Tesco pulled out all the stops in Turkey last week by taking one of our hacks out to dinner in a posh restaurant. But when his hosts came to pay they tried four or five credit cards and all were rejected. The team from Tesco had to have the restaurant invoice its Istanbul office. It may have half-year profits of £1.1bn but it appears Tesco is too cheap to give its press office decent credit. No wonder its suppliers are feeling the pinch too.
Meanwhile, another of my colleagues was over in Paris wandering through halls at the Sial food show when she noticed some novel English translations on product descriptions. There's the 'no smoking butter' for food on the go, or 'food for nomadism', and the product that 'agrees to the taste of each one when one is served'. Our fave, though, is a babyfood product made by a company 'well used to stepping in baby brain development'. Shouldn't chortle really - I dread to think how I'd mangle English to French equivalents.
There I was at a Channel 4 food event when James Averdieck, MD of Gü Chocolate Puds, tells me that he and his twin brother were so identical that even their mum found it hard to tell them apart. Twins, he proudly asserts, were the original bogofs, long before supermarkets came up with the idea.
For those of you who don't read the Brand News section as closely as you should, you may have missed the spooky coincidence of two stories this week surrounding the brand name Just Desserts. One tells of celebrity loudmouth Gordon Ramsay making a dog's dinner of PR by belittling his chocolates range, which includes a Just Desserts product, while the other talks about, well, a dog's dinner of another kind, this time from Town & Country Petfoods. One of the products comes in summer fruit pudding and apple & cranberry crumble flavours, but can you guess which one?
bogofs.week@william-reed.co.uk
Meanwhile, another of my colleagues was over in Paris wandering through halls at the Sial food show when she noticed some novel English translations on product descriptions. There's the 'no smoking butter' for food on the go, or 'food for nomadism', and the product that 'agrees to the taste of each one when one is served'. Our fave, though, is a babyfood product made by a company 'well used to stepping in baby brain development'. Shouldn't chortle really - I dread to think how I'd mangle English to French equivalents.
There I was at a Channel 4 food event when James Averdieck, MD of Gü Chocolate Puds, tells me that he and his twin brother were so identical that even their mum found it hard to tell them apart. Twins, he proudly asserts, were the original bogofs, long before supermarkets came up with the idea.
For those of you who don't read the Brand News section as closely as you should, you may have missed the spooky coincidence of two stories this week surrounding the brand name Just Desserts. One tells of celebrity loudmouth Gordon Ramsay making a dog's dinner of PR by belittling his chocolates range, which includes a Just Desserts product, while the other talks about, well, a dog's dinner of another kind, this time from Town & Country Petfoods. One of the products comes in summer fruit pudding and apple & cranberry crumble flavours, but can you guess which one?
bogofs.week@william-reed.co.uk
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