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Harbour & Jones Events boosts Sales & Marketing team with three new recruits

Posted on: January 12th, 2015 by chandco

Lucy Mears, Alex Campbell and Rebecca Hawkes have joined Harbour & Jones Events as Sales & Marketing Managers.

Lucy Mears joins the central sales team from Payne + Gunter, bringing a wealth of experience spanning supplier, buyer and agency roles. Lucy will work across the entire Harbour & Jones Events collection including St Paul’s Cathedral and Cutty Sark, as well as the three new venues gained at the end of 2014: Borough Market, RIBA and Church House Conference Centre.

Alex Campbell joins RSA House following a three-year stint at food by dish. With an impressive track record of driving sales and exceeding targets across extensive venue portfolios, Alex will focus on growing sales and nurturing the sales and marketing team.

Prince Philip House welcomes Rebecca Hawkes following the departure of Becci Thomson to the O2. Joining from Gibson Hall, Rebecca’s background in special events and business development will enable her to strengthen existing relationships while attracting new clients.

Susan Morrissey, Venue Sales Director said: “This is an exciting time for Harbour & Jones Events and I’m delighted to have such experienced and dynamic people joining us. We’ve enjoyed a fantastic year of growth and expansion, and now we’re strengthening our sales team with best-in-class events professionals to take us forward in to 2015.”

We’re busy working on our new summer event packages, which we’ll be launching at The London Summer Event Show on 27 & 28 January. Register here to attend, and if you visit our stand on 28 January you’ll be entered into a prize draw to win an exclusive Harbour & Jones Events dinner for up to 8 people at your own home!

We’ll be sending out more information about our new team and  this fantastic prize in our newsletter, so don’t miss out and sign up!

Festive fun as white Christmas takes gold at RSA House

Posted on: December 19th, 2014 by chandco

What do you get if you cross an £8 budget with 180 metres of tin foil, years worth of repurposed event decorations and a brand new events team? It’s ok, it’s not a bad cracker joke; it’s the winners of the annual Royal Society of Art Christmas decorating competition.

Our Harbour & Jones Events team at RSA House were looking for ways to raise their profile and get to know colleagues around the venue. What better way to get involved than by transforming the events office at RSA House, home to enlightened thinking, into a winter wonderland?

Every day, the team came together for ‘power half-hour’, adding decorations and displays to the space. It started with a computer screen being given the gift of wrapping and snowballed from there.

RSA House has seen it’s busiest Christmas to date this year, with award-winning restaurant The Vaults hosting 50 covers at lunch throughout December and back-to-back events across the venue.

Alex Campbell, Sales & Marketing Manager was really pleased with the teams efforts ‘It’s been really great to meet everyone and join in the festive spirit of the RSA. Business is booming and we’re all rushed off our feet, so it’s nice to be able to give something back to the team – a bit of fun goes a long way.’

Other efforts from around the offices included a handmade nativity scene, festive origami and a Christmas tree made entirely from books. But our team literally whitewashed the competition to take first place. The prize? Fame and glory, of course.

 

 

Double delight at the Event 100 Club big reveal!

Posted on: December 12th, 2014 by chandco

This week we joined Event Magazine’s elite Event 100 Club 2015, not once, but twice, as two members of our fabulous team were named amongst the most influential people in the events industry.

Our Creative Director, Jules Heckman Hughes, and General Manager at RSA House, Katy Hadcroft joined over 250 industry friends and colleagues for the Event 100 Club big reveal party, to find out who secured a much-coveted place on the prestigious list of just 100 names.

Jules is no stranger to the club, having also been recognised last year for her continued outstanding contribution to the events industry, but this is Katy’s first year on the list, acknowledged for her exceptional leadership and direction of RSA House, our magnificent venue located just off the Strand.

This is the icing on the cake for Harbour & Jones Events after being named Event Magazine’s Caterer of the Year, and to have our people recognised like this is a truly tremendous honour.

Congratulations Jules & Katy – we couldn’t be more thrilled!

Read more about the Event 100 Club, and the names to look out for in 2015.

Borough Market is a delight by night

Posted on: November 24th, 2014 by chandco

On 12 November, as the afternoon light faded and Borough Market’s traders closed down for the evening, our team burst into action, bringing the historic market hall back to life for an evening of vibrant street food and vivacious entertainment.

Over 250 guests caroused in a feast of flavours from our Street Eats food stall concept, launched to critical acclaim earlier this year at St Paul’s Cathedral.

Greeted by barrels of New Forest mulled cider, guests soon warmed up as they gathered around upturned oil cans that were transformed into table top fondue stations.

As the band warmed up and the drinks flowed, it was cheese galore at the bespoke branded raclette stall, with French bread, baby potatoes and pickles, loaded mac ‘n’ cheese and deliciously oozy Montgomery cheddar & sour dough toasties.

Korean yum buns tempted guests over to a tucked away corner. Steamed pillow-soft buns filled were heaped with slow cooked pork belly, miso glazed Portobello mushrooms or sticky chilli ginger salmon and served with kimchi, gyozas & Korean red dragon sauce.

