Doggy Royal Wedding

They are likely to be dogged by impersonaters for decades to come.

But Kate Middleton and Prince William could not have expected to be impersonated by dogs – until we hosted our Canine Royal Wedding.

The stars of the show, red setter ‘Kate Puggleton’ and ‘Prince Woofiam’, a Portuguese Estrala, dressed as the soon-to-be-married royals as they tied the knot in a mock ceremony.

As well as giving a humorous nod to the real Royal Wedding, we hope the stunt will help highlight the cruelty of puppy farming as well as raising over £200 for Be Puppy Farm Aware. 

Maggie Morgan, co-owner of Metrodeco, which holds regular doggy tea parties and has a special dog menu, said: “You might think we’re barking mad but we wanted a novel way to celebrate the Royal Wedding at the same time as highlighting a real animal cruelty issue.”

Celebrity vet Marc Abraham, who donated a signed copy of his new autobiography Vet on Call to be raffled at the event, said: “This was a fantastic way to bring a horrific practice into the public eye. Puppies bred by puppy farms are usually kept in horrible, dark conditions, totally unsocialised and riddled with both infectious and inbred often incurable diseases.”

Twitter tips for business

Recommended reading - Joel Comm's Twitter Power

We’ve been playing away again!

I mean blogging at other sites, you smutty lot!

This time we wrote about how we’ve used Twitter to grow customers on the Brighton Twitter Social Meet-up blog managed by Wendy Kier

Have a read if you want some tips on:

-          how to involve customers in your business and to use their ideas,

-          how to use Twitpics and other photo services to enhance brand,

-          how to search the Twittersphere to find people who might want to connect with you, and

-          some tips on optimising the appearance of your page

Helen

Improve your bottom line with Foursquare

Metrodeco's Helen checks in to Foursquare

We’ve written a guest blog for Brighton-based training provider Silicon Beach Training called How To Use Foursquare for Business.

In it we offer tips for small businesses on how to use the location-based social network, which is growing frighteningly quickly, to attract customers.

If you find this post useful, please come back and read our blog at this site on Brighton’s Tweeting Tea and Coffee Shops.

Hardly Amy Winehouse…the debut music video of a Brighton cafe!

Okay, it’s hardly Amy Winehouse…but there can’t be many small tea shops on the South Coast of England who have released a music video. Besides, we think Brighton-based singer/songwriter and comedienne Hannah Brackenbury, who penned the track recently after a visit, is as good as any of the current crop of British singers. Honest

This is the first rough cut of The Metrodeco Song – and it was filmed on a sunny afternoon in Kemp Town, Brighton, and Hove. We are currently in promising talks with a charity that’s close to our hearts and some music industry big wigs about making a proper recording in a studio and re-shooting the video so we can flog it on iTunes. All proceeds to that good cause, obviously.

So if you like it, please, please, pleeeease click on the ‘share’ options above or below and tell your Twitter, Facebook and MySpace followers and friends. Or just spread the link to this blog around.

Thanks,

Helen,
Metrodeco

Brighton’s tweeting tea and coffee shops

Metrodeco's Twitter page

A recent tweet by Will McInnes, a Brighton-based social media guru, praised the quality of a mini-explosion of independent coffee shops in Brighton.

Will was probably thinking about the great-tasting coffee – but a man with his digital know-how could not have failed to notice the inventive things these delectable and modern emporia are doing with social media.

Will mentioned Coffee@33 in Trafalgar Street, a delightful and quirky stop-off for anyone heading from the train station to North Laine – or coming back. Coffee@33 has a useful entry on Foursquare to which at least a dozen people have recently ‘checked in’, many urging visitors to try their apparently wonderful ‘flat white’. So I checked in and tried it. Take my word for it – it’s velvety smooth and definitely worth trying. But I’d probably never have known without eavesdropping on the online conversations that enticed me to that shop.

Another of Will’s favourites was our near neighbours at the Red Roaster, who have a vibrant Facebook appreciation group with 183 members, a veritable community of coffee-lovers online. Participants post photos, ask questions of the coffee house’s owners and swap advice on the best product (the Café au Lait is popular). The guys at the Roaster have learned a golden rule of social media – letting go. By that I mean they encourage conversations they do not control about their product, a clear departure from ‘broadcasting’ messages with posters, adverts and press releases. Sure, the odd unfavourable comment crops up – but most people are praise-worthy and the remarks are all the more credible because they come from real customers, not from the owners.

Harriet Harman visits the tea shop

Metrodeco's Maggie (left) and Helen (right) get a visit from Cabinet Minister Harriet Harman and Brighton Kemptown parliamentary candidate Simon Burgess

Politics and 1930s Parisian cafes go together like Jean-Paul Sartre and a packet of Gitanes Brunes.

So it was in this tradition that we were honoured to be visited by one of today’s leading politicians.

Harriet Harman, Leader of the House of Commons and Cabinet Minister for Women and Equality, dropped in to take tea and cake with members of the community and to chat to us about running a small business at the tail end of a major recession.

Egg-cellent result for Robert

Egg-cellent result! Robert scoops his prize while the Argus Appeal gets a donation

Apparently, anything is good if it’s made of chocolate. Well, that’s what comedienne Jo Brand once said, walking, breathing proof – if ever you needed it – that there can be no negative effects from enthusiastic consumption. Uhhm, hang on….

So we reckon Brighton resident Robert Brooks (pictured) will have a lot of goodness in his front room at the moment. You see Robert won the raffle for our giant Easter egg and he picked it up today.

Whooooah, before you slam your laptop shut in indignant jealousy, Robert’s not going to scoff the 10kg monster himself. He’s going to hold a party for his son and dozens of the toddler’s young friends in Queen’s Park. Many of those who bought tickets said they would put the egg to a charitable use – and we’re really glad it will put lots of little smiles on little faces.

It also made £112 for the Argus Appeal, which supports good causes across Sussex – so, all in all, that big oval ball of calories has brought a fair amount of joy to those around us.

Thanks to Holly from Chocoholly, who made the egg (you can see that amazing process here in our YouTube film). Thanks also to everyone who took part in the raffle – and commiserations. Commiserations, that is, to everyone except Robert. But Robert deserves a bit of luck because he’s obviously a good egg.

Protest for dog rights

Metrodeco's Helen Wilkinson (left) and Maggie Morgan (middle) rouse the troops before today's march

Wow, what a turn out!

We reckon 30-40 dogs brought their owners on our demonstration for canine rights on Brighton seafront today. Watch our short YouTube film of the event here.

This fantastic turn-out says one thing to me – people in this city really do care about their pets being treated like outcasts.

In fact, I’d bet most of the 50,000 dog owners in Brighton & Hove would say people who shun dogs in their bars and cafes are barking up the wrong tree entirely.

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: a city that is not dog-friendly is closing its door in the faces of thousands of potential tourists bringing in millions of pounds just at the point when Brighton ’s visitor economy badly needs investment.

Easter march for dog rights

Ever wandered into a cafe with your beloved four-legged friend – only to be met by tutting and barely-concealed disapproval?

Unfortunately, that has been the experience of many visitors and residents in Brighton and Hove because some businesses are needlessly intolerant of dogs.

Often, it’s just based on the false presumption that they will somehow be unhygienic and poorly-behaved, when the vast majority are not. We’ve admitted dogs at Metrodeco since we opened a year ago and never had cause to ask an owner to take his or her pet outside.

But it’s not just unfair – the real damage is that dog-owners from from other towns and cities will eventually consider this to be a city that is UN-FRIENDLY to dogs. And that’s bad for tourism.

So we’re making a stand by holding a march to highlight the issue.