We’ve been hard at work sourcing new products for our customer base. Because our customer base commonly uses our folding tables for banquets and events, we wanted to provide more options for those that like heavy duty plastic folding tables such as Mity-Lite ABS tables.

We are excited to announce the NES Reliable Rhino Plastic Banquet Tables

These tables will work perfectly for banquets and events because they are easy to clean, extremely durable and deliver both a product as well as a return on investment that party rental companies, hotels and banquet halls will love.

Here’s an overview of what to expect from these highly durable tables:

• Available as a 5ft (60”) Round, 6ft x 30” Rectangle, or 8ft x 30” Rectangle
• Steel legs and frame
• SGS tested and approved for 2400 lbs. capacity
• Weather resistant and low maintenance
• Rounded corners help to avoid damage
• Easy to set up and take down
• Stain-resistant surfaces won't crack or splinter
• Heat and water resistant

With the weather finally turning a corner in Canada (HELLO 32°C in Toronto!), we’ve got summer reading on our minds. With that in mind, I surveyed some of our amazing restaurant and caterer customers to find out their best recommendations for foodservice summer reads. Here’s what we came up with to keep you entertained at the cottage, at the beach or on a sunny patio during a day off. We’d love to hear what your favourite foodservice books are so tweet us or comment on our Facebook page so we can all pick up a copy to read.

Momofuku (By David Chang & Peter Meehan)

Written by the chef of the award-winning restaurants by the same name, Chef David Chang relays with his rise to superstardom, as well as the perils and pitfalls that marked his rise. This book portrays both the story and the recipes behind the cuisine that has revolutionized cooking with his bold Asian flavours and impeccable ingredients. As stated by Amazon – “this is a must-read for anyone who loves food”.

Read reviews of Momofuku

The Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide to Culinary Creativity, Based on the Wisdom of America’s Most Imaginative Chefs (By Karen Page & Andrew Dornenburg)

Surveying dozens of leading chefs’ combined experience in top restaurants across the country, these authors create the go-to guide to coaxing the greatest possible flavour from any ingredient. Ingredient entries in the thousands, organized alphabetically and cross-referenced, provide a spectacular encyclopedia of flavour combinations. Featuring tips, first-hand stories and signature dishes from some of America’s most imaginative chefs, it was named a winner of the 2009 James Beard Book Award for Best Book: Reference and Scholarship.

Read reviews for The Flavor Bible

What to Drink with What You Eat: The Definitive Guide to Pairing Food with Wine, Beer, Spirits, Coffee, Tea - Even Water - Based on Expert Advice from America's Best Sommeliers (By Andrew Dornenburg, Karen Page & Michael Sofronski)

A fantastic read for any “business-focused” foodservice operator that lacks proper sommelier training. What to Drink with What You Eat is the definitive guide to matching food and drink and includes pragmatic advice from the best wine sommeliers and chefs in America. Though the majority of this book is focused on wine, there are matches for a variety of other beverages. Provide a value add to your customers (and a sneaky upsell as well) by utilizing this guide to pair alcohol with your specials and/or entrées.

Read Reviews for What to Drink with What You Eat

Remarkable Service: A Guide to Winning and Keeping Customers for Servers, Managers, and Restaurant Owners (By The Culinary Institute of America)

Restaurants must distinguish themselves in a market oversaturated with competition by offering consistent, high quality service. This book addresses the service needs for a wide range of dining types – fast-casual, fine dining and even catering operations. This is the best guide to service and hospitality on the market and provides foodservice operators, as well as their servers and managers the tips they need to stand out from their competition and win customer loyalty instead of customer satisfaction.

Read Reviews for Remarkable Service

Lessons in Service from Charlie Trotter (By Ed Lawler)

Charlie Trotter’s name has become synonymous with outstanding service in the restaurant industry. Trotter has perfected the subtle relationship between food, wine, ambiance and service and has trained his staff to his exacting standards. In Lessons in Service from Charlie Trotter, the author details the secrets behind Trotter’s success and shows other restaurants and businesses how to improve their levels of service.

Read Reviews for Lessons in Service from Charlie Trotter

We could go on and on with the thought provoking books we found. What other books would you add to the list?

There are many events especially in Canada that may opt to be outdoors and want the assurance that regardless of the weather, their event can continue as planned. Because of this, tent rentals are vastly popular – especially in climates such as ours that experience different changes in season, weather and temperature. If you’re in the market to purchase tents – whether they be pop up tents or portable fabric structures knowing the best tent manufacturers to look into can help get a head start on your research and due diligence.

