Bradford garden centre's catering team win bronze at national awards
The catering team at Tong Garden Centre is celebrating after winning a bronze award for the quality of its food and its teamwork.
Tong's Commercial Manager Sharon McNair picked up the award for The Greatest Garden Centre Chef Team of the Year on behalf of her catering colleagues at a dinner during the HTA (Horticultural Trades Association) Catering Conference recently.
Tong Garden Centre's Head Chef, Colin Porter is proud that his team's hard work and commitment to sourcing local, seasonal ingredients has been recognised with an award: "We're delighted to have won this award. The whole team takes pride in producing wholesome, tasty home-made food using locally sourced ingredients wherever possible.
"You can always taste the difference when meals are prepared using fresh ingredients and we are very lucky to have many fabulous producers on our doorstep."
Tong co-owner Mark Farnsworth said: "The catering team have worked hard to exceed customers' expectations and are worthy recipients of this award. The team has grown considerably across our three catering outlets to ensure we consistently deliver fantastic front of house service and exciting daily fresh menus that change with the seasons."
The catering team at Tong prepares different menus in each of three areas; The Orchard Restaurant is renowned for its cooked breakfast and choice of Daily Specials; The Coffee Shop for its home-made scones, paninis and soups and Grass Hoppers Adventure Playground café for Yorkshire beef burgers and farm shop pork sausage hot dogs. All of the meat used on the 17 acre site comes from the in house butchery department that takes pride in sourcing its meat from Yorkshire farms and many of the cakes and baked goods are made in a state of the art bakery on site.
Tong Garden Centre is one of Yorkshire's biggest garden centres with 110,000 square feet of retail space and parking for up to 1,000 cars.
Ends
Photograph caption: L-R Ian Hoyle, Joanne Soltiys, Head Chef Colin Porter, Will Davidson, Alison Duquemin, Alfonso Fuentes Gonzales
For more information or to arrange an interview with Mark Farnsworth, please contact Tracey Baty at three60 marketing on;
Direct line: 01430 871360
Mobile: 07971 961574
E mail:traceybaty@three60marketing.co.uk
Web:www.three60marketing.co.uk
Notes to editors
For more information about Tong Garden Centre, please visithttp://www.tonggardencentre.co.uk
For more information about the HTA Catering Conference, please visithttps://hta.org.uk/event_listing/cateringconference.html