There were winter warmers aplenty at the traditional pie & mash stall, complete with jellied eels, and we bought the Basque to Borough with baby chorizo butter bean stew, squid ink rice with calamari and carved Brindisa Iberico ham, all with a feast of breads, cheese, vinegars and oils.

Under the roof of one of London’s most famous landmarks, passers-by on Borough High Street stopped catch a glimpse of the goings-on inside. The bustling market place was alive with music, laughter and the enticing aromas of the stalls.

Needless to say, the event was a roaring success and feedback was outstanding. One guest commented ‘what a superb evening it was, probably one of the best I’ve been to in recent memory. The food, drink, entertainment and attention to detail were all outstanding, especially the branding’ another said ‘Literally the best corporate event I’ve been to in 20 years’. We couldn’t agree more!

Borough Market is one of the newest additions to our venues collection. Find out more and enquire today.

In pictures: Queen Elizabeth Prize launch event wows the crowds

Posted on: November 18th, 2014 by chandco

Prince Philip House, home to the Royal Academy of Engineering, recently opened its doors to over 250 guests from Sony, BP, Jaguar Land Rover, National Grid and many more for the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering (QEPrize) Ambassadors Network Launch Party.

The theme of the evening was The Future of Engineering – an interactive journey through engineering projects and technologies. The full venue production is a first for Prince Philip House, with an interesting engineering or design installation on display at every turn. The events spaces lend themselves perfectly to this kind of experiential event, with state of the art inbuilt technology and the venue is a blank canvas waiting to be transformed.

Highlights from the night include Robothespian – a life sized, fully interactive, party-going humanoid robot, and the opportunity to see planets like never before with big-screen footage courtesy of NASA. Cutecircuit showcased a fully interactive digital fashion show complete with staged catwalk, and guest got to try their hands at Gravity Sketch – a technology start-up tool that lets you create intuitive 3D design in real time, with no programming experience needed.

Our team served a bespoke futuristic menu of canapés,and interactive food stalls greeted guests on arrival. Bocconcini with tomato gel & purple basil delighted the senses and an impressive seafood stall; showcasing sustainably sourced food with whole sides of cured salmon and king prawns didn’t fail to impress.

To have such vast and technical production across all of the event spaces was great testament to the capabilities of Prince Philip House as a cutting edge venue.

Exclusive historic sundown tour of RSA House reveals some of London’s best-kept secrets

Posted on: October 31st, 2014 by chandco

On Wednesday 29 October at 5pm prompt, a select group of industry invitees including guests from PWC and Marie Curie Cancer Care eagerly gathered at RSA House for an exclusive guided tour through some of the most unique event spaces in the city.

This is the first time that The House, designed by Robert Adam in the early 1770s, has opened its doors for a tour of this kind, with some of the more concealed spaces being London event bookers’ best-kept secrets to date.

The evening opened in the impressive Benjamin Franklin Room with nibbles and drinks from Event Magazine’s Caterer of the Year Harbour & Jones Events, and was followed by a theatrical overview of the history of RSA House starting in The Great Room. This spectacular space is dominated by the famous and imposing series of paintings ‘Progress of Human Knowledge and Culture’ by James Barry.

Moving through to the Durham Street Auditorium, which is built over one of London’s old Roman roads that used to link the Strand to the Thames, guests enjoyed gourmet popcorn whilst hearing about how the road has been preserved as a key feature running strikingly through the 60-seat auditorium.

Glasses refreshed, and nibbles nibbled, guests moved through to the Vaults. Originally designed as riverfront warehouses, these fully restored brick built spaces are now home to award-winning restaurant The Vaults. Brickwork has been sandblasted and sealed to create a powerful yet intimate space, which is also used today for conferences, press launches and weddings.

To round off the evening, guests came together to sample fine dining canapés and a spectacular pudding wall in the Tavern Room, which used to be a public house frequented by Charles Dickens and is in fact mentioned in the Pickwick Papers.

Katy Hadcroft, General Manager at RSA House said ‘’it was wonderful to be able to share the rich history of RSA House with such a captivated audience. The event spaces here are so unique and we’re proud to be able to offer event bookers such an extraordinary venue in a prime location.’

Situated just off the Strand in central London, the House team provides a bespoke service to clients.  Whether it’s a conference for 200, location filming, product launches, press events, boardroom meetings, wedding ceremonies, receptions or parties, they deliver the very best in hospitality.

Exclusive historic tours are being offered to event bookers throughout November at RSA House. Contact the House team on 020 7930 5115 to plan your visit.

Opposites attract at Prince Philip House

Posted on: October 30th, 2014 by chandco

On Thursday 23 October, over 200 industry insiders including PWC, Barclays, Blackrock, Incisive Media, Melon Events and Grant Thornton were welcomed to Prince Philip House for the venue’s second birthday, to celebrate the perfect combination of classic and contemporary represented by the building’s elegant Grade 1 listed façade and its state-of-the-art modern interior. With this in mind, the Prince Philip House team had organised a night of interactive food, exploring the themes of ‘old and new’ and ‘sweet and savoury’. Old and modern cooking techniques rubbed shoulders as ancient dishes were updated with contemporary twists.

