Area Focus: Coventry - Mid Warks - North Warks - South Warks - Rugby
Coventry & Warwickshire in business
Coventry four-star hotel looking for more recipes to success The chefs have had a lot of fun making their own family recipes but now they are asking customers to contribute their own favourites. General Manager Amy Windsor said: “The period features of the Telegraph create a peaceful space for people to relax, lounging in the comfy sofas and now have granny’s cake to finish off the experience.
The stylish four-star Telegraph Hotel in Corporation Street already has an enviable reputation for its homemade cakes – and now it is asking customers and locals to provide inspiration for further sweet treats. The hotel, which was listed by the Sunday Times as one of the top 100 in the UK, has a thriving café lounge and in recent months the kitchen team has been providing a range of cakes and biscuits for free to customers with their hot drinks.
“Our very talented kitchen team, led by head chef Luke Wignall, create an array of different cakes and sweet treats, often from old family recipes or recreating their childhood favourites. These have ranged from Great Granny Marge’s shortbread – which is my favourite – through to the classic Battenburg. “The ‘coffee club’ has gone down really well with guests, people just popping in to have a coffee and regulars meeting up with friends. We have had the occasional recipe request from customers in the past which we have produced, but we now want to take it a stage further.
“We would love people to send us some of their favourite recipes for cakes. They might be from their childhood, something they have made themselves, or once eaten and really loved. “Our kitchen team will then go through the suggestions, assess which ones would be most popular and are practical for us to create, and then start testing them. “We will then let people know when we are serving their particular recipe, and they will be able to pop in and have complimentary tea or coffee – and of course a slice of their particular cake.” People can send their recipes or suggestions to info@telegraph-hotel.com The Telegraph Hotel, which has 88 individually designed air-conditioned bedrooms including loft-style penthouse suites, has an all-day cocktail bar and restaurant that features a seasonal and locally-sourced menu, rooftop bar with views over Belgrade Plaza and versatile function rooms that can cater for up to 140 guests for conferences, weddings and parties.
Youth homeless charity teams with tech company on project St Basils, a youth homeless charity based in the West Midlands, has teamed up with Decision Lab, an award-winning technology company that solves real-world challenges for some of the biggest and most respected businesses in the UK, to work on a project that will help develop their understanding of the factors that influences positive outcomes for the young people they support. The aim of this project is to identify if there are inherent characteristics about young people that make it more or less likely that they will get good outcomes after working with St Basils. They also aim to see if there are aspects of the way St Basils interacts with young people that make it more or less likely they will get good outcomes.
Chris Harper, Director of operational support for St Basils, said: “We dipped our toe into the waters of data science and machine learning with the wonderful Data Science for Social Good programme in 2022, where they investigated the factors that led to different probabilities for the young people we work with. “Whilst it gave us some good insights, we also realised that maybe we weren’t framing the problem correctly, so the opportunity to work with Decision Lab on this same problem with a more coherent data set and more nuanced outcomes was too good to miss.” David Buxton, CEO of Decision Lab, said: “We are proud to be partnering with St Basils to help tackle youth homelessness because we believe in their multifaceted and integrated approach to addressing this complex issue.
“We are impressed by their focus on long-term impact for individuals, and their commitment to collecting data to track their progress and inform their work. We believe that our data analysis skills in machine learning, simulation, and optimisation are a natural fit for supporting St Basils in their work, and we are excited to work with them to support and discover ways to help young people avoid homelessness.” It is hoped that that the results of this work will be another step along St Basils’ journey in using evidence-based analysis to shape their work.
Union Streat Café is now open! CU London (Dagenham) Campus over the past 12 months. This opportunity is more than just a catering unit. It’s about creating an environment, an event space, and an opportunity for the Students’ Union to directly support the cost of living crisis for students and the wider community.
Coventry University Students’ Union’s new café, which operates from a container located in Starley Gardens (Cox St), is open. This venture is in collaboration with NUS and while being new to Coventry since February, it’s been built on the success of the same partnership which has been operating Union Streat Kitchen at the
www.cw-chamber.co.uk
having a stall located at the station. If your business would be interested in potentially operating this type of complimentary pop-up with our café, please email commercial.su@coventry.ac.uk as we are looking to offer a variety of events.
Addressing the COL impact is one of the three strategic pillars. We’re providing a range of products costing £1 or less, including freshly baked (and large) sausage rolls, a range of teas and other hot food. There will be regular offers for students, staff and the community too.
The final pillar is being able to use our business model to provide suitably priced hospitality. This will provide a benefit internally for the Students’ Union where catering has had to be sourced externally for events which ultimately costs students through the cost of tickets. Having this as a provision is therefore a service we can offer for external partners as well.
Another pillar behind this new venture is authentic collaboration with local businesses (SMEs). The first example of this in action is a new partnership with Wicked Cookies which is operating a weekly pop-up on Tuesdays, returning to Coventry after previously
As already mentioned we are curated and staffed by students, primarily for our students but we are open to the public too. We hope to see you join us as the weather improves in the beautiful surroundings of Starley Gardens.
Business booming for healthy nut bar firm Staggering sales of healthy nut bars have forced a start-up firm to redraw its business plans. Orders from wholesalers in mainland Europe, health firm chains and large food distribution companies in the UK have swamped Stratford-on-Avon based Global Fruit and Nuts just months after the firm launched its Exotic range of nut bars. Now the firm is looking to appointed regional representatives across the UK as the appetite for healthy eating has taken off and caught the firm by surprise. Hassan Miremadi, Global Fruit & Nuts Managing Director, said he’s staggered at the speed at which the business has taken off. “We had a business roll-out plan but demand and reaction to our product has been so great we are having to rethink. “I have a staff of three here in Stratford but now we realise we need to have regional salespeople across the UK to help us cope. It’s been a breath-taking start to a start-up business and exceeded our wildest dreams.” His new firm was invited to take part in the three-day UK Food & Drink Show at the NEC, Birmingham in April. The flagship trade show is held in association with The Grocer magazine. The Exotic nut bar range won its first major order from the 132-strong Grape Tree health chain and has been followed by Aytac, a specialist Turkish, Arab, Mediterranean and Caribbean food cash and carry firm which distributes to more than 1,500 shops in the UK. Faron Trading, one of Holland’s major food distributors, became the first mainland Europe firm to place an order for Exotic bars and a representative has now been appointed for the brand in Denmark. Stratford-on-Avon Golf Club is the first of a number of sports clubs and leisure centres in the UK to order the nut bars. While Hassan’s head office staff concentrate on wholesale business, the company has now launched a website where small retailers, clubs and leisure centres can order direct online at www.uknuts.co.uk He said: “We need agents in every region of the country because, although the interest in the brand is of course wonderful, my small head office staff just can’t keep up. “Once people taste the quality of our product they are won over. Healthy snack bars don’t have to be dull and boring and ours are packed with goodness and flavour.” Hassan’s family can trace its connections with nuts back hundreds of years to the fertile plains of Persia, now modern-day Iran. On his 500-acre farm in Abadeh, Iran, Hassan has planted 100,000 pistachio trees. Hassan’s family opened a food factory in Iran in 1956 to process raisons. Now there are seven production sites which process and pack nuts, dried fruits, herbal tea and honey. He moved to the UK in 1960 to study business at the University of Westminster and liked Britain so much he decided to stay. His international business currently employs three people in Stratford-Upon-Avon and 20 farm workers in Iran.
35