Lifestyle: Food & Drink – The Ribbon Room spices up tea time for city visitors

THE NEC Group’s catering arm has added a traditionally English flavour to the modern surrounding of the Library of Birmingham.

Amadeus has pushed the boundaries of traditional catering to develop a new pop-up afternoon tea concept named ‘The Ribbon Room’.

The Ribbon Room emerged after the team at Amadeus looked to create something different to the abundance of afternoon tea offerings available elsewhere in the city centre.

The Library was identified as the trial venue for the new service because of its unique surroundings.

Following the success of the trial, Amadeus will now be installing the moveable restaurant to sit within the NEC Group other venues – the National Exhibition Centre, The Barclaycard Arena and the Genting Arena – to capitalise on visitors looking for a different food experience at high footfall events.

Amadeus currently caters for more than 700 conferences, exhibitions and events annually at these venues, and The Ribbon Room will be brought in to support dining demand.

Working with the NEC Group shop fitters, the Atlantic Group, The Ribbon Room was created in the middle of the Library’s third floor by using corrugated cardboard called re-board – an incredibly light yet exceptionally strong   patented paper based board with a unique engineered fluted core.

Using weighted posts and hinged construction to form the skeleton of the room allowed the re-board walls to simply slot in. The simplicity of the design permits the pop-up concept to be removed and re-erected simply, and at the end of the development the material can be recycled as paper in normal waste paper streams.

The interior design was also commissioned to the Atlantic Group under the guidance of Amadeus’ Head of Marketing Emma Thorn who developed the concept to provide visitors with a distinctive and fresh experience.

Ms Thorn said: “The Ribbon Room was a real challenge for us.  We work with shop fitters and exhibition stand builders all the time but idea fell out of specialism for both.  

“Atlantic had been talking about re-board as a point of sale solution for some time, so I challenged them to scale up to larger formats and they succeeded.  However, due to the unique nature of the pop-up concept it caused a few headaches and there was learning on both sides with a couple of things we would do differently next time, but the result was worth it.

“With the current location being more of a hidden gem for second city shoppers, we are really excited to put The Ribbon Room in a high footfall area on a show like Gardeners World or Clothes show and watch it flourish. The hidden and quirky aspect of it brings a smile to people’s face and we will hopefully add another exciting food solution to visitors of the NEC Group venues.”

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