It’s safe to say January is always a strange month in the year, with it often being described as the ‘Monday’ of all the months… In the events industry however, (despite the post festive-period haze we all experience!) it remains as busy as ever. Luckily, the team were well rested after the Christmas break, as it’s been full steam ahead here at Social Espresso, kicking off the year with a range of exciting events. Here’s a brief roundup of what we’ve been getting up to this past month at our event coffee company, Social Espresso:
Wine tasting events
January is a big month for the wine industry, with a huge range of established wine wholesalers showcasing the very best of what they have to offer at large wine tasting events. Representatives from all over the hospitality industry such as restaurateurs, bar staff and sommeliers, flock to these tastings to try and select their favourite wines to potentially use at their respective locations. We, of course, step in to give them the well needed energy boost they require between tastings and have set up our mobile coffee bars all across London to facilitate their needs. These sorts of events often have a large number of guests, so we made sure to have two baristas on all of our bars for maximum efficiency and minimal queuing. Also, with these types of clients having especially refined palettes, our specialty coffee always goes down a treat! At one of our recent wine tasting events, our main client said that they ‘had lots of amazing compliments on the coffee, and it certainly kept us all going all day!’.
Our baristas are expert problem solvers and despite meticulous planning, unforeseen circumstances can definitely still crop up at events. When packing down and loading out of one of the wine tasting events, unfortunately, our equipment got stuck in a service lift for quite some time! Luckily, one of our team baristas, Rich, was on the case and promptly assisted the maintenance team on site to get the lift back up and running as soon as possible.
Open days
Open days for new business spaces, offices and event spaces are some of our most common bread and butter events. Being an event coffee company operating out of London, we provide our services at these events on a weekly basis. No one event is ever the same however, and our baristas love the change of pace from venue to venue! This January we helped with the opening of a large new industrial space, and catered for open days at several new office spaces in central London. Guests are usually greeted by our fresh specialty coffee which always helps to kick off the event right! It’s also great to work alongside a lot of our good friends in the catering industry, who pop up at these events as often as we do.
Staff wellbeing events
In recent years staff wellbeing days have risen in popularity, as more and more companies recognise the value of maintaining good physical and mental wellbeing for their team members. These events often focus on providing an array of interesting activities and benefits for a company’s staff. This past month we catered for a large online transport company, ensuring their staff were energised and refreshed throughout the day. Full coffee bar branding also meant that our bar was integrated into their offices cohesively. Fun activities such as, a team yoga morning and a puppy therapy play session were available for their staff to partake in. Sadly, we didn’t spot any of the puppies first-hand!
Coffee cupping
Coffee, of course, is at the very core of what we do! This means it’s important for our team to constantly cup our roasts at our HQ, refining our roasting profiles and making sure our flavours are all on point. For those who don’t know what cupping is, it’s a process in which people within the coffee industry evaluate coffee beans’ flavour profile and aroma. This is a good way to improve quality control from batch to batch and keep coffee tasting consistently great. It’s also a fun social activity, as we all get to discuss what we think about each batch and nerd out about coffee!