’s the 102nd), we wanted to mark the occasion of our 100th blog post. It’s been a little over 2 years since we revised the website and introduced our blog. During that time, we’ve introduced dozens of new products, travelled North America visiting trade shows from Vancouver to New Orleans and from Toronto to Las Vegas. All of which is incredible blogging material!

NEW PRODUCTS

Just recently, we’ve introduced our Mahogany Resin Folding Chair and our Polar White Dinnerware. Last fall, we added Wing Bowls and Wood Harvest Tables at the request of customers who had a need for these products. Last summer we began offering our new Crystal Stemware and Glass Stemware to great demand. The common denominator for all these products is that we introduced them in our blog before we managed to get individual product pages up. The blog is the perfect place get your first glance at our new Chiavari Chair Cart and our new amuse bouche fork and spoon.

In the future, we’ll continue introducing our new products on our blog. In addition, we’ll be providing information about our existing products, like our beautiful selection of Champagne Fountains, Chocolate Fountains, and Cupcake Stands. We’ll also be doing more videos showing how strong our products are by show just what it takes to destroy them.

NEW LANGUAGE

We teased a French version of our website about a month ago. Now we ready to launch it! We’re initially launching the product pages first, and we hope to add translated versions of blog articles within a day of the English language blog article being posted. The translation of the website is all due to the hard work of our French sales rep Stephanie Loiselle. She has put long hours into first translating the website and then fixing any errors I may have introduced pulling the pages together. Merci Beaucoup, Stephanie!

The National Event Supply Trade Show Team is gearing up for our only local show of the season, the CRFA Show at the Direct Energy Centre in Toronto. The CRFA Show is a great opportunity for restaurants, caterers, and others within the foodservice industry to take a look at our porcelain dinnerware, our stainless steel cutlery, our crystal and glass stemware, and our many great service pieces. It's also a great time to do a little comparison shopping and understand why our customers are thrilled with our pricing on our fantastic line-up of products. While the team will be spending the majority of their time helping visitors to our booth (1911), they've put together a list of three things that they're excited to see while at the show. Here they are in no particular order!

The first thing that the team is excited to see is the competition at the Flair Festival Stage. If you've ever seen the movie Cocktail with Tom Cruise, then you have an idea what flair bartending is. If not, check out the video below to see one of the competitors in the World Flair Bartending Championships. In addition to the World Flair Bartending Championships, there's flair tandem shows and the TFL Pro Championship which features the best Flair bartenders in Canada. For more information, check out this schedule!

The second thing that the trade show team is excited to see is a booth for a company from Georgia called High Road Craft Ice Cream and Sorbet. We're all big fans of ice cream at National Event Supply, and we're interested in seeing what they have to offer. From the looks of their website, they've got some interesting flavours going on. Personally, I'm hoping they have Red Berries and Prosecco Sorbet to try, but when it comes to ice cream, anything is good. High Road Craft Ice Cream and Sorbet will be exhibiting in booth 817.

The third booth that we're interested in checking out is a little cheesy—but who doesn't love cheese?!? The Springbank Cheese Company has retail locations in Alberta and Ontario and also sell their high-quality cheeses over the internet. Through these channels they sell over 700 different kinds of cheese in sizes ranging from 20 grams to 35 kilograms. While I'm more of a Havarti and Mild Cheddar man, they've got all the cheeses that the cool kids crave like gorgonzola and roquefort. The Springbank Cheese Company will be exhibiting in booth 905.

I've finally had a chance to sit down and summarize our amazing week at The Rental Show 2013 which took place last week at the Sands Convention Center in gorgeous Las Vegas, Nevada.

Paris Hotel and Casino	Bellagio Hotel and Casino

Our trip began the day after a massive snow storm hit eastern Canada and the northeastern United States. Our home base in Toronto had more than 18 inches of snow while the Newark and New York City regions had 6 to 8 inches of the white stuff. While it wasn't snowing on Saturday, our departure was not exactly uneventful. Due to the massive storm, all of Friday's travellers were still in the airport waiting to depart. And planes that were normally in the air flying, were stuck on the ground under several inches of snow. After about five hours, which seemed like an eternity, our plane was finally brought to the gate and we departed snowy Toronto for sunny Las Vegas.

