bright blue skies » Food Sector

Great Taste Awards – my Top Tips for entering

Webmaster — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 14:11:47 +0000

Last year I wrote about my experience of being one of the Great Taste Award judges and the judging process. If you are thinking of entering this year then you should read it to understand how the judging works.

Peters Yard Crispbread, awarded 2 gold stars in 2010

Being awarded a star (or stars) is fantastic and will give your sales and business a real boost. But what should you think about before entering and which products should you enter? Here’s MY thoughts:

First a reminder of the judging process:

It’s really intense 4 people have to taste about 25 products in a 2 hour session as well as anything that’s referred over to them the adjudicators table.
We don’t taste all of one kind of thing together usually so its not all confectionary or all jam or all cake; its ham, chocolate, bread, cake, drinks etc etc. A real mixture.
Its not a comparative tasting i.e we don’t say oh is X’s pie better than Y’s pie we are looking simply at whether it tastes ‘WOW’
We don’t know where things are from so packaging is irrelevant. However beautiful your packaging is it doesn’t matter the judges don’t see it.
We do look at the product before we taste so there is an element of is it visually appealing, is it what we might expect from e.g. a raspberry jam, a Victoria Sponge, a sausage roll.
Only one person on a table needs to think something good enough for it to be passed to the adjudicators and other tables for further tasting…and confirmation of a star rating or not.
Its actually very easy to spot what’s good despite the mount of stuff you taste. The good stuff stands out.

So in choosing what to enter the following really matter:

that it tastes ace
that it looks the part as a product i.e. not messy or collapsing or soggy
that its entered in the right category because we know what category it’s in so we do ask is this what someone expects when they pick up a jar of X or buys a slice of Y
packaging doesn’t matter at all - we don’t see it

So I would say you should:

enter products that people say WOW at most often
unless you are simply after feedback (which is potentially worth it because you get feedback on each entry albeit pithy) rather than a star don’t send anything you’ve not perfected in your own opinion (and I think there are better ways to get good feedback in the early stages of developing products)
if your products comes as a selection pack e.g. chocolates its better to send a particular flavour or two rather than a selection box. Its harder to judge a selection and therefore you might be less likely to get a star
remember it really is about the wow taste rather than what’s super creative or cutting edge flavour wise so something simple has as much chance of winning as something on trend
you don’t get marked down for wackiness if we pop it in our mouths and swoon you’ll get stars, simple or cutting edge
for a small producer an absolute maximum of four entries probably makes sense cost wise so pick your top 4 taste wise and send those, other products can wait until next year. If you only have four products then just enter the best one.
if your product needs to be matured to taste good make sure you will have enough at the right stage of maturity when the entry has to be sent in for judging. The number of under matured chutney’s and pickles I tasted last year still makes me shudder.

Thats about it – its quite simple really the judges are looking for stuff that tastes amazing, to get three stars though it really is a lot of people swooning.

I look forward to tasting your entries this year when I join the judging panel.

Enter the GTA Awards here.

Photo courtesy of Peters Yard. You can buy their award winning crispbreads in delis and foodhalls across the UK and online.

Peters Yard are a client of Bright Blue Skies Ltd.

Getting it right on twitter no.1

Webmaster — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:23:50 +0000

On Friday I spotted the beginning of a great example of how to use Twitter if you are a small business…and over the weekend I watched as it grew and engaged people’s imagination and captured attention.

Sarah, from Brays Cottage, is a good person to follow if you want to learn how to get twitter right. Last year she was selected as one of the Top 100 Social Brands . She tweets a great blend of interesting stuff about life as a small business, what Brays Cottage is up to and general chat as well as engaging with other users. She’s one of the accounts I recommend people look at for ‘how to do it well’… (it does help that she sells wonderful pork pies, a great product does make for slightly easier tweeting).

So back to that brilliant example….

the #pieku as it became known

It started as a question from Sarah about pies in nursery rhymes and quickly morphed into the idea of writing haiku about pies – hence #pieku. You can see a bit about how that happened in this post from Vivia who was instrumental in getting the idea off its feet.

Never one to miss a great opportunity Sarah then turned it into a competition with a prize of a personalised large pie for the best #pieku and with that her twitter chums were off coming up with mini poems a plenty.

By 6.45 pm Saturday there were 100 #pieku and plenty more comments and retweets helping to keep the momentum going. By Sunday (and the close of the competition) this had more than tripled.

Of the total number of tweets with the hashtag about 1/5 of them were original poems for the competition the rest comments and retweets spreading the word.

