Waitrose have officially launched what is their biggest new range. Waitrose chose OXO2 to launch its largest ever premium luxury food range since 2009. The new range, ‘Waitrose 1’ has over 800 lines featuring ‘the very best of Waitrose’ and is available in stores now. The emphasis is on quality, and the range has seen the Waitrose food specialists travel to all corners of the globe to source the highest possible quality products. Jonathan Moore, executive chef at Waitrose, says: “Our customers are really adventurous and want to try something different. They eat out, they travel more. They come into Waitrose and they expect to see these trends being reflected.”
Waitrose worked with Story Events to showcase the food and the story behind every item, to food journalists and bloggers. Story MD says “We were honoured to work with the Waitrose team to launch this exciting range. To learn about the development of the food and the stories has been incredible and translating this into an event has been very exciting.” The chosen venue OXO2 was perfect to highlight the food. The venue was chosen primarily for its colour as white is a key element of the Waitrose branding. The range also heavily features pops of colours and it was felt that the blank canvas nature of the space would allow the branding to shine. The packaging featuring bespoke illustrations was placed all around the space and the bespoke illustrations were installed along all of the pillars, walls and at the entrances. “The idea is the illustration should intrigue you and you pick it off the shelves,” says Maggie Hodgetts, head of graphic design at Waitrose, who talks about packaging being a signal in shoppers’ “peripheral vision”.
The format of the event allowed guests to explore the range by food type with stations featuring cakes and afternoon tea items, a cocktail station using the speciality tea range, chocolates, artisan breads, charcuterie, cheese and an interactive pizza station where guests were allowed to try their hand at pizza stretching highlighting how hard this is and therefore how impressive that all Waitrose1 pizzas are hand stretched.
All food served is available within the range and each tray told the story of the item and the research behind it. Over 180 food journalist and bloggers enjoyed the event.
Photography courtesy of Jeff Hopkins
