Blog posts from September, 2012

You only get one chance to make a good first impression.

When it comes to sales and retail, visuals are the key element to help you sell your product. Look at it this way, if you were to walk into a bakery and there were two of the same cakes on display, would you pick the one that has very little embellishments, or the one that looks extremely extravagant? Now if you’re a foodie like me, you’d probably take either one (after all, it is cake!) but to everyone else, the cake that looks like a million bucks will probably be the first one to sell. The theory is quite simple; people love things that look great and are more likely to purchase them when they do. Whether its cake or something simple like a plate that’s placed in a gorgeous table setting, it’s a theory I wanted to test in our very own showroom.

The first step to improve any showroom is to know your product. What is it used for? How much does it cost? Is it a popular item? All these questions will help determine how they can be merchandised. My entire first day at National Event Supply was just that, I got to know the product and it was easier for me to determine where everything should go. Keep in mind that your customers will be entering this room and basing their first impression on how your product looks. Make them “ooh” and “aah” over your product and make it easy for them to find what they are looking for.

Moving on to the second step: get creative! Your product may be in great order and starting to look great but it still needs a touch of life or personality. Using props is a great way to emphasize product. Seeing as our showroom is mostly comprised of tableware items, my first instinct was to bring in food! Now it’s not what you think, I didn’t go home that night and bake for hours to bring food into the showroom (although I’m sure my co-workers would’ve liked that), we bought fake food from Two Hot Peppers Inc., a company that makes fake food for merchandising purposes. There is one major reason why you should use fake food instead of real food: real food looks and smells great on the first day, but if you leave it there for more than a couple days, you’ll be attracting more than customers. Amongst other things, fake food has a much better “shelf” life and you’ll be able to use it multiple times and move it around as you please. But don’t let fake food be your only inspiration, feel free to use risers, signage and anything else that will create an atmosphere in your showroom.

Click to enlarge pictures.

This brings me to my last point: stay true to your product. There are so many cool props out there to use for merchandising, but stick to something that will compliment your product, not distract from it. Try to create focal points within your merchandising, and make sure that what you are actually selling is the “hero” in your display. There’s nothing worse than falling in love with a product that really isn’t sold from that store. I’m not saying that you can’t use little accessories here and there to help decorate your display. For example, if you were doing a fall tabletop display and you want to use leaves and put a few apples in the centre for a centerpiece, go for it! Just remember that your product is the most important part of that display and adding too many decorations can be confusing to your customer.

For example, we used a simple pasta dish, a fancy green salad and a bowl of deep red borscht to highlight the versatility and simple elegance of our Hotelier Dinnerware. Our Hotelier line of commercial-grade dinnerware is designed and manufactured to last in a commercial environment. The fake food that we used amplifies the elegance of the simple white pattern, allowing the strength and durability to shine through.

After all that is said and done, tah-dah! You have a beautifully updated showroom. I encourage all of you to try something new in your own showrooms. Be different, be creative and merchandise your product to get people talking about it. And if I can leave one more piece of advice, make sure customers don’t try to eat the fake food, they might break a tooth.

Since I started working at National Event Supply in 2010, we've shipped products across Canada and the United States. We've shipped tables and chairs to Nunavut in the North, and Aruba in the South. We've shipped dinnerware and cutlery to Vancouver, BC and St. John's Newfoundland. Most of the time, there are no problems. The products arrive on time, with no damage. On other occasions, products are lost or are damaged in transit.

When we find out that products are damaged in transit, we typically file a claim with the shipping company. As part of the claims process, the shipping company will refer to the bill of lading. If the customer has signed the bill of lading and has not indicated that there was any damage, the shipping company will typically deny the claim, as there was no damage indicated. This is why skids that ship from our warehouse in Toronto now have stickers on them that read "Inspect for Damage Before Accepting". But what should you be looking for?

4 Things to Look for Before Signing for your Order

Is the plastic skid wrap still intact?

National Event Supply wraps all skids in plastic wrap. For orders coming out of our Mississauga warehouse, we use a black wrap. Indianapolis and Vancouver both use clear wrap. The wrap should be tightly pulled around the products, and there should not be any tears or rips.

Is the pallet damaged?

If the pallet is falling apart or has noticeable damage, take a closer look at the whole skid. It could be that the skid was damaged while it was being loaded or unloaded at the shippers' depots.

Are there any dents or indentations on any of the boxes?

