Innovative ideas are put on show

A range of exciting new ideas designed by final year students on our BA (Hons) Hospitality Business Management programme went on display in the College recently.

The students divided into 15 groups to come up with ideas for a new product or service concept which could be used in the hospitality industry, as part of the Innovation in Hospitality module.

They spent four weeks working on their plans, before putting them on display in the Brasserie for students, staff and guests from industry to see.

The two winning teams were then chosen by representatives of Compass Group and Jurys Doyle, who sponsored the awards.

Chloe Vaughan, Carly Hawthorne, Sophie Price and Sian Connell received the first award for their skinni bar concept, for a healthy mini bar in hotels.

Chloe said: "We'd all stayed in hotels ourselves and experienced the problem of having nothing healthy in mini bars, so we did some research and found many other people didn't use them for the same reason.

"We came up with the skinni bar as the best solution to the problem, and we've now sent the idea on to a major hotel group who asked us for more information about the idea."

The second winning group was Inn Well System - a design for a plastic lining for a pub or bar's ice tray, to make cleaning easier, created by Lexi House, Jordan Davies and Nathan Gould.

Jordan said: "We all work in the industry, and clearing out the ice tray was a job we disliked and we wanted to find a way to make it easier. We developed an initial idea and tested it in two bars on Broad Street, where we got a very positive response from management and staff.

"Hopefully it's an idea we could go further with - we're going to contact a patent lawyer as a first step and take it from there."

Hospitality, Food and Retail Management programmes director of studies, Jerry Hartley, added: “The decision was made based on the originality, feasibility and practicality of the concept, the research the students had done and how well they presented their ideas on the day.

"Both teams were very committed and positive about their ideas and were a credit to themselves and the College."

The full list of entrants was as follows:

• Easy Plate – Eric Tan, Betsy Shen, Yen He
• Exotica Tropica – Xing Xin, Jingjie Tie, Sandra Brown
• Health Teller – Yao Chen, Hua Chen, Xiao Xiao, Chang Li
• Ice Cream Sushi – George Wang, Jason Man, Kit Man Chao
• IM Concierge – Raul Castro, Serina Bahery, Emma Smith
• In Well System – Lexi House, Jordan Davies, Nathan Gould
• Intelligent Cup – Gene Ghan, Gioukis Odysseas
• Metis – Iwona Muniak, Mariusz Domanus, Hazleen Patel
• OPOS – Nicole Zhu, Sam Zheng, Daozi Zhu
• Order by Touch – Peter Sturdey, Monica Gill, Piyush Setiya
• Pi – Daphne Hong, Joanna Cheng, Mandy Ye
• Signature Suites – Arvjdas Valeika, Russel Doctrove
• skinni bar – Chloe Vaughan, Carly Hawthorne, Sophie Price, Sian Connell
• S-L-M-R – William Gang, Kelly Dai, Jenny Jingzhou, Esther Yili
• Soya Milk – Tiffany Cheng, Stuart Lee