Blog posts tagged with 'nes news'

Welcome to our 100th Blog Entry! To honour this momentous occasion, we've put together a stress test video for our 8-ft Rectangular Plastic Folding Table. It's been about two months since we posted our last stress test video blog on our Tall NES Reliable Round Plastic Folding Cocktail Table. Plastic folding rectangular tables are a staple of the rental industry, and the 8-ft is far and away the most popular size for our rental customers and our banquet hall customers. NES Reliable Rectangular Plastic Folding Tables are commercial grade tables, and, as you can see from the video, are capable of holding an incredible amount of weight!

Image courtesy of Grant Cochrane / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

New Product Spring 2013 continues here at National Event Supply. So far this spring, we've introduced our New Folding Pedestal Table, our new wood Serpentine Tables, our new Wood 60inch Half-Moon tables, our new Wood Harvest Tables, and our new Polar White Dinnerware. The products just keep coming as containers arrive at our facilities in Vancouver and Toronto. And we're still not done. We have new colours of Plastic Folding Chairs coming including Wedding White on White, Royal Blue on Grey and Black on Grey. Finally, we have some new Natural Wood Folding Chairs on order.

Recently we took delivery of some cutlery that we had eagerly been awaiting: a Small Amuse Bouche Fork and a Small Amuse Bouche Spoon. Amuse Bouch Spoons and Forks are meant for single bite hors, d'ouevres. Unlike appetizers which customers order, Amuse Bouch or "mouth amusers" tend to be the chef's choice and provide a glimpse into the chef's technique and style. We've had a large Amuse Bouche Spoon in inventory since last spring. It's 5.25 inches long by 1.625 inches wide by 1.625 inches tall with a bowl roughly the same size as a tablespoon. It has been popular with several of our customers, and has been a nice alternative to our Porcelain Wonton Spoon. However, several of our customers asked if we had a smaller version of the spoon, and whether we had a smaller amuse bouch fork. We didn't at the time, but we do now.

The Small Amuse Bouche Spoon is 3.625 inches by 1.125 inches by 1.25 inches and has a bowl that is somewhere in size between a Mocca Spoon and a Teaspoon. It's ideal for that perfect little morsel that highlight your chef's ability to pack flavour and texture into a little bundle of joy. The Small Amuse Bouche Fork is 4.375 inches by 1 inch by 1.25 inches with tines that are 1.25 inches long. They are somewhere in size between a cake fork and a salad/dessert fork. If your chef wants to show off his ability to prepare small, savoury pieces of meat to awaken your customer's tastebuds, this is the utensil to serve them on. All of our amuse bouche spoons and forks are made of 18/10 Stainless Steel meaning they will keep their shine through use, washing, drying and storage. They are available by the dozen and are attractively priced.

February was a busy month for National Event Supply – with multiple containers arriving at our Vancouver and Toronto warehouses containing many products including our NES Wood Cruiser Tables as well as having our largest presence ever at the 2013 Rental Show in Las Vegas. It's also been a big month in the hospitality, party rental and food service industries so check out the articles below for a round up of some of the biggest articles of the month.

In an age of convenience, it comes as no surprise that wanting a little bit of everything has bled into the event and catering industries. Special Events Magazine wrote a fantastic article showcasing the response a number of caterers have shown to the new 'a la carte' wedding menu trend. It seems today's bridal couples are upping the requirements of caterers wanting numerous different ethnicities and foods instead of one common food heritage. Check out the article to hear more about the different responses to the rise in 'a la carte' requests with creativity, service and presentation.

Today's human resources requirements are upping the ante for many businesses making it hard for the solely owned, or independently operated businesses such as event rental companies, caterers, and restaurants to compete in finding top talent. Rental Management Magazine wrote a wonderful article to address this challenge by including practical tips including evaluating an applicant against four general levels of motivation in finding a job. To read the rest of the tips, check out the article to learn how to not only find top talent but attract them as well.

It seems that new and beneficial technology tools are being invented every day. Canadian Rental Service wrote an article on new online tools that could help those in the rental service industry improve their website. Not only does the article showcase some cool new tools that could significantly improve customer service on your website, it also offers tips for improving web experience, leading to greater customer retention and competitive differentiation. Check out the article to learn more tips and tricks to engage your website as a powerful tool to exploit new and unfound business.

Ask any marketer out there and you'll get notoriously mixed reviews on buying email lists to gain new subscribers. But if you can't buy a list to help garner additional followers, what can you do? Check out this article from MarketingProfs on how to gain subscribers without buying email lists.

Ensuring your operating costs are sound is becoming more and more of a challenge due to increasing costs, bargain seeking and socially connected customers. Restaurant Central wrote a blog post on how to reduce inventory control losses at your restaurant which stated the average bar or restaurant is losing 10% of its beverages and 15% of its food to variance and shrinkage—crippling and unsustainable losses. Read the rest of the blog post to learn more about what to do to reduce inventory control losses.

To round off our post, I thought a little social media humour would lighten everyone's day a little bit. Marketo created an infographic on the buzzwords the social media marketer seems to encounter which is sure to provide some amusement and laughs to your day – I present to you the social marketer’s urban twictionary. "What can I say? I'm attwicted."

Have a great week and be sure to check back next month for our monthly round up of articles!

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