Bird Bingo | Virtual opening from the new tasting room ‘House of Bird’ from Bird Brewery

7-4-2020

Inspiration from Amsterdam! A virtual opening of a new tasting room from Bird Brewery. On April 25 from 8.30 pm those who ordered a Bird’s Bingo Beer Package can play a virtual ‘Bird Bingo’ from the new tasting room, ‘House of Bird’. The tasting room ‘House of Bird’ in the Diemerbos (near Amsterdam) would open in the end of April. Unfortunately, there is no big opening for the time being because of the lockdown, but the brewers want to give their guests a glimpse during a real ‘Bird Bingo’. If you’re living in the Netherlands you can play along, that is if you understand the Dutch language! Order a Bird’s Bingo Beer Package via their web shop, receive a special bingo card and play on a live stream on April 25 at 8.30 pm. You might even win a great prize!

How to open virtually! Here in the Netherlands lots of people love to play games these days and the guys from the Bird Brewery use that fact to open their new restaurant  and tasting room virtually.

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Winners of the 1st ProVeg Vegan Cheese Awards I Max & Bien and Petit Vegann

13-3-2020

The Amsterdam vegan cheese maker Max & Bien won the audience award of the ProVeg Vegan Cheese Awards 2020 with their blue cheese. The Petit Lorrain, a vegan brie from Petit Veganne from France, was the favourite of the jury. The awards were presented during the well-attended sixth edition of VeggieWorld in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

Although a news from a week ago, we still love to mention it! There is currently an increasing demand for high-quality vegan products with which you can make a difference in the catering industry. For example, we recently wrote about camembert made from cauliflower and hemp seeds from Grounded Foods in New York.

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Soulpicks app | Already 120,000 unique favorite places, restaurants, wine bars and Cafe’s worldwide

25-2-2020

Places where you like to go and share in private with friends, family and acquaintances. In the past year, 120,000 of these kind of unique ‘soulpicks’ were recorded and shared in the Soulpicks app by users and the experts associated with Soulpicks. Of all favorite places, restaurants are the most shared, but also wine and cocktail bars and cafe’s throughout the world are well represented in the app. More than 7,800 favorite places have already been added in Japan, more than 31,000 in the USA and more than 16,000 in the United Kingdom and France. The milestone is an important step towards the position of Soulpicks as a ‘go to app’ for the implementation of your leisure time, wherever you are in the world.

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Dominique Ansel Treehouse |A new all-day café in London

18-2-2020

Chef Dominique Ansel, named World’s Best Pastry Chef by the World’s 50 Best Awards, has recently opened Dominique Ansel Treehouse, a new all-day café in London’s Covent Garden. Located on quaint Floral Street, the new concept offers a menu that celebrates and showcases the pastry foundations and artisanal techniques that pastry chefs do best, from flaky puff pastry to delicate handmade pasta, short crusts for pies and tarts, fresh-baked breads, and more.

We’ve been fans of chef Dominique Ansel from the moment he opened his first bakery in New York and got famous by creating his Cronut® and many more fêted pastries like my favourite his signature DKA (Dominique’s Kouign Amann). They don’t serve the Cronut® at the Treehouse for this croissant- doughnut hybrid you need to go to his bakery in London. But the menu of Dominique Ansel Treehouse sound delicious and London is relatively nearby for us Dutchies, although we still would love to have a Dominique Ansel bakery in Amsterdam!  ^Marjolein

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Booking.com | Twenty epic unique places to stay to kick start 2020 New Year’s resolutions

24-1-2020

This holiday season, Booking.com, the global travel leader with a mission to make it easier for everyone to experience the world, is encouraging consumers to book a trip to help kick start 2020 New Year’s resolutions. In an effort to offer inspiration, Booking.com is custom designing 20 incredible experiences available for guest bookings, with each “Resolution Suite” themed to align with 20 of the most popular New Year’s resolutions for 2020. Booking.com has encouraged consumers to #BookYourResolution to help them come true.

Great marketing campaign by booking.com. Unfortunately only available in the US and hopefully the lucky ones that had the opportunity to stay in one of their resolutions suites are probably even more motivated to have their resolution come true! The suites were available for 2 nights as from January 17^th! It might be a great 2021 New Year’s resolution for Booking.com to create a likewise campaign in Europe, preferably in Amsterdam!

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KINGSTAIRS | Burger King gave away free Whoppers in the Bronx

17-1-2020

To celebrate the DVD release of the movie Joker, Burger King gave away free Whoppers delivered to residents of the Bronx in New York City. This because they have been suffering through tourists from all over the world climbing the ‘Joker stairs’ on Shakespeare Avenue! Burger King said anyone living in the same borough as the now-famous stairs could get a free Whopper delivered by Uber Eats until January 12 if they used the code KINGSTAIRS.

Another example of a viral marketing campaign to promote a local happening. So if your city has its own special circumstances….. like a famous Instagram spot, use it to promote your product through social media. And we all know that residents in cities like Amsterdam, Barcelona, Paris etc. ‘suffer’ due to the influx of tourism. Play with it!    

