Pop-up café takes orders via Twitter

Electric Ireland recently created a pop-up Twitter Café to engage the technology-orientated audience at this year’s Dublin Web Summit.

 1st December 2011 in Food & Beverage.

It was not long ago that we saw household appliance brand Electrolux create The Cube, a pop-up restaurant designed to generate publicity for the brand’s kitchen appliances. In a similar vein, energy company Electric Ireland recently created a free Twitter-powered pop-up café, in an effort to stand out from the crowd at this year’s Dublin Web Summit.

Electric Energy were sponsors of the “Spark of Genius” award at the Dublin Web Summit in October, and wanted to engage the technology-orientated audience at the event using a relevant medium. Instead of a regular café format, the Tweet Café offered 24 food and drink options displayed inside small boxes. According a Next Web report, to order, users had to tweet #tweetcafe followed by the number of the box containing the snacks they wanted. When the order was ready for collection, the user’s Twitter profile appeared on a large screen and the door containing the treats opened.

The simple concept illustrates the possibilities for technology to change how we carry out day-to-day activities. Inspiration here for restaurateurs and café owners alike.

Website: www.esb.ie
Contact: service@electricireland.ie

Thindish een gids gericht op slanke gerechten.

ThinDish focuses exclusively on restaurants that serve dishes totaling 600 calories or less, and also offers consumers a discount for purchasing those dishes through the site.

 17th November 2011 in Food & Beverage.

Online restaurant guides are practically a dime a dozen these days, but Los Angeles-based ThinDish offers an interesting twist. Not only does the site focus exclusively on restaurants that serve dishes totaling 600 calories or less, it also offers consumers a discount for purchasing those dishes through the site.

Users of ThinDish begin by searching the site for items at local restaurants that are 600 calories or less. Those with special dietary restrictions can also narrow their search to dishes that are gluten-free, low-sodium, diabetic-friendly and more. In any case, for each dish listed, users can view a range of details including complete nutritional information. Once they find a dish that looks good, users can buy it through the site and either print out a voucher for use at the restaurant, or display it there using their mobile device. Through its partnerships with local venues, dishes on ThinDish are offered at a discount of up to 50 percent, the company says. The video below explains the premise in further detail:

Free for users, ThinDish currently focuses on its home base of Los Angeles and surrounding areas. One to partner with or emulate in other parts of the world?

Website: www.thindish.com
Contact: support@thindish.com

Heinz en social media

“Get Well Soon” boodschap

Heinz gebruikt Facebook om in je netwerk een bijzonder bericht te sturen...."een blik soep"

 16th November 2011 in Food & Beverage, Marketing & Advertising.

Personalized foodstuffs may be nothing new, and we recently saw Maynards in Canada engaging fans via Facebook with the chance to win candy shaped in their own image. A different take on the idea recently sawHeinz in the UK using Facebook as a platform for fans to send personalized tins of soup to friends suffering with a cold.

Heinz partnered with We Are Social in order to increase social media presence and sales, which resulted in a timely and relevant seasonal campaign acting as an alternative to a “Get Well Soon” card. Throughout October, after becoming a fan of the Heinz UK Facebook page, users could customize a can of Cream of Tomato or Chicken soup with the name of a sick friend or loved one, to be be delivered within three to four days. The service was only available in the UK, and cost GBP 1.99 per personalized can.

The campaign reportedly created a considerably amount activity on Twitter, further proof that consumers engage in ideas that allow them to personalize and share. Plenty for inspiration here!

Website: www.facebook.com/HeinzSoupUK
Contact: www.heinz.co.uk/contactus

In Canada, all-in-one cheese-making kits

Make Cheese all-in-one kits contain ingredients and equipment for home-made mozzarella and poutine.

 15th November 2011 in Food & Beverage.

With a rising consumer interest in the ethical and environmental credentials of their grocery essentials, as well as increasing food prices, we’ve recently seen several “grow your own” initiatives that put the food supply-power back in the hands of the consumer. Now in Alberta, Canada, Make Cheese enables households to do exactly that for cheese, with all-in-one kits containing ingredients, equipment and recipes.

Make Cheese was founded by Ella Kinloch, who left her teaching job in order to pursue her passion for cheese. The move took her to a four-month cheese-making internship followed by travels through North America to visit a multitude of cheese makers. Currently there are two Make Cheese kits available — Lotsa Motza for making mozzarella, and Proud Poutine which is a traditional Canadian dish of cheese curd served on fries with gravy — both priced at CND 24.99. The Lotsa Motza kits include everything needed to make mozzarella 30 times, each batch producing approximately 300 grams, without using any additives. Kinloch also runs cheese hosting nights in the Alberta area where, for CND 20 per head, eight to ten people can learn to make mozzarella in an evening. She also has plans to launch brie, blue and gouda cheese-making kits in the future.

Providing consumers with simple ways to create their own produce in the home, initiatives such as these offer chemical-free and cheaper alternatives to supermarket shopping. Inspiration here for those with food-making skills to share?

Website: www.makecheese.ca
Contact: hello@makecheese.ca

Platform connects artists and entrepreneurs with charities for joint fundraising

HelpersUnite is a crowd-funding platform that connects business ventures and artists with charitable organisations.

 4th November 2011 in Non-profit, Social cause.

Over the years we’ve featured numerous crowd-funding initiatives, and back in January we discovered33needs which focuses entirely on social enterprises. In a similar ethical vein, US-based HelpersUnite is a social platform that enables entrepreneurs, charitable causes and events to raise funds and awareness, by linking them together on one site.

Entrepreneurs and creative initiatives can post their project proposals for free to HelpersUnite. Once the proposal has been approved, they can add a pitch, photos and videos, which will be displayed on the site for 120 days for the public to fund. All projects must select a charity that will benefit from their funding, but can choose the percentage that they donate. Social media integration, personal connections and a network of helpers can be utilized to drum up support. Charitable causes can also create a profile, which enables them to accept general donations, and connect with the HelpersUnite community and project creators looking for a cause to support.

The HelpersUnite events platform, meanwhile, helps people hosting events that may be too large to sell tickets off-line, but too small for “big-ticket” venues. Event creators must also select a cause to support, and will then have access to the HelpersUnite community to promote the event. Anyone can help fund projects, causes or attend events, and users can search the site by category, locality, how close a project is to being funded, and how recently a project has been added. HelpersUnite will receive nine percent of project and cause funding, and seven percent of ticket sales.

Scope here for other groups and organizations to be collected in to one online space to enjoy mutual benefits?

Website: www.helpersunite.com
Contact: www.helpersunite.com/contact-us