Paddy Bishopp - My Love Of Food And Drink Events

Posted by Paddy on 25/05/2011

I had a great conversation on Saturday night, OK, after a few glasses of wine, but the gist of it was how could I enjoy spending my Saturday and Sunday serving nearly 1000 cups of coffee at The Greene King Food and Drink Festival!!  It was also 1 am in the morning and I knew that at 08:00 the next morning I would be back at the festival, getting the machines up to temperature, putting the displays back out and preparing for the busy day ahead.

I spent the journey home that night pondering many things:

Why was I not tired

Why was I so looking forward to the next day

How can non stop hard work for 8 hours be fun

The answer has to be that I just really enjoy mingling with my customers, I love the interaction, I love the banter, I love working with the Paddy and Scott's team ( can I just say that the team is Chris T (MD), Oz, (Head Barista), Nats (our office Manager), Sophie (helps at events but makes the meanest Flat White!!), all who work Monday-Friday and and give up their weekends to help)). This is not an ego thing (but you cannot but help loving people saying how wonderful the coffee is), this is not just a PR exercise, this is a pure genuine love of enjoying mingling with other foodies, people who are only there to experience the best food and drink around.

There is no doubt that these events are very stressful, especially when serving coffee!! Will the generator cope with the power requirements of the traditional coffee machines, will it not rain, will it not be so warm everyone goes to the beach, can we cope with the long queues because we all know that you cannot rush a good cup of coffee!!

The positives so take over the negative though. We have The Suffolk Show coming up on 1st and 2nd June, we have The Great East Swim approaching, The Elveden Estate Big Onion festival and The Aldeburgh Food and Drink festival, my problem is they cannot come quickly enough!! My wife Sarah probably will not agree, with three young children weekends are precious and this is definitely my biggest sacrifice. The only good thing with this is come September my eldest will be 10 and he insists that at that age he is old enough to come and help. How can I say no to no, even though I know his help will be drinking Babyccinno's and asking for money for sweets.  Just spending time with him will be great  but the main thing for me is sharing my big passion with him - my love of food and drink events.