Meet the chef who foraged in the great outdoors for ingredients to feed 800 at food awards

Sodexo Prestige Blog

While Tom hand-picked the ingredients our public relations agency hand-picked the positive headlines

Chef Tom poses for food and drink pr storyWHEN he’s not in his gleaming chef whites, talented Tom Beauchamp can often be found in the great outdoors hand picking ingredients for his inspired menus.

Now the award-winning chef has seen his foraging skills help cook up a feast of positive media coverage for his employers, Sodexo Prestige Venues & Events.

As the executive chef at Sodexo Prestige’s development kitchen in South Queensferry, Tom is regularly creating evocative and inspiring menus for major events.

However, he and his colleagues faced the most daunting of challenges when they were asked to deliver a culinary experience for 800 guests at the Scotland Food & Drink Excellence Awards.

While lesser kitchen teams may have quailed at the prospect of feeding so many industry experts in an incredibly time tight scale and in an unusual venue, the Sodexo Prestige team had no such fears.

So the experts here at Holyrood PR in Edinburgh did our bit, by helping prepare a two-pronged public relations campaign to make sure that Tom and the 120-strong catering team got the recognition they deserved.

Our before and after media releases resulted in a windfall of coverage in different media outlets important to Sodexo Prestige’s business, including:Sodexo makes Travel and Tour World with food and drink pr story

  • Influential business titles, reaching decision makers who need corporate hospitality
  • Respected trade titles serving specialist hospitality booking agencies
  • The wider public, to build awareness of Sodexo Prestige’s proud Scottish team and suppliers

Find out how we served up not one but two healthy portions of Food and Drink PR success for Sodexo Prestige

We help our clients get multiple bites of the cherry, by making sure their news isn’t wasted on just one angle, when there may be multiple opportunities – so that’s exactly what we did for Sodexo Prestige with before and after media releases.


Edinburgh PR agency show how they help clients achieve more media coverageLearn how to maximise your business PR opportunities by checking out our simple guide to getting more than one bite of the PR cherry.


BEFORE – Pre event PR Push

Museum event for food and drink prThe Scotland Food & Drink Excellence Awards has become a must-attend fixture in the sector’s calendar. It attracts movers and shakers involved in every stage of food and drink production from field to fork, including farmers, fishermen, producers, suppliers, brewers, distillers, hotels and restaurants.Sodexo coverage- food and drink pr

This year’s event was the biggest ever – double the size of previous events – as it fell right in the middle of Scotland’s Year of Food and Drink, the 12-month long celebration of the nation’s natural larder.

A total of 23 sought out awards were to be handed out on the night in 19 fiercely contested categories, focusing all eyes in the catering and hospitality industry on the event – and meaning the evening’s menu would be under the most searching scrutiny imaginable.

As buzz and anticipation built ahead of the event at the National Museum of Scotland, we delivered a media release which explained exactly what a great honour – and enormous logistical challenge – it was for Sodexo Prestige to be handling such an important hospitality experience.

ASodexo coverage-food and drink prnd we revealed that the menu, featuring the finest Scottish ingredients and inspired by Tom’s time training in a series of Michelin-starred restaurants, would remain a closely-guarded secret until guests sat down at their tables.Sodexo coverage- food and drink pr

You can read the original media release here it yielded positive coverage in the Edinburgh Evening News, the Scottish capital’s most trusted news source.

Meanwhile it also featured on independent news website the Edinburgh Reporter, influential online business titles, Economic Voice, in specialist trade news source, Travel and Tour World and on the far-reaching foodie blog, Citylicious.

 

 


AFTER – Post Event Press Release

Busy waitress captured for food and drink pr storyFor the second part of the Food and Drink PR plan we wanted to tell as many people as possible about the stunning dishes that featured on Tom’s carte du jour, which were only revealed to the 812 diners at the last possible moment.

As soon as we had details of the meticulously planned three courses on the night of the Awards, we started preparing a second story for news outlets – you can read the original media release here.

It revealed how Tom and his kitchen team had fused outstanding Scottish produce, including 21-day aged Scotch beef and Scottish asparagus available for just three weeks per year, with ingredients hand foraged by Tom himself. He ventured into fields and hedgerows to collect both wild garlic and elderflower used in the dishes.

We also gathered together some of the glowing praise heaped on the menu, including comments from the thrilled event organisers and positive comments shared on social media by attendees.

With that media release issued just hours after the event was completed, the story made further positive headlines for Sodexo Prestige, appearing on independent news site, Deadline News and in the dedicated business news site, Daily Business Group.

This coverage was gained as part of a long running campaign with Sodexo Prestige to share their many different stories with key industry press and national newspapers.


This isn’t the only great work we have done for Sodexo. Find out about the major award we won in 2014.


 

Whatever’s cooking at your business, find out how Food and Drink PR services could deliver the tastiest of media coverage

The team at Holyrood PR are a passionate bunch and we firmly believe that stories are at the heard of successful businesses. We believe that when those stories are told well to the right audiences it helps businesses become more profitable while making them better places to work.

Across our website you’ll find that we practice exactly what we preach – telling the stories of our clients and our own business every day,  in words, pictures and video, across print, broadcast and social media.

If you’d like to find out how our food and drink pr services can help you build a more profitable and rewarding business, then give us a call on 0131 561 2244, or get in touch by filling out the simple form below and we’ll get straight back to you: