News

Cafe du Monde’s Free Offer for Fairtrade Fortnight 22nd February — 7th March 2010

Going green and being sus­tain­able doesn’t have to cost your busi­ness, Café du Monde is here to help. To cel­eb­rate Fairtrade Fort­night and the Fairtrade Found­a­tions 15th year Café du Monde are offer­ing a free 4 cup cafetiere worth £29.95 with every two cases of Fairtrade “singles” pur­chased at £50.50 per case, post and pack­ing included […]

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Christmas Greetings from Café Du Monde

December, 2009

This year we have decided to donate the money we would usu­ally spend on Christ­mas cards and post­age to “Help for Heros”.  Fol­low­ing the appalling list of cas­u­al­ties sus­tained by our troops in Afgh­anistan, it would be dif­fi­cult to think of a more deserving cause.

So from all of us at Café Du Monde we would like to wish all our cus­tom­ers and sup­pli­ers and very Merry Christ­mas and a Happy and Pros­per­ous New Year.

Café du Monde celebrates 20 years in the coffee industry

December, 2009

On Fri­day 20th Novem­ber, 20 mem­bers of staff and their part­ners cel­eb­rated 20 years of Café du Monde.  The venue chosen for the fest­iv­it­ies was the award win­ning South Lodge Hotel, Lower Beed­ing.  From the pre din­ner drinks in the draw­ing room, where memor­ies were shared and miss­ing col­leagues remembered the whole week­end was magical.

The evening’s enter­tain­ment was provided by “Encore” singing songs from all the pop­u­lar music­als whilst we all enjoyed a splen­did 3 course meal hos­ted by Catey award win­ing Erick Ker­vaon.  Not too many glasses of wine were con­sumed as the coach was leav­ing at 8 am the fol­low­ing morn­ing for Good­wood motor cir­cuit for a morn­ing of com­pet­it­ive driving.

The agenda for the morn­ing was fast and furi­ous for in two and a half hours the five teams were timed as they skid­ded around a track, raced in the go karts and drove blind­folded in a mini moke around a sla­lom course.  Laughter rang around the cir­cuit and usu­ally at the expense of one of the team skid­ding off the track or crush­ing a cone.  A fur­ther sur­prise for the morn­ing was a flight in a heli­copter. There were a few nervous faces but every­one took part in all the activ­it­ies and any nerves were quickly forgotten.

Lunch was provided back at South Lodge in the Pass Res­taur­ant where a we were given a demon­stra­tion on how to pre­pare Game before a four course lunch which was pre­pared and served expertly before our very eyes.

The week­end fin­ished with cof­fee and speeches where David and Mike remin­isced over the past 20 years and thanked all col­leagues, fam­il­ies and friends for there loy­alty and sup­port.  Tears and smiles all round!

“The 2009 Catey Awards”

December, 2009

The 2009 Catey awards cere­mony took place at the Gros­venor House Hotel on the 7th July.  Spe­cial con­grat­u­la­tions go to South Lodge Hotel — Lower Bleed­ing, who won the Group Hotel of the Year Award and to Erick Ker­vaon from South Lodge, who won the Food and Bever­age Manger of the Year Award.  Our con­grat­u­la­tions also go to Café du Monde cus­tom­ers Red Carna­tion Hotels who’s Man­aging Dir­ector Jonathan Rag­gett won the Hotelier of the Year Award and to Simon Young of the Jumeirah Carlton Tower who won the Hotel chef of the Year Award.

www.caterersearch.com

“Condé Nast Johansens Awards for excellence 2010

December, 2009

This year the Awards Gala was held on the 9th Novem­ber at the Jumeirah Carlton Tower Hotel, Knight­bridge, Lon­don.  As the nom­in­ated cof­fee and tea Part­ners to Johan­sens Recom­men­ded Hotels key mem­bers of Café du Monde presen­ted three of the awards:- Most Excel­lent Ded­ic­ated Venue, to Scalford Hall by South East ~Account Exec­ut­ive — Tom Moitie.  Most Excel­lent City Hotel to The Old Bank Hotel by Dir­ector Mike Osborne and Condé Nast Johan­sens Reader’s Award to Bodys­gal­len Hall and Spa by South West Account Exec­ut­ive Car­oline Anne Argrave.

Fundraising for Olympic hopeful Jo Willoughby

December, 2009

If you were passing through Har­ome on Fri­day 27th Novem­ber you would be for­given for think­ing you were in the Alps, as The Star turned in to Mount Har­ome for the night.  The team had cre­ated an amaz­ing venue with ski equip­ment on tables and 40 tonnes of real snow shipped in for the event.