This year was our 8th year of exhibiting at the ARA Rental Show and we had our biggest booth ever. At 20ft x 30ft it was one of the larger booths in the Party and Special Event section of the show floor and we were right in the thick of the action. We were right beside Ben Shipper and his company EES (also known as Event Equipment Sales) from Chicago. Just a couple of booths away was another leader in our field, Palmer Snyder. Both of these companies are first class organizations that we are strive to emulate, both in the quality of our products and the level of our service that we offer. We spent all day Sunday setting up our booth so we could display all our products in the best light possible.

Ben Shipper visiting the NES Booth	Bill and Dennis Talking to Booth Visitors

During the 3 days of the Rental Show we saw many of our current customers and had the pleasure of meeting with many new people. Laura and Bruce from Allied Equipment Rental in Michigan were very pleased to see us again after missing last year’s Rental Show, and were interested in adding to their inventory of Tall Folding Cocktail Tables and Folding Counter Height Bar Chairs. We first met Bruce and Laura more than 2 years ago and they are seeing lots of customer interest in the NES Reliable Plastic Folding Tables and Chairs that they have in their inventory.

Early in this year’s show, a lot of customers told us about how impressed they were with the quality and durability of the products we have to offer. We have talked extensively about the weight capacity of our Resin Chiavari Chairs and regularly tell our Customers they will easily support 500lbs of weight. In December, we decided to put this claim to the ultimate test and placed more than 1,000lbs on one of our Silver Resin Chiavari chairs. The chair came through with flying colours. So we were very happy to have Brian from Handy Special Events in Saskatoon bring Shelby from Over the Top Tents & Events of Eagle River, Alaska to our booth to show him our Resin Chiavari chairs. Brian purchased our Gold Resin Chiavari chairs in the summer of 2011 and was so pleased with how they have performed for Handy Special Events, that he was selling our Resin Chiavari chairs to Shelby without any help from any of Bill, Diana, Jonathan or myself. What a great customer and product testimonial!

We also saw quite a few customers from California who were impressed with the quality of our new plywood folding tables. As many party rental customers know, California is a highly competitive market with many party rental suppliers in a race to provide the best and lowest possible price for their products. As they have aggressively reduced the sales prices for their products they have also been reducing the quality and durability of the products they sell such that many of them are no longer rental tough products.

With our bigger expanded booth we had a larger selection of our product lineup including all our newest table top items such as our Serenity Crystal Stemware, our Eclisse Wine Glasses, our new Polar White dinnerware line, our 3 different sized Wing Bowls and Sloped Bowls along with our tried and tested Quadrato and Ovali dinnerware lines. Having all of these products available gave our rental customers an excellent opportunity to check out what we have available and make decisions about adding these highly durable porcelain products to their inventory in the spring.

At times we were so busy in our booth, we had 2 or 3 customers waiting to speak with one of our 4 staff. It looks like we may need to seriously consider bringing another staff member for the 2014 Rental Show. If you weren't able to get to the show and you'd like to get a copy of our new catalogue, please fill out this form and we would be happy to send one out to you asap.

Last fall I gave you 5 reasons you NEED to go to The 2013 Rental Show in Las Vegas. With the show a week away I thought now would be the perfect time to list some booths that you should visit while you are at the show. Each of my selections focuses on a different aspect of the Party/Special Event rental sector. The first focuses on table top items, the second on tables and chairs, and the third on tents (aka making sure everyone stays dry).

The first booth to see is 10 Strawberry Street in Booth 3269. 10 Strawberry Street has established themselves as one of the leaders in table top with their catalog filled with a wide variety of items including flatware, dinnerware, platters, bowls, chargers, and glassware. They take pride in offering a diverse selection of product lines, from a variety of manufacturers, many of which have Special Events in mind. Many of their porcelain designs are unique in the market place which helps to separate your rental company from your competitors. Need another reason to stop by their booth? Last year Ten Strawberry Street had a pretty impressive booth, but for 2013 they went even bigger, 30 feet x 50 feet Big! That’s bigger than most houses, who wouldn’t want to see that!?

