Food articles written by Nellie Nichols, which include restaurant reviews, international sandwich and snack news, and Food to Go reviews.
Richard Lilley’s two outstanding London sandwich and café bars break one of the fundamental rules of marketing: there’s no branding. Customers are still flocking there in droves, however, as the news spreads by word of mouth, but guided by the address rather than the name. Branding is as old as the hills. In the old […]
Food consultant Nellie Nichols held a ‘Sandwich Surgery’ at the recent lunch! show, dispensing practical advice in response to audience questions. Q. How important is it to include innovative recipes in the offer, particularly given that most consumers tend to be fairly conservative in buying sandwiches? A. Innovation is hugely important. If you put a […]
London’s new Leon offshoot Flat Planet may be an unorthodox operation, but its flat-bread sandwich offer is inspired – so good, in fact, that the El Diablo has now been added to Nellie Nichols’ current top five favourites, along with Mooli’s Goat Roti. August has to be one of my favourite months of the year: […]
Nellie Nichols will be hosting a Sandwich & Snack Surgery live at lunch! at 10.45am on Friday 30th September in the Working lunch! Keynote Theatre. When I embarked in this food business in the mid eighties ‘Food To Go’ didn’t exist. M & S had just broken new ground with their first manufactured sandwiches; prawn […]
The Earl of Sandwich could be looking at “a big pot of gold” with his new London sandwich bar, if some of the initial teething troubles are sorted out. ‘Going into trade’ was apparently one of the worst things an aristocrat could ever do, along with “buying your own furniture” as the late Tory politician […]
Pret has announced new openings for its new concept, Coffee Pret Kitchen, aimed at giving the sandwich chain access to smaller towns. But Nellie Nichols has some misgivings about the food range and the shop design. In my younger days I had a more cavalier approach to life and a tendency to behave in a […]
Sainsbury’s has taken a radical step with the opening of its new freshly-made sandwich bar format, Fresh Kitchen. Nellie Nichols went along to see how the new concept measures up against the very best. Nearly twenty years ago, the walk from Temple tube station to Fleet Street used to be part of my daily journey […]
New international sandwich concepts are arriving thick and fast in London, now surely the sandwich capital of the world. Nellie Nichols chases up one of the recent arrivals – the Argentinian Lomito, at the recently opened Moo Grill in Spitalfields. What an insular sandwich bubble I’ve been living in. I thought I had come across […]
Chipotle has been a ‘must’ stop off for sandwich designers on ‘new retail trends’ tours, since it opened in London recently. Is all the fuss justified? Nellie Nichols joined the queue to find out. I don’t ever want to go to Mexico, I think it’s a texture thing. I can only visit a country if […]
Planet Organic has launched a range of organic sandwiches – Filling Station – in its London stores. Nellie Nichols went along to sample the new offerings. Although I care passionately about what I eat and where it comes from, I’m afraid I do sit very comfortably on the organic fence. I buy organic milk because […]