The even­ing star­ted with a great inter­view where Jo Wil­loughby explained to the gathered crowd of 147 sup­port­ers how she felt con­fid­ent that she would return from the Winter Olympics in Whist­ler with medals round her neck.  Most people have never heard of Jo Wil­loughby but she is the best hope Great Bri­tain has ever had of col­lect­ing Alpine Gold Medals, you see Jo is a bit dif­fer­ent para­lysed from the chest down by a child­hood ill­ness, Jo has no sen­sa­tion below neck and no move­ment below the chest.  Hav­ing had her left leg ampu­tated in May she has only re-started her train­ing in July after 4 months off the slopes through ill­ness and injury.  Des­pite this she is the best female sit­s­kier Great Bri­tain has ever had.

Drum­mond and Val Mur­ray rep­res­en­ted Café du Monde at the event and Val was lucky enough to sit next to Jo and found her SO inspir­ing and such a lovely per­son.  She dis­misses her dis­ab­il­ity com­pletely and says she’s just like any­one else!!! — nothing could be fur­ther from the truth.

With Andrew Pern a Mich­elin starred chef cook­ing for you and such an inspir­a­tional sports­wo­man to raise money for it is not sur­pris­ing that over £20,000 was col­lec­ted and Jo has had part of her dream real­ised.  If you would like to sup­port or fol­low Jo’s pro­gress her web site is www.jowilloughby.com

La Spaziale launch the new S40

November, 2009

The new S40 range of tra­di­tional espresso machines was launched at the Hos­pit­al­ity Expo 2009, Milan, Italy in Octo­ber.  The first machines arrived in the UK in Novem­ber and include 2, 3 and 4 group machines in both semi-automatic and fully auto­matic ver­sions.  The “flag­ship range which has vari­able group head tem­per­at­ure con­trol and the option of an auto­matic frother will com­pete against the Gag­gia “Deco”, Faema “Emblema” and the Brazil­lia “Opus Sublima”.

The King John Inn

November, 2009

Giles Coren was highly impressed. His Times review of the King John Inn at Tollard Royal on the Wiltshire/Dorset bor­der described it as hav­ing “a lovely, light, unpon­cey sym­path­etic style” and “good, simple, mod­ern home cook­ing”. Over­all, he awar­ded the food eight out of ten – very impress­ive by his high standards.

Behind the recent refur­bish­ment works and respons­ible for the cuisine are Alex Boon and his wife, Gretchen. Hav­ing had pre­vi­ous exper­i­ence of the res­taur­ant busi­ness, they left the industry for a short while to set up a whole­sale wine busi­ness. Built in 1859 and named after one of King John’s hunt­ing lodges, the Inn was almost derel­ict when they first saw it. Nine months later they opened with eight bed­rooms. That was almost a year ago and the pair have not looked back. Gretchen has over­seen the refur­bish­ment with the help of local crafts­men like Fran­cis Ruffle Designs. Five sump­tu­ous bed­rooms are in the main build­ing. The remain­ing three are housed in the coach house, along with a wine shop. Here, Alex has put his past exper­i­ence to good use and pat­rons may pur­chase wines they have seen on the wine list. In all, they stock 160 wines, largely from France with some New World bins and they are the import agent for sev­eral wine estates.

“We see ourselves as a hearty coun­try pub serving good local food” says Alex. And it doesn’t get much more local than this. His butcher is Simon Harvell in Iwerne Min­ster, four miles away and ven­ison comes from a mile dis­tant. “In fact”, adds Alex, “there’s not much on the menu that has to travel more than five miles in any dir­ec­tion to reach us. You can’t get much fresher than that!” In the kit­chen is a team of five chefs, busy pre­par­ing such mouth­wa­ter­ing dishes as Port­land crab; part­ridge and wild mush­room ter­rine; twice baked West­combe ched­dar soufflé –and to fin­ish — apple & fig crumble or banana and chocol­ate bread & but­ter pudding.

Alex and Gretchen had dealt with cof­fee sup­plier, Café du Monde before and appoin­ted them again when they set up the King John. Nat­ur­ally, they selec­ted the free on loan cafetière sys­tem once more, but this time, to com­ple­ment the unfussy bed­room décor, they added Café du Monde’s Ser­vice en Chambre bed­room bever­age system.

“Our pre­vi­ous exper­i­ence of Café du Monde left us well sat­is­fied”, says Alex, “oth­er­wise we would not have re-appointed them. It’s a big thumbs up for the cof­fee, but that tells only half a story. To that, add the excel­lence of their sup­port ser­vice, with friendly staff demon­strat­ing total commitment.”

