The Kitchen Shop serves up foodie events

A Lichfield housewares retailer is hosting a series of events in-store with a local foodie flavour.

For the next two weekends – June 29-30 and July 6-7 – from 11am to 3pm, the ‘Wimbledon Strawberries & Cream’ event will make its debut at Staffordshire-based The Kitchen Shop.

To celebrate the oldest tennis tournament in the world, the store will be handing out free strawberries and cream to customers. A local business, New Farm Produce in Elmhurst, is providing strawberries for customers to enjoy. There will be deals of the day and demos showing how to use a strawberry huller.

Last Saturday on June 15, The Kitchen Shop hosted its ‘A Taste of Italy’ event. A chef from Lichfield’s latest Italian restaurant – Ristorante Sorrento – gave customers a taster of how to make pasta, with samples and 20% discount vouchers to dine at Sorrento available.

One week earlier on Saturday June 8 a Bread Making Clinic was held, with the help of Lichfield business Hindleys Bakery. Master Baker Duncan Hindley hosted a two-hour bread making clinic in-store, giving demos on particular bread-making techniques, and helping to solve customers’ dough dilemmas. Samples of different artisan breads, and dippers and compotes were on offer throughout the day and 25% off vouchers for Hindleys bread were given out.

Commenting on the demos, Lizzie Braine, who works alongside fellow manager (and sister) Vicki Woolston, said: “It’s all about shouting out to people and giving them some retail theatre. We’re just trying them out at the moment. We took a small ad out in the ‘Lichfield Gazette’, promoted them on our Facebook site, and have free listings on the Lichfield Live and Visit Lichfield websites.

“The idea is to team up with local food producers and businesses. We hope people will drop by and come to see how easy it is to buy local.”

She added that the demos have proved a good opportunity to push related product sales too: strawberry hullers for the Wimbledon Weekends; bread boards and dough scrapers at the Bread Making Clinic; and pasta machines, cutters and rollers for A Taste of Italy.

The Kitchen Shop also runs regular Foodie Fridays. As the retailer’s Facebook site explains: “If you love kitchen gadgets you’ll love Foodie Fridays! Every week we show off some of our unusual and best loved kitchen gadgets. You get to try them out too!”