The Best Tent Manufacturers in Canada

1. Warner Shelter Systems Limited (WSSL):

Located in Calgary, Alberta, WSSL was founded in 1970 by Kurt Ehrich Warner, and Gery Warner. WSSL has designed and manufactured quality award winning tents and fabric clad portable structures for over 40 years. WSSL specializes in Peak Marquee Tents, Peak Pole Tents, Twin Peak Pole Tents, Arabesque Tent & Joining System, Dome Stagecover, Tent-X-Span Fabric Structures, MOD Series Tents, and GIGA-SPAN Structures. They also welcome the opportunity to manufacture custom & specialty tents.

2. Tentnology:

Located Vancouver, British Columbia, Tentnology was originally established by Gery Warner as Warner Shelter Corp. In 1990, a share exchange took place and Gery Warner separated from Warner Shelter Systems and has been independent ever since. Tentnology has continued to develop, and innovate new, and original patented fabric structures and event tents, and is a world leader in the portable shelter industry. They specialize in manufacturing Matrix-Marquee tents, SaddleSpan tents, Mega tents, Poleadion tents, Bumbershoot & Preso tents, TSpan tents, Tranpeze Tents, and Uni Slope tents.

3. Ideal Canopy Tent & Structure Ltd:

Located in Delta, BC Ideal Canopy was founded by Rajbir Jhand in the fall of 1996. In the beginning, he operated the company with a single employee assisting in the fabrication of a variety of camping supplies in the back of a small suburban Vancouver workshop. After 13 years of attention to detail Ideal Canopy employs a staff of more than 20+ people to build North America’s finest engineered temporary tents and shelters. Ideal Canopy specializes in Marquee Tents, Megaframe Tents, Single Arch Structures, Web Truss Structures and Side Access Shelters.

4. Fiesta Tents Ltd:

With their manufacturing arm located in Montreal, Quebec, David Murray, current president of Fiesta Tents Ltd., founded Portable Stalling Inc., in 1977 which supplied tents and horse stalls for horse shows throughout Quebec and Ontario. As a result for frequent requests for event tents, the company expanded its business in 1982 to include party tents and changed their name to Tents for Events. In 1992 after the acquisition of another tent company they rebranded to Fiesta Tents Ltd. They are leading tent manufacturers of marquees, clear span tent structures and canopies for all types of functions. We offer models ranging from small 10' x 10' marquee tents to expandable 60'-wide clear span tent structures.

5. Commercial Tent:

Located in Sussex, New Brunswick, Commercial Tent has been in the tent manufacturing business for over 25 years. They offer full customization services for all new tents allowing you the ability to create the size and colour needed on their different styles of tents. They also offer high-quality used tent options for sale and offer full warranty coverage on all new and used tents.

6. Impact Canopies:

Impact Canopies Canada Inc, formally called Caravan Canopies Canada Inc was formed in 1999. They have a 10 year history of manufacturing and distributing all qualities and styles of Pop Up Canopies and Pop Up Canopy Accessories. To expand into the US and global market, in 2006 Impact Images Inc, based in California was formed to manufacture and distribute Instant Canopies and Instant Canopy Accessories. Today, they have a wide range of shapes and styles of pop up tents including domes and marquees, as well as marketing equipment such as flags, signs and banners.

Jonathan and I recently attended the National Restaurant Association’s tradeshow in Chicago, IL to learn more about the foodservice and restaurant industry including the trends that are occurring, what’s new and innovative in the industry and any additional education we could learn on the industry. As a restaurant supply store in Toronto, we thought it best to see what the largest restaurant show had to offer our customers and potential prospects. We toured both the tradeshow floor to see exhibitors such as Steelite, Oneida, Dudson, Mitylite and Lenox as well as attended some sessions of interest. Here are some of the lessons learned from the show:

1. One of the most important marketing tools next to your menu is your website.

Ensuring you have fantastic pictures of your food on your page will help ensure you differentiate yourself from the multitudes of restaurants in your area. Showcasing beautiful photos of your food enhances the likelihood of a potential customer choosing your restaurant over another. We attended a session called “Food Selfie” that featured a food photographer on how to take the best pictures for your website. While I think that the session could have been done better to provide more value some of the greatest tips learned from this session include: the quality of light is the most important factor next to what camera you use to ensure a great photo – and the sun is the best quality of light. Make sure to pre-visualize your shot in your head and keep a portfolio of magazine / web images that appeal to you as a reference. And finally play around with the angle at which you shoot the photograph as well as the textures in the photograph to ensure the photo doesn’t become too one dimensional.