The second booth that you should check out is McCourt Manufacturing in Booth 3061. McCourt Manufacturing has been exhibiting at the Rental Show for more than a quarter of a century which definitely shows they have some great products. McCourt Manufacturing offers a variety of tables and chairs that are designed to withstand the rigors of the rental industry. Better still they are one of the last manufacturers that still make many of their products in the USA and do so while still maintaining affordable prices. The combination of high quality, affordable products with a great variety to serve your needs makes McCourt Manufacturing one of the booths to see at The Rental Show 2013.

The final booth that you should go take a look at is Warner Shelter Systems Limited in Booth 2865. Warner Shelter Systems Limited is a leading tent design and manufacturing company that makes both portable and semi-permanent tent structures. Their products range from the Peak Marquee Tents (pop up tents) to the GIGA-SPAN Series (clearspan structures). Founded in 1970, Warner Shelter Systems Limited has the expertise to help you with your tent needs.

Once you visit these three booths you may want to add some others to your list, don’t hesitate to stop by to see National Event Supply in booth 4072. If you can't make it to the show, why not request our catalogues? Simply fill out this form, and we'd be happy to mail you a copy of our latest catalogues.

This Saturday we were exhibiting at the Canadian Rental Association's Ontario Tabletop show which was held at the Nottawasaga Inn & Resort in Aliston, Ontario. While the show was held in a tabletop format we were still able to show off a number of our latest new product lines. We presented our new Wing Bowls (which have been hard to keep in stock), our latest dinnerware line, Polar White, as well as our Serenity Crystal stemware and Eclisse Glass stemware. Combined with our Tabletop and Table & Chair catalogues resulted in a full showing for our booth.

Bill and I were busy throughout the day meeting with a number of our customers including Mike from Happening Party Rentals, Collingwood and Christian from Totally Covered Events, Aliston each stopping by to check out our new Crystal Stemware and discuss some of the attributes of our NES Reliable Line of Plastic Folding Tables. We wrapped up the show with a long chat with Paul from Location Equipment Supply, Toronto about our extensive NES Reliable line of Plastic Folding Tables and Chairs including our NES Reliable 6ft Fold in Half Tables.

After the show everyone headed into the banquet hall at the Nottawasaga Inn Resort where we enjoyed a cocktail (or two) before sitting down for a superb dinner. We were served a Butternut Squash soup with a maple glazed breaded topping, a mixed greens salad with radicchio and spiced walnuts and for the finale we enjoyed Pan-seared pork tenderloin with a peach mango & chipotle glaze, with wild & white rice pilaf. The entire meal from start to finish was simply delicious.

To wrap up the evening we were entertained by Hart Entertainment with ‘Game Show Mania’, a quiz show where many of us were invited to be participants in the quiz based show. Contestants are asked simple well known everyday questions and raced to hit their buttons to be the first to answer. In the picture above we see Colin Wilson with his daughter Lauren (World of Rentals, Kingston), Paul Potvin (Location Equipment Supply, Toronto and CRA Ontario 2nd Vice President), Mike Maltby (Ingersoll Rentals and CRA Ontario President) and Gary Webb (LB White, Tampa). Paul and Gary were finalists in the contest with Paul becoming the eventual winner of the grand prize, half of the 50/50 pot that had been collected throughout the evening.

After the game show, Mike Maltby presented some awards including the Image Award to Hank from Tim’s Party Centre, Bowmanville and the Rental Store of the year was presented to Paul at Location Equipment Supply, Toronto. Wacker Nuesen were presented with the Ontario CRA Supplier of the year Award. Jeff Campbell the incoming CRA National President spoke briefly and noted the Canadian Rental Association was sponsoring a PR program that is available to all Members and Associate Members of the CRA. Since Jeff is being appointed CRA National President next month at 2013 Rental Show in Las Vegas, the PR firm used this as an opportunity to spread the news in Jeff’s local St. Thomas community. Jeff is now a celebrity throughout the community and has seen a nice jump in visits to his store, St. Thomas Rent-All.

Hank from Tim's Party Centre	Paul from Location Equipment Supply

Our Next Trade Show has us heading back out to the west coast for the BC Foodservice Expo on January 27 and 28, 2013. If you aren't going to be able to see us at a show, why not request our catalogue to see what we have in stock!