Take a look at the boxes on the skid. If there are holes or a corner is bashed in, then the skid may have been damaged in transit.

Is the skid leaning to one side, or does it look like it could topple over?

If the contents have shifted during shipping, there is a chance that the products within may be damaged.

Click to enlarge pictures.

What to Do if Your Order Arrives Damaged

If you discover that your order is potentially damaged in the course of your inspection, here is what you should do:

Take pictures of the damage while the driver is there. If you can take pictures of the skid on the truck that's even better.

This allows us to show the carrier that the product was damaged while they were responsible for it. It is important that the pictures of the skid are taken before the skid is broken down.

Write down on the Bill of Lading the exact damage that you have discovered and that you will be filing a claim

Be as specific as possible. If the corner is bashed in on the box that is third from the bottom, write that down. The more detail that we can give the shipping company claims department the better. Write down all the damage that you document with pictures.

Don't use the damaged product. Leave it in its box.

If the product is damaged, then you cannot use it. Let us know so that we can get replacement product out to you. Also, make sure that you keep the damaged product in its box at your facility so that if the claims adjuster wants to inspect it he can. If you return the product to us, the claims adjuster can dismiss the claim

Let us know and we will start the claims procedure.

The sooner you email or call us and let us know about the damage, the sooner we can get the ball rolling on the claims process. We'll need the photos that you have taken so we can give them to the shipping company and we'll need to know what happened when the shipping company arrived with your product.

As I wrote earlier, most of the time nothing goes wrong, the products arrive on time and in pristine condition. For those times that they don't however, it is important that you know what you're signing for. It's important to "Inspect for Damage Before Accepting".

Early September typically means the end of summer and cooler weather, but we had a gorgeous day at the CRA Ontario Golf Tournament at the Hawkridge Golf Club in Orillia. This was the first year that the Hawkridge Golf Club held the event, and they did an incredible job hosting the CRA. As with previous year's tournaments, it was a shotgun 'bestball' tournament with members and suppliers teeing off from every hole on the course at 11:00am.

Bill Winslade and I represented National Event Supply at this year’s event as Dennis was in Alberta visiting customers after exhibiting in the Alberta Foodservice Expo. This year the National Event Supply team played with Brian from Texada Software, another rental industry supplier. Texada Software provides rental companies with a full software solution that can be hosted internally or licensed as Software as a Service. Since we played as a threesome we had the luxury of having an “extra” shot to share between the three of us. However, Brian is such a good golfer that we found we only used the extra shot about 50% of the time. Unlike last year (and thanks in most part to Brian) our score was a very competitive 8 under par. Among the many highlights during the day was Bill almost sinking a 50ft putt, and Brian getting lucky by having his ball pop out of the sand trap and onto the green.

We would like to thank the CRA Ontario Members that worked hard to organize this great event. We hope to see you all out on the course for next year’s event!

The Alberta Foodservice Expo kicked off at 11am on Sunday and there was a steady flow of visitors to our booth along with the many cooking activities on the main culinary stage.

Shortly after the show opening, Richard Toll, the Owner/Executive Chef of ASNA Cooks, stopped by to introduce himself. Richard is actively involved in the Edmonton and Alberta Culinary scene, and on Sunday was one of the judges for the culinary competitions taking place centre stage, right in front of our booth. Richard was also the winner of the Edmonton Iron Chef Competition back in April 2012. We gave him a quick preview of our porcelain products including our very popular Quadrato Dinnerware, our heavy-duty Hotelier Dinnerware, and our extensive range of porcelain platters and bowls. He was also quite interested in some of our 18/10 stainless steel cutlery lines. Richard was excited to discover the possibilities National Event Supply provides to dramatically reduce his porcelain and cutlery purchasing costs. We saw Richard later on when he modelled some new chef uniforms in the fashion show that was sponsored by Canadian Linen & Uniform Service.

Not long after Richard left our booth, we had DJ Parkin, the General Manager of Fandango’s Live Entertainment Saloon, stop by to check out our newest porcelain products along with our best sellers. They’ve been working hard doing renovations at 12912 – 50th Street NW in Edmonton for a little more than 5 months as you can see from their Facebook page, and it looks like they are really close to opening up their new live entertainment saloon. They did have enough time to come and checkout the 2012 Alberta Foodservice Expo though. Congratulations to DJ & Leigh, you guys are so close to your opening after many months of hard work I am sure you can almost taste the beer beginning to flow!

