Free tea for a year! And the winner is….

Okay the judges are retiring to consider your suggestions for the name of our new vanilla and rhubarb rooibos tea.

As we explained here, the winner will get a free Afternoon Tea for two (worth £28), a gourmet pouch of tea emblazoned with the winning name (worth about £5) and a free pot of that blend whenever they visit Metrodeco in the next year.

There were so many excellent entries, our panel of experts has asked for an extra 24 hours to deliberate.

Don’t be frightened to try and sway their decision in the comments section below!

So – in no particular order – here are the choices:

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Help tea shop name new blend and win free tea for a year

How would you like a free Afternoon Tea for two (worth £28) at Brighton’s 1930s tea salon, Metrodeco?

And how about a free gourmet pouch of our newest blend to take home with you afterwards?

In fact – what the heck! – how about a free pot of that blend every time you come to the tea rooms FOR A YEAR?

Sound good? Well read on – and you could have all three.

Foursquare flashmob: let’s try again!

You've got these - but what about the Swarm Badge?

Okay, after a fantastic attempt to unlock the Foursquare swarm badge yesterday, we fell short – we had 30 check-ins and we needed 50.

We’re now looking on this as a ‘dress rehearsal’ and we want to have a another attempt a.s.a.p.

Aral (@aral) and Greg (@GR3GD) both made the excellent point that we didn’t do enough to tap into Brighton’s wealth of ‘geeks’.

We’ve checked with Foursquare and there hasn’t been a successful Swarm Party in the UK before – so if we can pull it off we’d all be genuinely the first to unlock a swarm badge at a dedicated flashmob.

QUESTION: What day/time within the next week or so do you think would be best to have another go (bearing we could only do after 6pm on weekends due to being full with customers).

Please reply on the comments section below and we will announce date/time later today or tomorrow.

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

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

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.

We’re open for business again! Yay!!!

It was a bit of a slog, which involved a smattering of late evenings, a light dusting of patience, a moderate seasoning of creativity and a healthy dollop of hard work.

But we got there in the end.

After four days of refurbishments, we’re open for business, serving all your favourite teas, coffees, light lunches and our signature Afternoon Tea over the Easter bank holiday weekend.

As part of the improvements, we’ve made our preparation area more spacious, meaning we can launch our new menu very shortly – so watch this space!

If you pop by before or on Easter Monday, you’ll notice a giant Easter egg, which we’re raffling off for charity. You can enter the raffle for free simply by registering on our website. Be absolutely assured – we will not spam you or use your email address at all. We’ll just ask you once – politely – whether you’d like to hear from us when we’ve made a new film, posted a blog, when we’ve got some news or when we’d like to give you the opportunity to write a review of our shop or of an individual product.

If the answer’s no, we won’t bother you again 🙂

Back to the giant egg – you can view our YouTube film of it being made here.

In the meantime, please feel free to book a table so you can be sure of being one of our first customers to take advantage of our new look!