Kingston based retailer Food For Thought is considering staging regular ‘club nights’ following the success of its first Night Shift event.
A pilot event last week (September 27) combined music, food and drink tastings and exciting live demos with the relaxed ambience atmosphere of a club.
Store owner Alan Martin told Natural Products: “We wanted to create an evening event in-store that was more like a club night. It was important that we try to create a different feel from day time trading.”
Martin says there was no problem staffing the 6-10pm ‘Night Shift’. “In fact a lot our guys and girls turned up anyway and staff that had been working the day joined in the fun in the evening too, we even had Jonas our supervisor from Guildford come over and get straight down to serving the coconuts.”
He also praised “some terrific suppliers out there who absolutely got what I was trying to do and were fully on board with us”. Singled out for special thanks were “Tarquin from Amy’s Kitchen who supplied us with the vegetable chilli to cook and sample, Mauro from Mozzarisella, who supplied the Vegan Mozzarella Cheese, Charles from Zelected foods, who supplied the bake in a box bread, Raymond who came along and blew us away with the gluten free vegan buckwheat crepes that he cooked and Caroline & Tony from Cocolyte (young green Coconuts).”
Food For Thought even managed to recruit pizza chain Zizzi’s who baked some special vegan pizzas using Mozzarisella vegan cheese.
Music came from Boys Town Gang, Underworld, Public Service Broadcasting, Kate Bush, Dan Gibson and Deep forest ended the evening with some real chill out tracks as we wound down around 10.30pm.
Martin described the inaugural Night shift event as “great, beyond my expectations”. But how did it perform commercially? “. “Well we handed out 10% off coupons so we did give a bit away. But all in all it was like having eight days in a week.” Will he do it again? “That’s the question that we kept getting asked in emails and calls the next day. Answer: Yes. And we’re thinking about trying the concept out in our Guildford store too. Watch this space!”