The Apprentice Level Competition took place from 11:15am to 12:15pm on Sunday, while the Team Competition took place later in the afternoon from 2:45pm to 4:45pm. We were honoured to be able to help sponsor the event by providing our most popular selling line of flatware, our Maria line of 18/10 stainless steel cutlery. This line was used by the judges to perform their sample tastings of each of the competitors dishes. In the picture are Judges (from left to right) Chef Doreen Prei (Zinc Restaurant), Chef Richard Toll (ASNA Cooks) and Chef Allana (CCFCC Edmonton).

As we moved into the afternoon, it became apparent to the event organizers they would be needing additional chairs to seat some extra judges that were needed for the Team Competition, so we were pleased to be able to provide Donna Dooher, the Chair of the CRFA, and Adam Saunders, Alberta Membership Sales, with a Silver and a Black Resin Chiavari Chair to help pull off the ‘Event nature’ of the competition. We also provided some of our new wine glasses from our Eclisse line of Stemware to help with the presentation of some very fancy desserts the competitors were making.

Donna Dooher is not only the current Chair of the CRFA but is also a very accomplished Chef and business owner. Here’s a write up and a picture that does Donna much more justice than my quick snapshot prior to the culinary competition at the Alberta Foodservice show. She is also one of the featured Chefs in the ‘I am Restaurant’ video on the front page of the CRFA website.

At the conclusion of the show, attendees, competing chefs and exhibitors were invited to a cocktail and awards presentation party hosted by Chuck Nervick, Senior VP of MediaEdge Communications and Garth Whyte, President & CEO of the CRFA. Prior to the awards presentation, Garth Whyte gave a brief presentation on the significance of the Restaurant sector in Canada. Some of the interesting facts he talked about were: 1.1 million Canadians work in restaurants across Canada with another 260,000 in spinoff jobs, 1 in 4 Canadian will work in the Hospitality Foodservice sector at some point in their life, restaurants contribute 4% to the Canadian GDP and probably the most significant, 18 million Canadians go to a restaurant every day.

All in all it was a very good first day for National Event Supply at the 2012 Alberta Foodservice show.

The NES Trade Show team was off to Edmonton Saturday, where they linked up with Dale, Will, and Kevin of our Alberta-based sales team to set up for the 2012 Alberta Foodservice Expo. Once we got everything onto the show floor, we managed to get the booth set up in about four hours and make sure that everything would be ready to go for the Sunday Morning start. After finishing up the set-up, I headed out into Edmonton to explore and to get a bite to eat.

While I was walking down 118th Avenue, I came across the Kaleido Family Arts Festival. This weekend-long festival features music, dance, theatre, film, literary and visual arts all in a four block stretch of 118th Avenue between 90th and 94th Streets. There were musicians playing, and numerous street vendors showing and selling their hand-made sculptures, paintings, and other unique pieces. Lots of families with young children were having a good time and there was just a great vibe in the air. It certainly didn’t hurt that the evening weather was also fantastic.

I continued along 118th Avenue to the corner of 95th Street and decided to have dinner at Habesha Ethiopian & Eritrean Cuisine for some authentic Ethiopian and Eritrean food. This was the first time I had ever had Ethiopian or Eritrean cuisine and it was quite the adventure. Not really knowing what to order, I decided to ask the waiter what he would recommend. He brought me a sampling of menu items which consisted of a variety of meats (some spicy, some not), specially seasoned potatoes, and a mixed vegetable/salad on a large platter that was covered with pita-like flatbread called Injera. The meats and potatoes were in small fruit nappy bowls (each about 5 ½ ounces) while the mixed vegetable salad was piled onto the middle of the Injera. The waiter then said dig in. It didn’t take me to long to figure out that this meant I was to eat everything with my hands and use the Injera to scoop up the food. After watching my neighbour at the next table, I quickly dumped all my bowls of meat and potatoes onto the Injera bread and salad and began to dig in.

I found my dinner experience most enjoyable and would highly recommend anyone who has a little adventure in their spirit to go for what I found to be one of my most unique and enjoyable dinners of the past summer. I would also agree with the 4 ½ out of 5 rating that Trip Advisor gives this restaurant. I should add that if you have trouble with smoke, you may find it difficult to stay in the restaurant. During my time many of the patrons were smoking from Hookah’s and many other patrons were waiting for a Hookah to come available.