Blog posts tagged with 'caterers'

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.

Spring continues to roll on here at National Event Supply. We received containers at both our Vancouver and Toronto warehouses and in each case they brought us products that we didn't have in stock. At our Toronto Warehouse, we received a shipment of wood cruiser tables, and at our Vancouver location we received three new wood tables: NES Wood Serpentine Folding Tables, 5-ft NES Wood Half-Moon Folding Tables, and 8-ft NES Wood Folding Harvest Tables.

We've had NES Wood Cruiser Tables in our Toronto for almost two years now. Available in three sizes (24 inch, 30 inch, and 36 inch), two shapes (square and round), and two heights (29 inch and 42.5 inch), you can mix and match the qualities you want to get the tables that you need. Each table set comes with the desired table top size and shape, the pole that you need for the table height you want, a steel connector which gets screwed to the underside of the table top and a base with adjustable feet and a polished top. All of the piece can be bought seperately, and if you want both tall poles and short poles, we can do that to. We'll be filling backorders as the week goes on, so if you interested in getting some of these tables for your summer weddings, you should act now.

In Vancouver, we will be receiving three new wood tables which we have never stocked in any of our warehouses. The first of these is a 60 inch half-moon table. This is basically a 60 inch diameter table that is cut in half. These are commercial quality tables, that feature super-strong steel legs, and Canadian plywood tops. The legs on the table are narrower than on a standard 60 inch diameter and are located along the straight edge of the half-circle. Like our other wood tables, the NES 60 Inch Wood Half-Moon Folding Tables feature legs and support beams that are bolted through the table top. We'll be getting some of these tables in our Toronto warehouse in the next couple of weeks, and as soon as I have some pictures I'll be posting them to Twitter and Facebook!

The second table we'll be receiving in Vancouver is our new NES Wood Serpentine Folding Tables. These tables have an out diameter of 10 feet and an inner diameter of five feet. Again, these tables are commercial grade with grey steel legs and Canadian plywood tops. The legs and support beams are bolted through the top for extra strength and the table top is clear-coated to keep it looking great. We'll also be getting some NES Wood Serpentine Tables in our Toronto Warehouse in the next couple of weeks and I'll be posting pictures of this fantastic table as soon as I have them.

The final table is going to be a Vancouver exclusive for the next month or two. We've been asked by customers for a wider "harvest" table, and we've managed to get our factory to produce one that we're happy with. With a wider table, you need to make sure that the supports and legs can handle the extra weight. The NES Wood Harvest Folding Table can handle the extra weight with no problems. It features enhanced supports to keep the table stable even under the heaviest loads. The table itself is 96 inches long and 42 inches wide, allowing for additional table room during family-style meals.

It's that time of year again. That's right, it's time for The Rental Show in beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada. The National Event Supply Trade Show Team managed to fly out of snow-bound Toronto on Saturday, only 5 and half hours later than they'd planned and got to The Sands Expo and Convention Centre to set up our booth. This year, we have the biggest booth we've ever had and it's filled with our fantastic NES Reliable Plastic Folding Chairs, our durable NES Wood Tables, and several new product lines like our Eclisse and Copa Glassware and our Polar White dinnerware. Our NES Trade Show Team will be on hand to help answer any questions that you may have and to show you all the great features of our many products. So, if you're in Las Vegas for the show, head on down to booth 4072 and talk to Dennis, Diana, Bill, or Jonathan and find out why you always win with National Event Supply!

We've been working on our website revamp for the past 3 months, and have finally managed to get things tested and up on our live site. We've gotten rid of the bright green sidebars from the previous version, and have updated the base to make the website more friendly for touchscreen based devices like the Apple iPhone and iPad, the Blackberry Playbook, the Microsoft Surface, and Android based phones and tables. With the new website framework, you'll be able to see larger pictures of our products by clicking on links or the picture itself. We think we've gotten most of the bugs out, but if you do run into any, please do let us know!

While we achieved our goal of making the website for touchscreen/mobile device, we're still in the process of making our website bilingual. We're currently working on putting together a French version of our website, complete with all the bells and whistles. Stephanie has put together translations of all of our website pages, and we hope to be able to launch the French version of the website by the end of February. We'll be updating our blog, our twitter feed, and our facebook friends when the French version of the site goes live.

As always if you're interested in a quote for any of our products, or you simply have a question, please feel free to drop us a line. Just as a reminder, February 18th is Family Day in Ontario, and as such we will be closed that day. Our Ontario-based shipping partners will also be closed that day, so if you are looking for products that week you may want to get your order in early.

As one of Canada’s leading Party Rental suppliers, we try to make sure that we have sales representation from coast to coast across Canada. To help us with sales representation we signed a strategic sales agreement with AE Sales Group 2 years ago which gives us sales coverage in western Canada (BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Northwest Ontario) and with their partner Certified Sales we also get coverage for the Maritime provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and PEI. Every few months I get the chance to travel with one of the AE Sales team members to do some joint customer calls in various locations across Canada.

This past week I was once again in Vancouver, this time so that we could exhibit at the BC Foodservice Expo at the Vancouver Convention Centre. Since I was already in town I thought this was also a great opportunity to meet a few of our customers in the surrounding Lower Vancouver mainland area. Tony Shelling, one of the partners at AE Sales and I travelled throughout the Vancouver lower mainland area on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday so we could meet with a few of our customers and in couple of cases to deliver a free NES Reliable Tall Folding Cocktail Table. Two weeks earlier we exhibited at the CRA BC Regional Show and for those customers that met with us at our booth with a post card that we sent our prior to the show, we were giving them a NES Reliable Tall Folding Cocktail Table for FREE. We had such a great response that we ran out of tables at the show and had to deliver a few this week.

