Unilever Foodsolutions is showing its support to Hospitality Action this autumn by donating 20p from every tub of Knorr 1kg Chicken, Beef and Vegetable bouillon sold for a three-month period up to the end of this year.

The company hopes the campaign will generate a £40,000 cash donation that will support Hospitality Action’s work in helping current and past hospitality employees during times of tragedy, ill health or personal hardship. 

In addition to raising valuable funds the Knorr Bouillon campaign aims to help raise the profile of the work that the charity does within the industry particularly with working chefs, caterers and kitchen staff.  Tubs of Knorr Bouillon will carry real-life stories from people who have been helped through difficult times thanks to the support given by Hospitality Action. 

Celebrity chef Jason Atherton, has supported Hospitality Action for many years and welcomes the Knorr Bouillon fundraising campaign: “It’s great to see Knorr taking the initiative to raise cash for Hospitality Action and helping to share the message about the great work it does. HA is our charity, for our industry and it’s important that people know there is help and support available when it is needed – and this campaign is a great way to demonstrate this.”

Next week is National Chocolate Week which means it will be positively frowned upon not to eat chocolate all week long. Oh misery…

Like we need an excuse anyway. In fact the latest research from Mintel reveals that despite these dark economic times forcing cutbacks in other areas, chocolate is something we’re not giving up.

With consumers turning to it as a low cost comfort food, UK sales of chocolate confectionery increased by 9.2% between 2007 and 2009 to reach an estimated £3.6 billion and sales are projected to grow even further to £4.1 billion by 2015.

And it seems that dark chocolate has leapt ahead in the popularity stakes with the overall majority of people who said they preferred milk chocolate in 2008 dropping to just 35% in 2009.

A whopping 90% of us say we ‘regularly’ eat chocolate and the number of us using chocolate as a treat increased from 46% in 2008 to 49% in 2009.

Well it is cheaper than a pair of Jimmy Choo’s.

Just as has happened with coffee, ‘black/white’ and ‘with/without sugar’ is set to become a totally inadequate vocabulary when ordering tea, if trend predictions from Teapigs are anything to go by.

The tea supplier says there is a tremendous opportunity to upgrade the British tea experience by offering a range of products that go way beyond the standard cuppa.

Although there are powdered products on the market for producing the likes of chai lattes, Teapigs advocates using whole leaf tea bags (or tea ‘temples’ as they like to call their own tea bags) to create tea lattes this winter.

Teapigs tea taster Louise, who in true Madonna style appears to have no surname, says the company offers training and recipe cards which include caffeine-free rooibos caramel lattes and spiced winter lattes.

It’s latte alright, but not as we know it.