The Editor's Hospitality Blog

Well if you haven't I'm sure you soon will, particularly if you live in the West country, because owners Cosmo Fry and Lulu Anderson will be featured in a TV documentary about opening their newest Big Sleep hotel in Cheltenham.

So when Caterer's Tom Vaughan interviewed the pair a week or so ago, the TV cameras were already rolling, so it seemed too good an opportunity to miss a chance to interview the pair to camera... and they make an engaging couple..... so if you haven't seen this five-minute clip yet, it's well worth a look. Or if you want to read the full article either buy Caterer and Hotelkeeper tomorrow (8 February) or read the full Big Sleep hotel article on CatererSearch.

If you think you seen it all on the web - then this takes the biscuit (for me I prefer a Carr's water biscuit with Cheddar, but I digress). West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers has come up with an online hit... watching one of it's famous Cheddars grow mouldy..... urgh!

There are obviously some serious cheeseheads out there as its attracted loads of hits according to Reuters... nearly 50,000 people—presumably driven by a mad passion for aged dairy products—have already clicked through to watch mold grow on cheese in real time.

A company spokeswoman happily bigged it up saying "It puts watching paint dry in the shade."

Yesterday we posted our latest piece of video on the site - an interview by Tom Vaughan of Caterer cover story duo Cosmo Fry and Lulu Anderson. Now, thanks to our great online sub Katherine, the page hosting all our video clips looks far better making the content far more accessible for anyone wanting to watch online.

Looking back since our first webcast in spring of last year - I think it's quite clear that the quality of our video has improved quite a bit.. hope you think so too.

So far our video has been created by ourselves, but we want to open it out to everyone. We can help you edit it and we can host it, but we need you to send us your content.

So if you want to share your video experiences with the hospitality industry then get in touch with me through this blog and we can discuss details.

As you probably know if you are familiar with this site, we have recently introduced three new blogs to our stable, including this one, the new caterer blog (left) and a redesigned Kitchen Rat (btw... we have a plan to introduce more, so watch this space for more on that).

But we also our experimenting with other things we can do on our blogs - and we recently introduced an RSS feed on to the caterer blog, so you can keep an eye out for all the best of the hospitality stories on the web.

What we do is sift the news feeds through our team of experienced journalists, so hopefully we weed out some of the rubbish and just serve you up the best of the web (we are still learning with this ourselves, so bear with us if don't get it quite right).

Watch out for different variations of this idea appearing on our blogs... and of course I'll keep you updated through my posts too.

At CatererSearch we are constantly looking to improve the service we offer you. To this end we are conducting a user survey to collect opinions of our website. To help us do this, all you need to do is fill in this questionnaire - it takes less than 10 minutes to complete and all responses you give will remain confidential.

The other good news is that you might win £500 by completing the form... not bad for 10 minutes work!

Many thanks.

As well as having the latest news and views on the hospitality industry, we also try and provide bespoke sources of information on useful topics.

To this end, we have put together a series of pages that bring together the best of CatererSearch information and other information from across the web.

Each page includes latest news, latest analysis or comment, features, links to blog posts, images, profiles and recipes where relevant, video clips, and links to external websites.

So far we have constructed 16 of these among a wide range of topics. So if you want to find out latest news, features or analysis about a wide range of issues, like the forthcoming smoking ban, school meals or the London Olympics then use the embedded link to find these pages.

We are launching a new blog from our old colleague Dan Bignold, who now lives and works in Shanghai, so we wanted to find out what you think we should call it.
Go to our poll below and cast your vote.

This week we've been updating our new product section Buy It! with all the latest product releases onto the market - this has seen another 109 new products featured in this section. So if you are keen to keep abreast of what new products are out there then head to Buy IT!

Also new on the site is the latest figures on hotel performance from both Tri Hospitality and PKF. For those operating in the UK hotel industry checking out the latest monthly stats from these consultants might be an invaluable insight for your business.

As well as daily news, blog postings, features, new recipes and new products, CatererSearch also has been posting new openings on the site since we launched the section in the magazine in late 2005.

There's now nearly 200 openings from hotels and restaurants since Butterfly High opened in London on 8 November 2005.

So if you are interested in the latest openings then head for openings section, where you can see all the latest openings, such as Soho Thai restaurant Benja, or new Japanese restaurant Shimo near London's Blackfriars.