Denise Leicester’s Ila is a beauty brand that loves you back December 21, 2015 Beauty products all claim to be the most age-defying, youth-providing, beautifying, and so on. And there’s a bamboozling list of chemical names which claim to do just that. But a growing awareness that what you put on your skin is as important for your health as what you put in your mouth, is leading more [...]
Grenada: The chocolate capital of the Caribbean May 3, 2016 Sitting outside the front of the Spice Island Beach Resort I asked a young bellman where he would go to get the best food on the island of Grenada. He smiled, his eyes glazed over and he described how his mother makes the local porridge called tanya log. “She puts bay leaves and nutmeg into [...]
Galley on Upper Street in Islington is nice: but we should aim higher February 23, 2016 We can afford to be discerning about things, us Londoners, what with all the lovely London stuff we have, Londoning the place up. “Isn’t everything here great compared to the things in places that aren’t London?” we say to each other, smiling and knowing it to be true. Take restaurants: we have heaps of them, [...]
The dollar just reached its highest level since 2003 November 16, 2016 The US dollar has reached its highest level since 2003, as continued concern about the impacts of President-elect Donald Trump’s new era of fiscal policy pushed it over a previous high point in December of last year. The index measuring the dollar against multiple currencies today rose to 100.53 at around midday, before falling back slightly [...]
Music ban on the Tube, child-free restaurants and four-day working week: The 10 laws we most want to see introduced in 2016 December 29, 2015 Ban on being drunk in a pub, carrying a plank along a pavement or flying kites in the street. There are plenty of weird British laws that we suspect may not always be strictly enforced (not that we’ve ever seen anyone inebriated in a pub, of course). But what about laws that ought to exist, [...]
Would you make an evening meal of it at Starbucks or Pret? No? Then how about Greggs or Subway? December 1, 2015 Starbucks and Pret a Manger have started trialling late-night opening hours, offering their customers evening menus and even serving wine and beer. YouGov assessed the attitudes and opinions of more than 60,000 consumers to evaluate whether high street coffee outlets are really an attractive venue for dinner and drinks. The blunt answer is “not yet”. Almost [...]
How Tyrrells aims to be the big cheese (and onion) of the crisp world January 28, 2016 Six years ago, David Milner received a phone call from private equity firm Langholm Partners, the former owners of Tyrrells Crisps. They needed help. After an eight-year growth spurt, sales at the posh crisp brand had turned rather stale and Langholm wanted the former Mars and Campbell’s Soup executive on board. “The first thing I [...]
Just Eat is off to sizzling start on the market April 3, 2014 SHARES in Just Eat, the online food takeaway group, yesterday finished their first day of trading 23p above an already high issue price, to value a group with underlying earnings of £14m at an astonishing £1.6bn. When the group first started discussing the possibility of floating earlier this year, the assumption was it would fetch [...]
King Digital investor and Index Ventures partner Ben Holmes is hunting for tech unicorns February 8, 2015 Ben Holmes first heard about King Digital Entertainment, the company behind three of the global top-grossing iPhone apps, including Candy Crush Saga, over a decade ago. At that time in 2004 Holmes, a partner at the new London offices of Index Ventures, represented one of the few venture capital firms still investing in consumer-facing internet [...]
It’s official: Dining at your desk or on the move makes you gain weight August 20, 2015 We all know we should get outside for some fresh air at lunchtime – but it turns out missing out on exercise isn't the only reason eating "al desko" makes you gain weight. A new study, by scientists at Surrey University, has found if you're focusing on something other than your meal – by, for [...]