At the start of the year, we had plans for several exciting new projects, but like almost every other business in the hospitality sector, everything changed at the end of March and we were very quickly forced to look at how to adapt our business in light of Covid-19. Thankfully, whilst spending more time at home, we have still been able to develop and grow the Infused business and have had a few unexpected highlights along the way!
Here are just a few of our key achievements in 2020…
Clients
We are grateful to work with fantastic clients who have all faced their own challenges this year but have continued to work with us whilst displaying continued professionalism and a shared goal of trying to do their best for employees and customers in the current climate.
We are also pleased to have gained 5 new clients and even more reassuringly, a couple of these have been on the back of other customers’ recommendations.
What we did for them?
- Training – this has been an exciting year for us in developing our hospitality sector training and in particular our new apprenticeships (see below)
- Filming & photography – we have always loved recording our work through photography and film, and working with clients on their food photography is a reminder of how creative and fun our industry can be. We have begun to expand these areas for ourselves in 2020 and you can regularly see examples posted on our Linkedin page and of course on our gallery Look out for our new YouTube channel in early 2021.
- New concept design – our experience in creating new concepts has meant that we are asked to produce these time and time again. It is amongst our favourite professional moments when we see a new concept brought to life in one of our client’s businesses.
- Concept critique – we pride ourselves on our understanding of what works well within our industry, and this year we were appointed to carry out reviews of more than one of our customer’s brands, helping to identify what works well and what could be updated. This has been an interesting challenge in 2020!
- NPD – knowing the process for introducing a successful new product means that we are ready and able to help clients whenever they want to bring something new to the market. This year has been difficult, due to the amount of products that are still waiting to be solved, however the development still goes on, and we are looking to see some new exciting products going live next year that our chefs at Infused have been involved in.
- Sales – with the new ways of working this year, it has been tougher than ever for our industry to achieve sales growth. We have been able to advise our clients how best to be flexible and adapt to the changing circumstances in the market.
- Health & safety – this has always been a priority for us but this year has forced everyone to look at H&S from a new perspective and be even more stringent in looking after customers and employees.
First steps into…
- Apprenticeship tutoring – in 2020 we have taken the exciting step into food hospitality apprenticeships by bringing 8 young apprentices onto a tailor-made programme that will give them all the tools they need to succeed, in this challenging but rewarding industry. We aim to increase that number considerably in 2021.
- Retail New Product Development (NPD) and Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) – it has always been an ambition for us to produce our own products and this year we have begun development in these areas. Look out for more information coming soon.
Filming
- Infused YouTube channel – during the course of this year we have started to create some great videos of us in action and these will be appearing on our brand new YouTube channel in early 2021.
- Videos for apprenticeship learners and the general public – the popularity of video and its ability to communicate means that it is also the ideal medium for us to help to teach our new apprentices. We also know that a lot of what we are doing in the kitchen can help inform people to help them eat better and more healthily whilst using ingredients as cost-effectively as possible, using our skills as professional chefs which have been learnt over the last few decades!. We have got over the embarrassment factor and will be bringing these kinds of videos to our YouTube channel very soon. (Please be kind to us in the comments section and remember the camera adds 10lbs!)
Market Reports
- Creation of market trends and analysis – Using data collected from across our range of diverse clients we have a great ongoing picture of the latest market trends. We have been working on creating an easy-to-read summary of this latest hospitality data direct from source to give our clients the most up-to-date and accurate information.
Personal
2020 has given us a lot of time to reflect on our Infused goals but also to what is important in our personal lives.
In the summer Ian became AET qualified (Award in Education and Training) which has helped with the structuring of our apprenticeship training, but perhaps one of the most exciting achievements of the first lockdown was the building of our very own outdoor pizza oven!
Oh, and of course we started our Infused blog!
We are looking forward to seeing what 2021 brings!