The Art of Professional Presentation

The Sandollar Café has a perfect location; situated right on Aberdeen’s beach front, it’s a fabulous spot to sit and watch the world go by. Specialising in British style food with a focus on seafood, and providing breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea to lucky diners, the café is a popular venue for both locals and tourists.

We’re pleased to see the café’s wide variety of burgers served alongside their branding and sporting our very own greaseproof paper. We asked owner Garry Millard why he felt it was important for the business to use branded packaging. “Quite simply, it enhances the quality and look of our products. It’s very much a cosmetic decision for us but appearance has far reaching results.  We’re aiming to look professional and provide a memorable customer experience and feel that branded greaseproof is something that helps us achieve these goals.”

We’re lucky at It’s a Wrap to receive regular positive feedback from retailers. Seeing a brand for the first time on something tangible like packaging is often an exciting and well received event – don’t believe us, just check out our Instagram page for stories from enthusiastic businesses!

What we often want to know is how do the end customers react? Garry tells us “We’ve received plenty of comments that our food is well presented. It’s back to looking professional again and adding to the quality of our products. Serving food that looks like it’s been thoughtfully created and presented helps to keep the customers coming back for more.”

Garry adds “Customers have also been pleased to see us using paper-based packaging materials. So many of us are realising we need to be kinder to the planet and creating waste that’s hard to recycle is a route we’re keen to avoid. We decided with our take-away options that we wanted to be as eco-friendly as possible which is why the branded greaseproof is perfect for including in the boxes. Knowing it’s food safe but still recyclable and compostable is great for us.”

The conversation turns to how business has been over the last 18 months. Until 2020, The Sandollar café also ran special dining events for occasions such as Burn’s Night or Valentine’s Day but these have been halted since Covid restrictions were announced - a situation that’s all too familiar across the industry.

We asked Garry his thoughts on the impact of Covid for the business. “It has been hard, especially during the lockdown periods when we had to close the sit-down Café. We initially closed for take-away too but decided from July 2020 to revert to take-away only. Even now the Café is allowed to welcome sit-down dining again, we have reduced the number of tables to ensure Covid safety. Naturally, this impacts on our revenue and staffing requirements and leaves us with difficult decisions to make. We’ve been thankful of the financial support and various grants that have been available and allowed us to keep trading. We’re definitely looking forward to easier times ahead…as is the whole industry!”

If you’d like to know more about The Sandollar Café visit their website www.sanddollarcafe.com/ or better still, pay them a visit – the burgers look awesome!