The first customer we met with on Tuesday was with Peggy and Angie from The Rental Network in Squamish, BC. As Tony and I were meeting with Peggy and Angie, they were squeezing in a quick lunch and answering customer phone calls the whole time we were visiting which was almost 2 hours. They were pleased to hear that we are bringing in a new size of NES Wood Folding Table that is 8ft x 42 inches wide and we will be stocking it in Vancouver (as well as Toronto). The Rental Network have a bunch of tables that they have custom made that are 8ft x 40 inches wide that they call Harvest Tables. Tony and I saw their Harvest Tables and they are absolutely gorgeous.

On Wednesday we met with Shane and Kwin at Salmon Rentals who were interested in talking to us about our NES Reliable Resin Chiavari Chairs. Since we had just shown these chairs at the BC Foodservice Expo, Tony and I stopped by our Vancouver area warehouse (which is on Annacis Island) to pick up the sample NES Reliable Resin Chiavari Chairs to show Salmon’s Rentals. Everyone was impressed with how durable our NES Reliable Resin Chiavari Chairs are while still maintaining their traditional elegant look. Later in the day we then went to see the new showroom and warehouse location for Pedersen's Event Rentals. Pedersen’s were just in the process of completing their move from their old Burnaby location back into Vancouver where they had been 14 years earlier. The new location fronts right on the Fraser River and gives the Pedersen’s lots of room for more growth.

On Thursday, we were visiting a bunch of our Customers in the Port Coquitlam, Pitt Meadows, Maple Ridge, Langley and White Rock. While we were in Maple Ridge, we stopped in to see Denise and Dave at Bob’s A to Z Rentals. Denise was ecstatic with how quick we were able to ship their order of NES Wood Folding Tables and NES Reliable Plastic Folding Chairs from our Vancouver warehouse in the fall of 2012. While thanking them for their business, Denise mentioned she was interested in seeing some of our Hotelier Dishes and our Eclisse Glass Stemware. In Langley, we stopped in to see the team at Turkey’s Party Makers to show them a range of our highly durable dinnerware lines with them being most interested in our Ovali Line as well as our newest Polar White Dinnerware line.

This was our 4th year of exhibiting at the BC Foodservice Expo and each year we see a few more of our Customers throughout the Vancouver region. Outside of Southern Ontario, BC has been our largest base of customers. Now that we have a physical warehouse presence in the Vancouver region, our customers are excited that they will be able to purchase a wide selection of our NES Plywood Folding Tables, NES Reliable Plastic Folding Tables, NES Reliable Plastic Folding Chairs, and NES Resin Folding Chairs. With their close proximity to our Annacis Island warehouse, many of them will be able to pick up directly from the warehouse while others will benefit from much lower shipping rates.

"Vancouver Skyline And Stanley Park" courtesy of Rosemary Ratcliff / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The National Event Supply Trade Show Team were out in Vancouver again this weeked for the BC Foodservice Expo. We spent Saturday morning setting up the booth and then spent the afternoon exploring the city of Vancouver. We decided to go to Granville Island to check out the sights and experience more of Vancouver than their gorgeous convention centre. Granville Island in the middle of the city and there are tons of great restaurants to go to, a public market, a number of art galleries, the Emily Carr University of Art & Design as well as a number of other artisan studios. You can also visit an active micro brewery, The Granville Island Brewery. Granville Island has incredible views of the surrounding cityscape and there are yachts of every shape and size at water’s edge all around the island. It was quite busy for a cool, cloudy, winter day and I could only imagine how busy it would be in the summertime.

After strolling around for a while, we decided to go to Bridges Restaurant for lunch and enjoyed the Dine Out promotion. This two week program offers special lunch and dinner menus at a reduced price. For $20 I enjoyed a mixed garden salad, salmon on a bed of fettuccini and for dessert a Oreo Cookie Gelato. Jonathan had the same salad and dessert as I had, but had a Pulled Pork sandwich. Since we had such a busy morning setting our booth up for the BC Foodservice Expo we also decided to enjoy a pitcher of Granville Island Lager. You can tell by the smile on Jonathan’s face it was going down very well! We would both give the restaurant a 5 out for 5 for the lunches we were served. Service was great as well.

The BC Foodservice expo opened on Sunday at 11:00am with great fanfare and lots of activity around the BC Chefs Hot Competition. Our booth was in a great position with big Hospitality foodservice distributor Sysco across the aisle from us and Dudson China just around the corner at the end of the next aisle. We had great traffic for most of the day with Nahar from Discount Party Rentals coming from Abbotsford to take a look at our Quadrato Dinnerware, our Maria 18/10 Cutlery, and our wood folding tables. He was particularly pleased to hear we are now stocking a wide range of our wood and plastic folding tables and our plastic folding chairs and white resin folding chairs in Vancouver.

Later in the day we met with Charlie Huang of Peaceful Restaurant. Charlie was excited to discover how cost effective it is to buy square dinnerware like our Quadrato dinnerware from National Event Supply and discussed the possibility of working with NES to develop custom branded plates for his restaurant. While speaking with Charlie we found our that he was the only Chinese restaurant to appear on Diners, Drive-in & Dives with host Guy Fieri. Here’s the link to the show episode of Charlie appearing on Diners, Drive-ins & Dives.

All in all, we had a great time at the BC Foodservice Expo, and can hardly wait to get back to Vancouver again next year. If you couldn't make it to the show and you're interested in one of our catalogues, please fill out this form and we'd be happy to send you out a copy!