New Covent Garden catering supplier Chef’s Connection held an open day last Friday, to showcase its new food preparation facilities and give suppliers and contacts the opportunity to sample the products and meet the chefs who use them.
Chef’s Connection’s Stuart Busby said: “We want to instil some of our enthusiasm for our products into everyone who comes today. It is not a PR event for Chef’s Connection, we have a number of people here who supply us, but there are also others who don’t. We want to support people who have a passion for the quality of the product they offer, like us.”
The preparation department installed by the company is, he said, “unique in the market. We want to show people the commitment we have as a business to invest in the service we give to our customers, as well as give them the opportunity to see, taste and learn about some of the unusual products they may not have tried before.”
Several fresh produce suppliers were on hand. “I think this is an excellent thing that Chef’s Connection has done and I wish more wholesale market companies would do something similar,” said PDM Produce’s Paul Houlker, who was displaying his company’s lettuce products.
Lucy Carroll, a producer of heritage potatoes in Northumberland, who provides Chef’s Connection with Salad Blue and Highland Burgundy, added: “We are trying to encourage the chefs to put the names of our potatoes onto the menu, so it is great to be able to come here and meet the chefs, hear what they need, what they think and how they cook the products we grow for them.”