2. Online restaurant reviews are a hot topic in the industry.

What I heard continuously (and quite unfortunately) is with the apparent freedom of digital anonymity, often the review tends to go past the point of civility. While sitting in a fascinating “He Said/She Said Session” other restaurant operators both independent and large multinationals chimed in how they combat the negative reviews that might be received. One session attendee, an independent restaurant operator, has seen a lot of traffic (both web traffic and actual customers) from sites such as Yelp, Groupon, and OpenTable. A specific person has been allocated to monitor all the different sites that reviews can be written on. They then collate all reviews (both negative AND positive) and have incorporated the “hits and misses” into their weekly meetings with their entire front and back of house staff. This approach has not only given them the ability to actively respond to any negative reviews to thank them for their frankness but also allows them to look for trends. It can be hard to hear but if you keep getting a review saying your salmon is too dry – that is a great opportunity to take the review into consideration and better your restaurant. This operator showed how phenomenally they’ve addressed reviews to grow the restaurant and turn negatives into positives based on how the issues are dealt with. Another operator has helped train their staff to proactively identify issues so that an issue isn’t left to fester once a diner leaves the restaurant. The staff look for cues such as a meal not being finished, a takeout container not request or feedback that the meal was “just fine” and help to circumvent a potentially negative review. Regardless on how a restaurant is dealing with reviews the overall consensus was that if you aren’t responding to your restaurant reviews – you’re missing a HUGE opportunity to ensure your customers are heard and responded to.

3. Where are trends in the industry coming from?

It used to be that the trends that ultimately prevailed would start at either coast and work in. Nowadays with culinary education, the advent of the Food Network trends truly have started to pop up everywhere because of digital prevalence. While food trends can come from anywhere these days, it certainly can be from a large national chef or a small locally owned restaurant or even in supermarkets. Also, fine dining seems to not be driving the trends the way it used to and the majority of trends appear to be coming from either supermarkets or diets.

The winter that would never end has finally come to a close. For most, it has been a slow start for the spring event season. Cash flow has been tight but now with the weather is finally turning warmer and business is picking up. You are getting requests for Chiavari chairs, tables and porcelain products you don’t have in stock. If you don’t buy them now you may lose the business to a competitor.

Not to worry, we have just the solution you need, Lease Financing for all your event equipment purchase requirements. Lease financing your purchase from a reputable leasing company is a great way to spread out large purchase costs over time to more closely match the sales the product will help you make. Lease terms typically range from 1 year to 5 years and some leasing companies will step payments up or down based on any seasonal fluctuations you may want to adjust payment for.

If you’ve been operating your Event Rental business for a number of years, leasing approval will generally be much quicker and easier than anything you might consider doing with your bank.

A sample of monthly payments from one of the Lease Financing companies.

Because we deal with a large number of party rental companies coast to coast across Canada, many of whom are making large purchases of Chiavari Chairs, Folding Tables or new porcelain dinnerware, we have become familiar with a number of lease financing companies who are very easy to deal with, professional and help to make our customer’s lives easier. Here’s a list to help you out:

1. Easylease Corp:

Easylease Corporation is a Canadian-based equipment leasing and finance company. They offer a full range of credit solutions to help you stretch your money, including equipment leasing, lease lines of credit, factoring, and term loans.

2. Jacova Financial:

Jacova Financial provides equipment leasing and financing solutions to small and medium sized businesses across a variety of industries. They offer industry leading equipment financing and also offer other services including vendor finance, corporate finance, transportation finance and insurance and financial services.

3. Pacific Sun Leasing:

Based in Kelowna, BC, Pacific Sun Leasing has been in business over 15 years helping a wide range of businesses locally and across Canada. They specialize in equipment leasing, and offer highly personalized service, a quick turnaround, and competitive pricing.

4. Lease-Line:

Lease-line has been providing uninterrupted equipment leasing services since 1985. The principals of the company are also the founders and have been in the equipment leasing industry since 1975. They’ve earned the trust of thousands of lessees and numerous vendors with their excellent equipment leasing service.

5. RoyNat Lease Finance:

Roynat Lease Finance is wholly owned by The Bank of Nova Scotia and, along with Scotia Leasing, is part of the Scotiabank Leasing Group. The Scotiabank Leasing Group is a single funding source for all sizes of leasing transactions, while Roynat’s focus is on the small to mid-ticket market.

Hopefully these 5 lease financing companies can provide you with the knowledge and security in being able to synchronize your purchase cost more finely tuned with your revenue earned.