Blog posts tagged with 'products in action'

Although this isn’t the 100th blog post (it’s the 102nd), we wanted to mark the occasion of our 100th blog post. It’s been a little over 2 years since we revised the website and introduced our blog. During that time, we’ve introduced dozens of new products, travelled North America visiting trade shows from Vancouver to New Orleans and from Toronto to Las Vegas. All of which is incredible blogging material!

NEW PRODUCTS

Just recently, we’ve introduced our Mahogany Resin Folding Chair and our Polar White Dinnerware. Last fall, we added Wing Bowls and Wood Harvest Tables at the request of customers who had a need for these products. Last summer we began offering our new Crystal Stemware and Glass Stemware to great demand. The common denominator for all these products is that we introduced them in our blog before we managed to get individual product pages up. The blog is the perfect place get your first glance at our new Chiavari Chair Cart and our new amuse bouche fork and spoon.

In the future, we’ll continue introducing our new products on our blog. In addition, we’ll be providing information about our existing products, like our beautiful selection of Champagne Fountains, Chocolate Fountains, and Cupcake Stands. We’ll also be doing more videos showing how strong our products are by show just what it takes to destroy them.

NEW LANGUAGE

We teased a French version of our website about a month ago. Now we ready to launch it! We’re initially launching the product pages first, and we hope to add translated versions of blog articles within a day of the English language blog article being posted. The translation of the website is all due to the hard work of our French sales rep Stephanie Loiselle. She has put long hours into first translating the website and then fixing any errors I may have introduced pulling the pages together. Merci Beaucoup, Stephanie!

It's been a little over a month since we posted our last stress test video blog on our NES Reliable Square Plastic Folding Card Table. It's taken us a little time to get back into the swing of things, but we have a new stress test video—this time starring our Tall NES Reliable Round Plastic Folding Cocktail Tables. We love this high top table and are frequently asked just how much weight it will hold—so now it is time to find out! How much weight will it take to cause the high top table to collapse? Will Dennis make our Resin Chiavari Chair Collapse when he stands on it holding a 20kg bag of road salt?? Can I come up with a third question that's halfway reasonable??? Apparently not, but you should watch the video and find out just what it takes to break a Tall NES Reliable Round Plastic Folding Cocktail Table!

Now that you've see just how strong our NES Reliable Round Plastic Folding Cocktail Tables are, if you have any questions about them, please feel free to contact one of our incredible sales reps. They'd be happy to answer any questions you might have about our Cocktail tables or any of our other fine products!

Image courtesy of Grant Cochrane / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Tuesday evening was the third CRA Ontario event/meeting of the fall season. Dennis and I attended the meeting which was hosted by Uniquip at their Ontario location located at 2625 Meadowpine Drive in Mississauga, just off of Highway 401.

Uniquip is one of Canada’s premiere suppliers to the equipment rental industry providing a wide range of products including generators, pressure washers, flooring equipment, construction, and compaction equipment. Uniquip has been in business for over 35 years, and has been owned by the John Brooks Company since 1996. John Brooks will be celebrating their 75th year of existence in 2013 and recently merged their Canadian operations under the Uniquip brand to provide better service and support for the rental market.

The meeting drew quite a large crowd, probably one of the highest turnouts in recent years. It was great seeing Tony and Michelle from D & D Party and Tent Rental. They provided tables and linens for the CRA Meeting at no charge. It's great to see such comraderie and makes us proud to be a member of such a great organization. Upstairs in the conference room, I ran into Kim and Shannon from Muskoka Party Rentals in Bracebridge, Ontario. It was good to see them, especially since it is quite a long trip for them. After a short conversation, we were invited to take a tour of the Uniquip Warehouse.

The Uniquip warehouse has about 60,000sq feet of floor space and a very impressive clear height that allows for 6 levels high of racking. The warehouse includes lots of racking for product storage, a staging area for orders, a product assembly area, and a testing area.

Click to enlarge pictures.

After the tour we were taken back to the conference room where Mike Maltby (President of the CRA Ontario and owner of Ingersoll Rent-All Inc) talked about the schedule of upcoming events, the most significant of which will be the 2013 CRA Ontario Tabletop Show which is to be held at Nottawasaga Inn Resort in Alliston, Ontario on Saturday, January 19, 2013. The Tabletop show is a great way to see all the leading suppliers to the party rental and equipment rental industry in one location and to share stories with your peers. After the Tabletop show there will be an evening banquet dinner followed by some great entertainment.

We then proceeded to a great buffet dinner that was prepared by Teatro Conference & Event Centre in Milton. We were served roasted to perfection roast beef and a collection of incredible side dishes. It wasn't until we were eating our dinner that Dennis and I realized we were sitting at our 60" round plywood folding tables. When we usually see the tables, they're stacked on a skid waiting to be shipped to one our fantastic customers. It was a great opportunity to see some of our products in action!

After dinner we were entertained and informed by Joe Ellers on 'How to Make it Happen with Proactive Sales Strategies'. Joe has more than 25 years of sales experience and talked about ways every one of the businesses in attendance could do simple little things that would dramatically improve company’s sales. The highlights of Joe’s presentation were:

1. Define what you want more of—This of course would be SALES! But make sure you are specific with this Goal.
2. Put together a Target Account list that includes both your existing Customers and New prospects
3. Set up outbound calendars—this is so your staff schedules calls: phone or in-person. And it doesn’t have to be only for your sales people.
4. Start Tracking Your Opportunities—You can’t grow what you don’t track or measure.

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.