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Trends we spotted | Week 3

16-1-2020

At hospitalitytrends.eu we spot many national and international trends on a daily basis. We pick the most interesting ones to write about, the smaller trends we use in our weekly column ‘Trends we spotted this week’.

This week, among other links to articles about Selfridges that has a café with an adult-sized slide in its window and about Lets Golf!, they transformed the city of Groningen into a minigolf park.

During the Hotelnacht (the hotel night) 2020 in Amsterdam (the 18^th of January) you can participate at Taiko Bar’s Asian Karaoke Night at the Conservatorium hotel. Or visit the Pulitzer x Lindt during the Hotelnacht 2020. They’re creating a chocolate heaven!

In December the first vegan cheese shop opened in Amsterdam and in London a pop-up cheese-themed hotel will open! An idea by Café Rouge.

Le Prestine in Antwerp, the new restaurant for Sergio Herman is looking for staff, they will open this April. Also a link to ‘The Jungle Bubble by Anantara’ in Thailand, watching elephants from your bed and bubble! And inspiration for a children’ playground from Beijing, the Baoyan Park Children’s Entertainment Park. 

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The BrewDog AF Bar, the alcohol free beer bar & BrewDog’ ‘Drink All You Can Jan’

9-1-2020

‘The BrewDog AF Bar’ is the brewery’s first fully alcohol-free bar. Independent Scottish craft brewer BrewDog have opened their first bar dedicated to alcohol-free. The BrewDog AF Bar is the world’s first alcohol free beer bar and will offer 15 taps of draft alcohol-free craft beer. The bar has opened in central London and will be the first of the company’s global bars to feature a line-up solely devoted to drinks without alcohol. In addition to this, BrewDog will be running ‘Drink All You Can Jan’ across all bars. The initiative offers drinkers unlimited refills of BrewDog alcohol-free beers in all bars for the entire month. And with 24% of beer drinkers choosing more low or no-alcohol options (according to the Mintel, UK Beer Market Report 2018), the brewery are piloting a new concept for their bar division, with a view to rolling it out across the UK and into Europe.

It’s the time for alcohol free drinks: in the Netherlands we spotted amongst others the first pop-up Bar 0.020 in Amsterdam and the new menu for alcohol free drinks at NRC café in Rotterdam. With Dry January it’s wise to serve your guests at least the possibility to drink alcohol free. Our colleagues Robin, Nick and Leonie tried some drinks last week and they were kind of surprised on the sweetness of most mocktails! So if you’re buying or creating alcohol free drinks, not everybody has a sweet tooth!  

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Mr. Berry’s wants your coffee to taste better ad personal

22-11-2019

Mr. Berry’s is an online e-commerce platform where a consumer can discover his or her own personal coffee taste through a machine learning algorithm. A machine learning algorithm? Machine learning is used all around us to allow consumers to make choices. Spotify does it with your music. Youtube works with your related videos. Your bank uses it to monitor your expenses. But the biggest example of this is of course Google.

Mr. Berry’s applies 21st-century technology to an outdated coffee market. An initiative of Floris de Laat who organized the pop-up ‘The Cone Masters’ in 2017. With this pop-up you could, very Instagrammable (#coffeeinacone), drink your coffee from an ice cream cone filled with chocolate. He now wants you to enjoy coffee that suits your taste.

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Trends we spotted | Week 46

15-11-2019

At hospitalitytrends.eu we spot many national and international trends on a daily basis. We pick the most interesting ones to write about, the smaller trends we use in our weekly column ‘Trends we spotted this week’.

This week, among other a link to an article about Blend 32 Kitchen & Bar in the Hilton Groenplaats in Antwerp, Belgium. And we spotted the Ben Nevis beer by the Northern Monk Brewery, priced at £1,000 for 330ml!

Accor, the world-leading hospitality group and the Alibaba Group recently announced a strategic collaboration to develop a series of digital applications and loyalty programs to improve the consumer and traveller experience over the next five years. And did you ever taste green caviar?

Barcelona-based Glovo, one of the world’s fastest-growing on-demand delivery players, recently announced that it has acquired Poland’s largest food delivery platform, Pizza Portal. And did you already tried the Rebel Whopper at one of the Burger King locations in Europe?

And a link to an article about The “Restaurant Industry 2030” report, on which the National Restaurant Association partnered with American Express and Nestlé Professional, examined the key indicators shaping the future of the industry. And Heineken joins mayor beer companies with ditching the plastic 6-pack rings.

In Seoul, Stylenanda’s store sells makeup, clothing and accessories in a five-floor space inspired by the hotel and hospitality experience. Deliveroo launched a ‘Pickup’ service in the UK.

For Christmas inspiration we invite you to check these two articles about the ‘floating’ tree at Liberty, London and the Serra Alpina at Eataly NYC Flatiron. Nhow Amsterdam RAI will open its doors in the first quarter of 2020, this month they organized a Nhow Crew Fest!

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