Two Trips To Brum

07 March 2011, 20:55 pm
Speciality Bites by Paul Hargreaves

During the last week I have been to Birmingham twice, and I'll talk about both in my piece this week

The first time was a trip with my kids to Cadbury World during half term. I had never been there before, despite being pestered for the past two years. Finally we had an opportunity to go – and I must say they absolutely loved it. I was, however, quite sad when I left.

Having learnt more about the philanthropic, Quaker roots of the company, it seemed an even greater shame that it’s now owned by a multinational, American corporation.

The original Mr Cadbury was actually a retailer and realised that there was a trend for hot chocolate developing, so he started making it himself rather than paying other companies for it. How innovative! Can we turn our hands to anything we are not making ourselves at present?

As the company grew it became known for employing people from the inner city of Birmingham. But it didn’t just give them jobs – Cadbury also built houses and leisure facilities for them. What good employers they were – although there must have been a hell of a profit margin in the products to afford all that!

The entrepreneurial, altruistic roots of the company are now all but gone – and it is now charging customers a large entrance fee to market its own products to them. Most companies have to invest to market – in this case we pay Cadbury. Nice one!

My second trip to Birmingham was to visit The Farm Shop & Deli Show on Sunday. This took all of an hour to wander round and that included two 20-minute conversations with suppliers. I’m sure it’ll work one day, but not this year. Well not for visitors anyway; the exhibitors were having a good time because there were so few of them!

This brings me onto the question of the increasing number of trade shows in our sector. There have been at least five genuine ones this year that may have been worth my while going to, but I do have to do some proper work occasionally! And we still have the big one coming up – IFE. The more shows there are, the more diluted they become.

Anyway, see you at IFE in a couple of weeks – that will take you two days to get round!

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