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In addition to my personal love of food, some other things are close to my heart including sailing, the coast and Dartmouth in particular. I regularly make a donation to the RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution) whose volunteer crews are always on call; putting their lives on hold to be ready to save lives at a moment’s notice. As I’m keen on boating, to support them to ensure they have the resources they need to do their work.

This year, donations are going toward funding a new Shannon class lifeboat. As part of the relief fleet, the new Shannon will stand in for other boats that need repairs or maintenance around our coasts, where 22 people are rescued every single day.

While the team travel all over the country, Birmingham is the closest city to “home” for the majority of them and as such, the new restaurant, café and bar openings are always a hot topic in our office!

The last year has seen the openings of some great new eateries in England’s second city – not just those within the major developments of Grand Central (Leon, Pho, Square Pie and Tortilla among others) and Resorts World (High Line, Robata, Sports Bar, Sky Bar as well as mainstream brands Nando’s, TGI’s, GBK and Pizza Express) but also great independents all over the city.

From the messy and atmospheric Nosh & Quaff, tapping into 2015’s biggest food trend – the single dish (ish!) restaurant – to the popular with the work crowd Bodega, the Botanist, Cosy Club, Gas Street Social and Marmalade. They’re each using the city’s quietly grand architecture (the old Midland Bank and the REP Theatre among them) to be the perfect environment for their all day dining and drinking options.

Closer to our homes, we’ve seen the introduction of Meatcure, Coffee Architects, Bourbon Smokehouse and 33 The Scullery. Many of them have included “unlimited” options, incentives to dwell, and impressive kids menus; understanding the real shift we have seen in family and group dining in recent years and often outside “normal” meal times.

And it doesn’t stop there. 2016 has already seen the opening of Adam’s, Friska, Zizzi at Brindleyplace and we have Gaucho’s little brother – CAU, the Alchemist, Viva Brazil and Le Bistrot Pierre and a new Hotel du Vin yet to come. There really are too many hotspots, and too little time for us food lovers to get to them all!

The biggest changes we’re expecting to see come in the forms of the technology driven to service these restaurants; from Deliveroo to Quikr payment options, it’s likely to be the significant disruption in the catering sector in 2016. Plus, we’ve heard on the grapevine that Hawaiian food “poke” and Philippine cuisine will be hot this year, falafel will be appearing as vegetables in premium restaurants and menu kits from your favourite restaurants will be available for purchase. We can’t wait!

Yes that’s right – we are one today! We can hardly believe it’s been a year since Thread began building its own story, but as they say, time flies when you’re having fun!

We have had a brilliant first year, since launching on the 2 February 2015 and would like to say thank you to those clients who have chosen to work with us already, our nine new clients, and a big welcome to those thinking about using us in the future.

We’re quick to build trust and new foundations within our client organisations, and are often treated as part of their team – which is a huge compliment to our people and theirs, and makes working together both enjoyable and productive.

On top of that, since launching a year ago, we’ve saved our three major clients alone a whopping £3.5m!

They’re pretty pleased with us as you might imagine, but we appreciate that it’s their understanding of the importance of continuous investment in catering quality audits, contract performance reviews, catering and soft service procurement and benchmarking, contract renegotiations and training that make our role in finding those efficiencies and improvements for their organisations possible.

In addition to this, we’ve undertaken three major strategic reviews and strategy development exercises with our clients, which will lead into more savings and performance improvement in 2016 and beyond. But we won’t jump the gun, we’ll let the storyline develop and tell you about those next year!

The port of Dartmouth welcomed thousands of visitors to the 171st Royal Regatta this summer. Thread team enjoyed a fun packed week experiencing the delights of numerous air shows, crabbing competitions, dinghy racing and rowing, with shopping and running events woven in between. Fabulous live music from the bandstand delighted spectators while they sampled a variety of street food. This soon became a piece of foodie research The Thread Team relished with enthusiasm!

The highlight of our experience was watching The Royal Navy display with The RNLI- Thread’s chosen charity. We continue to make donations throughout the year to support the vital part they play in saving lives. The RNLI have launched a new fund raising initiative in recognition of the many volunteers who risk their lives (and often their supper!) when they get called out to sea in an emergency. If you would like to support this worthy cause, please visit: rnli.org/howtosupportus/Pages/How-to-support-us.aspx and see how you can help.

The 33^rd Two Castles Run was held last Sunday and completed by our very own Business Support and Conference Specialist, Sue Jenkins. The 10k run started at the breathtaking Warwick Castle and finished at historic Kenilworth Castle. The race organised by the Kenilworth Rotary Club with the help of Leamington Cycling and Athletics Club, attracted 4,000 runners.

The Two Castles Run has a reputation of one of the best and classic 10k runs in the country as well as raising over £100,000 for charity. Sue completed the run in a personal best time of 49 minutes and 31 seconds.

Sue has now begun training for her next challenge which is the Oxford Half Marathon in October and we wish her the best of luck!

We’re delighted to announce our chosen charity, RNLI.

As keen sailors, Sally and her family enjoy holidays in Dartmouth. So when we are not weaving our magic at work, we enjoy the fresh air and short sea trips to local Devon harbours. Sally is keen to support the RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution) as Thread’s chosen charity. Last year the RNLI rescued an average of 24 people every day, and that wouldn’t be possible without donations.

The company makes regular donations to their appeals, starting with their May Day campaign #YellowWelly this year, which from 1-4 May will celebrate the lifesaving work of their lifeboat crews. The fundraising supports the maintenance of vessels, training for new recruits and uniform provision for the rescue teams.

If you’d like to make a donation to this wonderful cause, please visit https://rnli.org/howtosupportus/getinvolved/fundraising-for-us/Pages/mayday-donate-now.aspx

We’re not your usual consultants. If you come and meet us, you’ll know we know our stuff, that we know how to handle challenging stakeholder groups or distil and communicate complex issues at multiple levels, and that we’re astute enough to take on board the experience across your organisation, while openly benchmarking it to the marketplace, to bring your team on the journey with us. We’ve been where you are; we’ve led high performance teams, we’ve managed operational delivery of catering and hospitality operations and we understand the curiosity and occasional wariness attached to the introduction of consultants.