The winning entry was selected by Sarah and her team:

A flinty sea falls.
Scents of lemon and chilli
Rise from Brays Cottage.

by @yyadiloh

So what was so great and why did it take off?

Simplicity

Easy to fit in the 140 character limit

a distinctive hashtag created early on

lots of fun

a good prize

timing – a relatively short time frame to enter and as it was the weekend people prepared to have fun play

Sarah said:

“Pieku has been my idea of what Twitter is for – lots of people enjoyed it and I enjoyed it. It was interactive, creative, inclusive and the result of friendship and team work. Pieku landed from nowhere in our lap and took on a vivid and unstoppable life force! It was more of a community art project than anything – but it’s exactly the sort of thing we love and, if Bray’s Cottage as a brand has a personality, association in people’s minds with mad, funny, foodie and heartfelt poems is just what we’d like that personality to be.”

I couldn’t agree more. A fantastic use of twitter.

Credits: photos copyright Brays Cottage

Great Taste Awards: being a judge

Webmaster — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 11:21:02 +0000

So the Great Taste Awards for 2011 have been announced and out of 7482 entries there were:

1686 1 star

608 2 star and

114 3 star products

and we have still to find out who the regional winners and grand champion for the year are.

That’s not that many stars really is it, just under 1/3 of entries.

So anyone who got stars should be celebrating a fantastic achievement and

….when the they’ve had chance to catch breath planning how to maximise the benefits that being a GTA star product can bring.

And for those who didn’t get stars or got some but not for all their entries well then there is perhaps some thinking to do about how or whether to tweak the product in the hope of futures stars.

With this in mind I thought it would help anyone who has entered or thought about entering or even decided not to enter to tell you a bit about the judging process from the perspective of being a judge.

This year I was part of the team of judges for the 4 ½ days of judging in London. It was my first time as a judge and it was fascinating. Here I’m going to share with you how the judging process works and I’m also planning a post on top tips and things to consider.

Each day a whole range of products are amassed for the judges to try. Judges are grouped on tables of 4 or 5 and have roughly 25 items to taste in a 2 hour session. Well that’s the items allocated to a table but actually you taste more that that because as soon as something is thought star worthy it passes round other tables to be assessed and also to the moderators table. All items are tasted blind, the judges don’t know who the producer is just the category and a short description.

Each table has a real mixture of items of sweet, savoury, drinks, cold, hot. At first this feels like it won’t make sense but actually works well because your palate doesn’t get raspberry jam fatigue or similar. The variety means that you can taste everything properly and therefore assess it properly. And the tasting blind means you can’t judge based on branding just simply on taste.

So the judges taste each item and really you know pretty much straight away if you think something is star worthy. The table chats about what they think so we can leave (hopefully) useful feedback even if there are no stars. And if JUST ONE PERSON on a table thinks something is star worthy then off it goes for further assessment. The whole table doesn’t have to agree (often it does but not always) if one person thinks its star quality then it goes off. I think this is really important because people have different palates and the one person rule means its very unlikely that something fab gets missed.

The table send it out with a suggested number of stars BUT can’t send it out suggesting 3, the maximum you can suggest is 2 with a possibility it might merit three. Off it then goes around the room and to the moderators and finally comes back with a star rating, sometimes though it comes back with a ‘no we didn’t think it worth a star’. Its been tasted by at least 12 people to get to this stage and more to get awarded 2 or 3 stars.

Why are so few stars awarded compared to entries? Does this means there is lots of rubbish entered? No. The vast majority of what is entered is of a very high standard and in fact the assumption is that everything is star worthy (that’s why the producer entered it) and we ‘grade’ from that position up or down.

The point though is that to have any stars we have to be going:

‘wow what is this? I want to know where to get it. I love it’

not simply ‘oh that’s quite nice’

and for 2 stars its ‘I REALLY need to know what this is and I’d go out of my way to track it down’

and 3 is ‘wow wow wow can I steal the sample and take it home, this is amazing, I’d knock people out of the way to get my hands on this’.

So lots of the products are very nice but far fewer meet the real wow factor…so if you have stars you really should be thrilled because you genuinely have got a great tasting product. If you didn’t get stars then the feedback should give you a feel as to how close you might have been, it won’t say explicitly but the comments will help you know. In 4 ½ days I only encountered a handful of really not great product out of what must have been 300+ things I tasted.

And when you taste a 3 star it really does stand out and of course when one is confirmed the whole room gets excited.