The Fox and Hounds

October, 2009

Mac­mil­lan Can­cer Sup­port is such a worthy cause and cof­fee sys­tem sup­plier, Café du Monde, has sup­por­ted the World’s Biggest Cof­fee Morn­ing for the past 5 years, rais­ing over £50,000. This year’s fun­draiser was held on 25th Septem­ber and they dis­trib­uted free cof­fee to their par­ti­cip­at­ing cus­tom­ers.  The cus­tomer rais­ing the most money this year was the Fox and Hounds in Llan­car­fan near Barry in the idyllic Vale of Glamorgan.

This pub res­taur­ant with rooms is the heart­beat of the vil­lage and was pur­chased by the vil­la­gers them­selves in 1999, when it was threatened with clos­ure. It is no won­der, then, that the com­munity ral­lied round present own­ers, Sue and John Mil­lard. Between them, they raised the mag­ni­fi­cent sum of £1,110 for Mac­mil­lan. Plan­ning the event began weeks before with prizes being donated for a grand raffle. On the day, there was a ‘bring and buy’ and home-made cakes were baked and bought – all in addi­tion to the cof­fee morn­ing itself. The event was even advert­ised in the local news­pa­per. Says Sue: “We are a very close knit com­munity here and many res­id­ents have their own per­sonal exper­i­ences of can­cer. Because we all believed in the cause, it came as no sur­prise just how much we had raised. This is our best effort so far, bring­ing our five-year total to over £3,000. Thanks and con­grat­u­la­tions to all our customers.”

In 2001, Sue and John bought the Fox and Hounds from the vil­la­gers in return for a com­mit­ment to con­tinue to run it as a pub. Today, it is renowned in the loc­ale for its food, with 8 en-suite bed­rooms draw­ing tour­ists to South Wales and busi­ness people vis­it­ing nearby Cardiff. John, a clas­sic­ally trained chef, runs the kit­chen per­son­ally with the help of his sous chef, Dar­ren. Their cuisine is tra­di­tional home cook­ing, served in hearty por­tions. Their Cod in Beer Bat­ter is widely regarded as the best in Wales.

The asso­ci­ation with cof­fee sup­plier, Café du Monde, goes back to when they first opened. They use a free-on-loan cafetière sys­tem, serving Con­tin­ental and Decaf­fein­ated blends from eleg­ant glass cafetières. They also offer espresso-based spe­ci­al­ity cof­fees from a Mon Ami 50 bean-to-cup machine sup­plied by Café du Monde.

Of their cof­fee sup­plier, Sue says:

“We would not change Café du Monde for the world. Their cof­fee is just the best. They have been with us since the start and are so sup­port­ive. Office staff are more like friends than sup­pli­ers and com­pet­it­ors don’t even bother knocking!” 

Mac­mil­lans World’s Biggest Cof­fee Morning

October, 2009

We just wanted to say a big thank you to you and all your guests for tak­ing part in this year’s Mac­mil­lans World’s Biggest Cof­fee Morn­ing , col­lect­ively the com­pan­ies across the Café du Monde cus­tomer base have raised a massive £10,723.89 .

The World’s Biggest Cof­fee Morn­ing is Macmillan’s largest fun­drais­ing event and this year thanks to you and the thou­sands of people who joined you, Mac­mil­lan hopes to raise an amaz­ing £8.5 mil­lion for people liv­ing with cancer.

The money that you raised dur­ing your cof­fee morn­ing will fund Macmillan’s increas­ing range of ser­vices, includ­ing Mac­mil­lan nurses, doc­tors and other health pro­fes­sion­als, new can­cer care centres, a range of can­cer inform­a­tion, prac­tical help at home and help with money.

• £22 could fund 100 cop­ies of Macmillan’s Can­cer Guide which helps recently dia­gnosed people under­stand can­cer, its treat­ment and the help available.
• £3,333 could keep a Mac­mil­lan can­cer inform­a­tion and sup­port centre stocked with all the inform­a­tion resources it needs to sup­port people affected by can­cer for a year.
• £121 can fund a Mac­mil­lan nurse for one day to give sup­port, care and advice to fam­il­ies affected with cancer.
• Approx­im­ately £350 could pay for a con­vales­cent break for someone with can­cer and their carer.

All of Macmillan’s ser­vices are provided free and are fun­ded entirely by the gen­er­os­ity of our sup­port­ers – people like you.

We do hope that you enjoyed your cof­fee morn­ing.  Thank you very much once again for tak­ing part and sup­port­ing Mac­mil­lan Can­cer Support. 

