baruser

In this blog, you’ll see what we got up to in February!

United Kingdom

February was fantastic! 

We were thrilled to join Wärtsilä with a sponsored bar at the Energy Storage Summit at Novotel London West for the 2nd year in a row! Our team was in full swing, treating visitors to passion fruit, strawberry and green apple crush from its sleek branded hospitality platform.

Take a look at the branded bar below: 

Wärtsilä Crush Bar at  Energy Storage Summit at Novotel London West.

Over to ExCeL, London, for the show that got all the #eventprofs talking, International Confex! It was vibrant and buzzing with energy, and we were thrilled to be back, 

sharing a stand with TechnaUK. Deploying a fully branded bar, we gave visitors a taste of what we do, offering Barmotion branded green smoothies, gourmet hot chocolates and a selected premium coffee menu. 

Throughout the two-day event, we served over 1000 branded refreshments! ☕

We even had a team of Rock Stars serving up a storm in the VIP lounge, providing fabulous hospitality from Cvent’s speciality coffee bar, which you can see in the images below. 

Barmotion at International Confex, ExCeL London.

South Africa

In South Africa, we had an exceptionally busy month providing our services nationwide.

We had a great time during our sextuple deployment at Meetings Africa, where we delivered not one but six branded speciality coffee bars!

The team of 8 headed over to Sandton Convention Centre, Johannesburg, for the event and brought their A-game, keeping the event attendees energised and refreshed with speciality coffees and, of course, good vibes and high energy.

Take a look at what we got up to in the images below! 

Barmotion at Meetings Africa, Sandton Convention Centre, Johannesburg

We were also delighted to see Barmotion in the latest edition of Business Events Africa, discussing our top tips on making your exhibition hospitality count, which you can view on page 26!

Watch this space 👀

In March, as we prepare for warmer spring months in the UK, we’ll be heading to ExCeL London, delighting Armstrong Fluid Technology’s guests with speciality coffee at Data Centre World, ExCeL London, and deploying a health smoothie bar for Cleo Systems at Digital Health Rewired at the NEC, Birmingham.

Marking the end of the Summer season in South Africa, we are expecting an equally busy month in March with a handful of activation events for Marriott, where we’ll be deploying a popcorn and doughnut bar in multiple locations across Johannesburg over 2 days! 

Stay tuned to our social media channels for updates and more.

We’re celebating here at Barmotion after winning the Exhibition and Events Association of Southern Africa (EXSA), EXSA-LLENCE Award for Delivering Exceptional Services and Products, held at Cedarwoods of Sandton, Johannesburg, South Africa, on Thursday, 18 January 2024. 

The winner of the Exceptional Services and Products Award is chosen by an EXSA membership vote, meaning that we have been recognised for our excellence by our fellow industry professionals in South Africa. The awards followed the annual EXSA Conference, where we provided hospitality services, offering a selection of cocktails to delegates throughout the evening. Our event manager, Kelsey Humby, was on hand to accept the award. 

Thrilled with the award win, our MD, Alexia Swart said, “I am incredibly proud of our team for their hard work delivering the best possible service to our customers, and on their behalf, at live events. It’s their dedication and enthusiasm to delivering outstanding services, that has been integral to this win” 

Alexia concluded, “This particular award means so much to everyone here at Barmortion. At events, we strive for excellence, so we’re delighted to have been selected as the winner by our industry peers in a category that recognises excellence in both service and products.”

Taking the branded hospitality bar to the next level, Shapes Design created a fantastic cafe space for visitors to the Coopervision stand at BCLA 2023, 9-11 June, at Manchester Central. Barmotion brought the speciality teas and coffees, and supplied our trademark warm welcomes from our Rock Stars in elegantly branded aprons. The sleek, modern bar, vivid lighting and stand design really came together into a fully branded experience, and it was great to be a part of it, not least for the many compliments about our coffee from the delegates!

Coffee for Water Aid, courtesy of Kier

We were at the Telford International Centre for Flood and Coast 2023, 6-8 June, with a coffee bar for Kier, one of the UK’s leading infrastructure and construction companies. In tune with the subject of this event, Kier wanted to offer a free coffee to every delegate and invite them to make a donation to Water Aid either by cash or using a QR code on the front of the coffee bar. 

We provided the branded speciality coffee bar, and our Rock Stars were kept very busy serving around 70-80 coffees an hour, equivalent to one coffee every 45-50 seconds!

Keeping cool at the Festival of Work

We were back at Olympia London for the Festival of Work, 7-8 June, a hugely vibrant show. We were there with our wonderful client CoachHub, helping keep energy levels and focus up with our speciality and iced coffees. Everything was branded to a ‘T’ and matched the stand beautifully. We’ve worked with CoachHub before, including at Learning Technologies last month and it was great to be back on stand with them again! We were also on stand with the fabulous folks at HiBob, serving probably the most delicious and refreshing Health Smoothies and Frappés at the whole show!

Our business is branded engagement, creating moments and experiences around coffee, drinks and snacks at exhibitions and other events. We understand the importance of eye contact, face-to-face meeting, and the power of a sharing act accompanied by a smile.

We train our Rockstars carefully, not just in how to make delicious coffee, drinks and food, but also in customer service skills, and they learn how to make people feel welcome and how to put them at ease. And we extend this thinking to the design of our coffee and snack bars.

Fundamentally, we build the back shelf of our bars lower than everyone else, especially our coffee bars. Modern coffee machines can be enormous, and once you’ve stacked cups on top, you’ve built a big barrier to engagement, with baristas left to peek over the top, where only the tallest customers are visible.

As you can imagine, this isn’t a gift to engagement or customer service, so in our bar designs, we lower our work surfaces from the standard height of about 80cm to below 70cm. The difference a mere 10cm makes is surprising, opening up the bar in an immediately more open and accessible space, and giving our Rockstars an opportunity to do what they do best  – make everyone feel welcome and special. Of course, sometimes we’re limited by having to use pre-installed bars and counters, but wherever we can, we try and make everyone a bit more visible to one another.

It works. There’s no question in my mind that dropping the height of the bars to keep sightlines open makes a huge difference to the look and feel of the stand overall. Compared to ours, other coffee bars at exhibitions begin to look like they’ve been defensively barricaded, with only the tops of the baristas’ heads visible bobbing up and down behind walls of steel topped with stacked cups. Barmotion coffee bars, by contrast, look positively inviting and welcoming.