The judges are a mixture of people from the food sector: deli owners, food PR, food writers, producers and that makes for great cross section of people. Each session you are on a different table so you don’t just sit there and judge with the same people all week you get rotated round and that’s useful too. Hearing what other people think of the products and why really adds to your understanding of good food.

I think overall the process works really well, I think there is limited possibility of something getting missed and I’ll deal in my top tips post with how or why something might get missed. I like the fact it doesn’t judge pie A vs pie B and decide which is ‘best’ it is simply saying this tastes great. So I think that if you got stars then you really should be thrilled because your product isn’t just good its great.

If you’ve got stars flaunt them, if not then watch out for my top tips post next week.

See the results here and find out more about how the awards work here.

How to run a supper club

Webmaster — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 17:20:58 +0000

Underground University: How to run a supper club

An event by MsMarmiteLover

Saturday 21 May 2011, from 10.00 a.m.

Speaker: Linda Williams

Following the publication of her book “Supper Club: recipes and notes from The Underground Restaurant” Kerstin Rodgers (aka MsMarmiteLover), proprietress of London’s premier supper club is running a ‘how to’ workshop. Kerstin and other supper club hosts present a day conference on setting up your own successful supper club.

bright blue skies founder Linda Williams will be talking about the nitty gritty of the business end….from getting your admin ducks in a row when setting up , what the tax man might think about it all to why chucking receipts away might not be a great idea.

Other speakers include:

James Ramsden: blogger, author and chef of The Secret Larder supper club

Lynn Hill of My Secret Tea: runs a secret tea room in Leeds, blogger and administrator of supperclubfangroup.ning.com

Andre Dang: Marketing and PR supremo. (Sell those tickets! Create a profile!)

Details:

Place: The Underground Restaurant, Kilburn
Cost: £100 including breakfast, lunch and refreshments
How to Book: Book your place online now

Make, Sell, Grow

Webmaster — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 16:26:42 +0000

Make, Sell, Grow

A British Library Business & IP Centre Cooking Up Success Event

Run by Women Unlimited

Wednesday 14 July 2010, 10.00-14.00

Speaker: Linda Williams

One of the main challenges that every business faces is getting more sales, and food based businesses are no different.

As part of the British Library Business & IP Centre’s Cooking Up Success event Women Unlimited have put together a mini-conference specifically for food producers and caterers.

This event is all about how to engage with your audience and your buyers to enable you to grow your business and take it to its next stage.

Our founder Linda Williams will be talking about how to use social media for food businesses. From Facebook to Twitter, Flickr and blogs, the range of social media out there can seem daunting, but with an active food community online there are lots of opportunities to get your food business noticed.

Other speakers include:

Claire Burnett of Chococo on how she turned her passion into a successful business.

Linda Batt-Rawsden of The Impact Agency will talk about food marketing and PR.

Henriette Reinders of the South East Food Group Partnership will talk about products, provenance and getting it right with buyers.

Laura Salas Ortiz will talk about here experiences form both sides of the fence as a buyer and a wholesaler.

Details:

Who should attend? This event is not for you if you already have more business than you can handle, but if you would like to find out how to build the relationships that can help you grow your business and sell more of your products book now – only 40 places.
Place: British Library Business & IP Centre
Cost: £38 before June 11 and £45 after
How to Book: Book your place online now

The Business of Food

Webmaster — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 15:36:59 +0000

The Business of Food

An Aldeburgh Food & Drink Festival Fringe Event

Thursday 1 October 2009, Framlingham Technology Centre

Panellist: Linda Williams

As part of the Aldeburgh Food & Drink Festival Fringe the Framlingham Technology Centre Business Club is holding a panel discussion about all aspects of the business of food. From starting up to growing your business, Health & Safety to training and facilities to commercialisation a panel of experts will answer your questions, provide guidance and outline the support available to help you make the best business choices for you. There will be a chance for networking and one to one consultations.

Our founder, Linda Williams, will be joining the rest of the panel, bringing her wealth of experience on how you can run your business more effectively and develop it in a way that matches your vision.

The panel will be chaired by Yvonne Moores, Business Development Officer for Suffolk County Council.

The other 4 panellists bring a wide range of food and business experience to the discussion. They are:
Melissa Watson, Otley College;
Julie West, CEO, Tastes of Anglia;
Frances Hopwell-Smith, Co-founder, Jules & Sharpie, makers of hot preservaments;
Jean Turnbull, Rural Advisor for Business Link East.