606 Club

September, 2009

This iconic door­way is the entry to one of Europe’s finest jazz clubs. It’s the 606 Club in Lots Road, a stone’s throw from fash­ion­able Chelsea Har­bour. No lesser author­ity than Jamie Cul­lum has described it as “London’s best music venue”. Curi­ously, there is no 606 Lots Road, the Club takes its name from 606 Kings Road, where the Club spent the first 11 years of its life. In the best tra­di­tion of jazz clubs, its suc­cess is meas­ured by atmo­sphere and enter­tain­ment val­ues rather than décor or fur­nish­ings. With its metal stairs, stark brick walls and bare wooden tables and chairs, one critic has likened it to a Chica­goan Speak­easy dur­ing prohibition.

All this pres­ages fine enter­tain­ment and good food at afford­able prices. Pro­pri­etor, Steve Rubie, took on the Club from the ori­ginal founder over 30 years ago and the “6”, as it is known to its mem­bers, con­tin­ues to attract the best in musical tal­ent. Him­self a respec­ted musi­cian, Steve has worked with the world’s finest musi­cians, many of whom have per­formed at the Club, includ­ing John Dank­worth, Claire Teal and Mica Paris. In fact, as many as ten bands per­form here weekly, mak­ing the 606 the biggest employer of Brit­ish and UK-based jazz talent.

There is no stage as such; acts per­form eye­ball to eye­ball in close com­mu­nion with their audi­ence. Food is served at table, cheek by jowl with your neigh­bour. If this leads you to lower your expect­a­tions of the cuisine, then the sur­prise is that much greater when you real­ise the food is of a remark­ably high standard.

In charge of the kit­chen these past 14 years is Jean-Pierre, known to all and sun­dry as “JP”. His menu offers a choice of seven mains, accom­pan­ied by an eclectic wine list. You would really have to party hard to break a £50 note — and that’s not just for a meal, it rep­res­ents a full night’s enter­tain­ment. Where else in afflu­ent Chelsea could you find such value?

Most diners con­clude their meal with a cof­fee and, dis­sat­is­fied with his sup­plier, Steve turned to Café du Monde, who installed a free on loan cafetière ser­vice. Now, the qual­ity of the cof­fee is without ques­tion and served in an eleg­ant way that does full justice to a fine meal.

Says Steve: “In frus­tra­tion, I turned to the man­ager of my other estab­lish­ment, Lot’s Lar­der, just round the corner and he recom­men­ded Café du Monde. We haven’t looked back since and that was two years ago. Not only is the cof­fee top rate, it’s afford­able and just as in the jazz world, it’s a bonus to be able to deal with nice people!”

For Club details see www.606club.co.uk  

15 MORE GOLDS FOR NEWBY TEAS AT FOOD ‘OSCARS’

September, 2009

Newby Teas , dis­trib­uted on an exclus­ive basis to hotels and res­taur­ants by lead­ing bever­age sys­tem sup­plier, Café du Monde , has yet again tri­umphed in the annual Great Taste Awards 2009 organ­ised by The Guild of Fine Foods, pick­ing up eight 2-star gold awards and seven 1-star gold awards.

The Great Taste Awards, held annu­ally in Lon­don are widely regarded as the ‘Oscars’ of the food industry and this year’s haul is the best ever for  Newby Teas, who have now amassed a grand total of 31 Gold awards for their teas since they first entered four years ago.

Newby, estab­lished in the UK since 1998, is a family-run con­cern with three gen­er­a­tions’ exper­i­ence of the tea mar­ket. It is a mem­ber of the Eth­ical Tea Part­ner­ship, which mon­it­ors liv­ing and work­ing con­di­tions on tea estates and ensures that tea is pro­duced in a socially respons­ible way. Café du Monde has been asso­ci­ated with Newby for sev­eral years and became the sole dis­trib­utor of their teas for the out-of-home mar­ket last year.

In the 2009 awards, Newby won 2-star Gold for its Imper­ial Him­alaya, Premier Oolong, Needle Green, Jas­mine Phoenix Eyes, Longjing, White Peony, Imper­ial Jas­mine and Kazir­anga. 1-star Golds were earned for Jas­mine Lotus, Fujian Oolong, Curly White, Keemun Maofeng, Gir, Eng­lish Break­fast and Darjeeling.

Speak­ing fol­low­ing the awards, Sales Dir­ector of Café du Monde, Mike Osborne, said: “We are delighted but not sur­prised by the ‘Oscars’ picked up this year by Newby Teas. They are richly deserved and fully reflect the qual­ity and con­sist­ency of their products. The tea itself, the pack­aging and the over­all present­a­tion is clearly aimed at dis­cern­ing res­taur­at­eurs and hoteliers look­ing for a lux­ury brand, which is exactly our mar­ket niche. Newby Teas is an exact fit within our own product port­fo­lio and per­fectly matches our cus­tomer profile.”