Supermarket wars: Sainsbury’s move to eat rivals’ lunches could turn sour September 28, 2016 British supermarket giant Sainsbury’s recently changed the terms of its lunchtime meal deal offering – much to the dismay of many customers. It decided to remove its more expensive “taste the difference” sandwiches from the deal, and has rebranded the lunchtime option to “on the go”. The move was met with bewilderment on social media [...]
Mondelez International takes out sweet £1m insurance policy for one of its chocolate tasting-scientists September 6, 2016 Mondelez International has taken niche insurance to a whole new level after it insured the taste buds of one of its chocolate scientists for £1m with Lloyd's of London. Hayleigh Curtis works as part of Cadbury's innovation team at Mondelez's Global Centre of Chocolate Excellence, based in Bournville, the birthplace of Cadbury chocolate. The specialist chocolate team [...]
Here’s how much of your pay goes on commuting September 12, 2016 Thought you were angry about your commute already? Brace yourself… Cancellations and delays, leaves on the track or too much heat, the increasing cost of tickets and jam-packed sardine tin-like trains – there's already such an array of choice when it comes to commuting complaints. Here's another one to add to the list. A tenth of your [...]
Buy-to-lose? With new restrictions on buy-to-let mortgages and the introduction of other punitive measures in 2017, is there any value left in letting for mortgaged landlords? January 11, 2017 As we enter 2017, the tide has truly turned against Britain’s buy-to-let landlords. First, George Osborne discouraged people from buying a second residential property by imposing extra stamp duty of 3 per cent. Now, the Bank of England is demanding that mortgage lenders “stress test” loans to landlords. Since 1 January, the Bank’s Prudential Regulation [...]
How one buccaneering family dominated the UK scampi market October 20, 2016 "At the tender age of 32, I got involved in buying assets from the receivership of what was the Whitby Shellfish Company”, says Graham Whittle, founder of Whitby Seafoods. From relatively humble beginnings, in just over thirty years, the business has gone from one that was sinking to the biggest producer of scampi in the UK, [...]
Need some Valentine’s Day ideas? We’ve got you covered with our expert guide to the perfect date February 10, 2016 It’s almost Valentine’s Day, the yearly celebration of big kisses on the mouth, so you know what that means: candle-lit dinners, small boxes of chocolate cubes, asking your beloved to turn all the lights on and off in quick succession to create a strobe effect as you dance every kind of forbidden sex-dance there is. But [...]
Working Lunch review: Roma restores Ancient Roman cuisine to the City of London on the site of an old fort October 31, 2016 Roma 14 New London St, EC3R 7NA WHAT? Do you remember Harper’s, that bland, beige wine bar down an alley by Fenchurch Street station? No? Just as well because it’s been given a marbled makeover and now it’s a culinary tribute to the glories of Ancient Rome. Expect hefty cuts of meat and an empire-spanning wine [...]
Don’t tell the black cabs: Brits can’t get enough of Uber as UK profits and revenues double in 2015 October 10, 2016 Uber drivers in the UK raked in more than £100m in fares last year, doubling revenues and profits at the disruptive transport app. The taxi service's holding company in Britain, Uber London, recorded a 105 per cent uplift in turnover to £23.3m in 2015, according to records filed on Companies House. This was up from [...]
Restaurant review: Luca is the Italian nobody expected from The Clove Club’s Isaac McHale January 18, 2017 Isaac McHale was such a rebellious Young Turk that while he was still cheffing at the Ledbury, he ran a series of pop-ups under the name The Young Turks. He and James Lowe – then the head chef at St John Bread and Wine – would serve up whatever they damn-well pleased, in venues not [...]
Meet Tom Vernon, the former Manchester United scout and founder of Africa’s top football academy out to turn the sport on its head December 21, 2016 There is something extraordinary about the union between FC Nordsjaelland, an unremarkable Danish first division football club to the north-west of Copenhagen, and the Right To Dream academy in Ghana. It is not just because the club, from the modest 19,000-person town of Farum, is some 5,000 miles away from Right To Dream’s football-oriented residential [...]