Guests were welcomed with alcoholic iced teas and canapés and invited to wander among the interactive food stalls. The Indian stall commemorated the first ever Indian restaurant to open in London back in the 1800s, the same era in which Carlton House Terrace was built, and served ‘London meets Delhi’ street food with delicious filled chapatis and Scotch bhajis.

Doughnut recipes first appeared in 1803, but the Prince Philip House chefs elevated this humble bun to new levels with savoury fillings and spiced savoury sugars. Crab mousse with chilli and lemon sugar, braised oxtail with paprika sugar and ricotta cheese with cinnamon sugar were all on offer as the doughnuts were assembled in front of the delighted guests.

To fit with the savoury and sweet theme, a popcorn challenge tested even the most confident of taste buds. Party-goers were invited to match the flavours to numbers on a card, with a bonus point for anyone who could guess the mystery flavour.

Creative technology agency, Luma, had installed a YrWall digital graffiti wall so that people could unleash their inner artist and then print off the results as a memento of the evening. Guests also downloaded the Prince Philip House app, created by Appsolutely Mobile, prior to the event in order to post messages and images via the event wall, which were then projected live on to plasma screens around the venue. The PPH app is available as an event organiser’s tool for any event held in the building.

The showstopper, as the evening drew to a close, was a gigantic plate of puddings which took pride of place in the Velvet Living designed Al Qasimi room as guests were handed forks and encouraged to dive in. Needless to say, the pudding was a fabulous mix of techniques and flavours, perfectly representing the evening’s ode to ancient and modern.

Rupert Outram, General Manager at Prince Philip House, said, “We couldn’t have hoped for a better evening. It was rewarding to see how much our guests enjoyed the whole experience. Prince Philip House is the perfect setting for fun evening events like this, and we’re really looking forward to welcoming more guests to the venue.”

All of the food, theming and surprises from the night are available to event bookers at Prince Philip House. To find out more, contact the team [email protected]

Two awards won at this year’s MIMA!

Posted on: October 22nd, 2014 by chandco

October has been a great month. Hot on the heels of winning Event Caterer of the Year came another successful evening, this time at the Meetings Industry Marketing Awards (MIMA) which took place at the Lancaster Hotel on Monday 20th October.  Up against the industry’s top marketing minds, we were delighted to have been singled out for two awards for our Save the Orchards campaign; gold for Best Use of Budget and bronze for Best Live Marketing Event, for the campaign launch party held at RSA House last year.  Huge congratulations to all the teams involved and keep saving those orchards!

Harbour & Jones Events named Event Caterer of the Year

Posted on: October 6th, 2014 by chandco

We are utterly delighted to have won the prestigious Event Caterer of the Year gong at the 2014 Event Awards, held at the supercool Troxy on October 2nd.  The art deco-style theatre played host to a glittering 1920s themed evening, complete with flapper girls, sharp suits and a swing dance group.

The Harbour & Jones Events team glammed up and joined more than 700 event professionals who packed the venue to cheer on their teams. And we had plenty to shout about as first we were announced as Event Caterer of the Year and then the RSA House was Highly Commended in the Event Space of the Year category.

Nathan Jones, Director of Harbour & Jones Events echoed the sentiments of the whole team; “This has been a fabulous night for Harbour & Jones Events. To be recognised by your industry is very rewarding and my congratulations go out to the whole of our hardworking, creative and dedicated team.”

Great food and plenty of dancing rounded off an exceptional night.

Cutty Sark embarks on a nautical Christmas

Posted on: September 22nd, 2014 by chandco

Whisk your guests away from central London on their own private boat, enjoy entertainment, fizz and canapés as your guests look out over the glittering lights of London, including South Bank, Tower of London and Canary Wharf.

Arriving in style to Greenwich Pier, your guests will be greeted by the team and the impressively lit Cutty Sark before descending into the ship’s famous bough.

Tastefully styled to echo the ship’s history, tables will be decked with miniature treasure chests overflowing with flowers and gold, and up-lit bars framed with tall rope-bound vases.

Choose from our range of packages that includes everything from a reception for 300 to a sit down dinner for 100 under the ship’s gleaming copper hull. Experience the ship’s travels through the spicing, methods and ingredients used, including the Cutty Sark Whisky cured salmon, 24-hour cooked Essex pork with a spiced tea rub and Greenwich battered pollack. Or for a sweet treat, black tea cupcakes, spiced rum cream or Cutty Sark Whisky chocolate delice with macerated strawberries.

Long table dinner for 100 guests – £241PP

Reception dinner and dance for 200 guests – £189PP

Reception for 300 guests – £135PP

 

BOOK NOW – CONTACT US ON 0203 206 7763

River transport from central London to the Cutty Sark available from £25.00 per person – includes a glass of champagne on board.


Work with us

We are always looking for talented people from chief cooks to expert bottle washers to work with us.

If that’s you, email your CV to: [email protected]