What are us ‘Brits’ known for best do you think? Scour the net, speak to your foreign friends and family, visit a neighbouring country, or travel half way across the world; the answer remains the same, tea! Us English folk love a good brew (besides myself however, I’ll always opt for a coffee but there we are). My mind is filled with memories of tea with my great grandmother (asking for 3 lumps and getting just one, every time!), tea at my friends houses, the obsession with tea drinking every 20 minutes at my ex’s families house and the incessant tea drinking of colleagues at my various places of work over the years. However my family and I, particularly my mother’s side, have never been known to drink it, not even my grandparents…I guess it’s in the genes; funny that, considering my Mothers line is purely English!

However us people are not the only ones who like a good brew! Thanks to my sister in law (to be!); I recently learned that feeding your house plants with cold tea will help them thrive! Cold tea fed to house plants will provide them with tannic acid which is good for them! So taking her advice, I began feeding the sunflower that my daughter is growing for her school project with tea. The plant is due into school for measuring in a few weeks time; it is a competition to see which child grows the tallest sunflower. Not that I’m competitive or anything (ahem!), I have been specially brewing tea for it! Combined with the additional carbon dioxide my 6 year old lovingly provides our little green friend as she sings it lullaby’s (yes, you heard right), it’s really doing rather well!

So thanks to ‘Aunty Amy’s’ green fingers, my daughter can walk into school with her hopefully ‘doozy’ of a sunflower and I shall watch from a distance as the other mothers and children ‘deflate’ upon viewing the spectacular, Guinness Book of Records size plant in her arms. Optimism? Possibly, it currently stands at a not so gigantic 4 inches… You never know!

So if you’d like to try out Amy’s gardening tips for yourself, or maybe you’re just hankering after a cup of Rosie Lee, then we have an enormous bag of Tetley on offer for you now. Our Tetley Tea Bags come in mega packs of 440 so will last your household or office of eager tea consumers for quite some time! Grab a bargain that makes everyone happy, yes, even your green leaved friends, for just £15.59 inc VAT!

For more gardening hints and tips, see Amy; for stationery, office supplies, janitorial, catering and education equipment, visit www.office365.co.uk!

With so many different tea manufacturers out there, it seems to be a battle of the brands. However when it comes to a great British cup of Rosie Lea, you can’t beat a nice Tetley. In my own words, I’d always say it brews nice and quick, and produces a nice strong (but not too strong) cuppa, perfect with half a sugar and a small splash of milk – the comfort in that one cup is quite something!

Tetley as a brand are passionate about tea and focus entirely on just that; they do not produce any other goods, and specialise entirely on perfecting their one product. Having been in the Tea business for over 160 years, Tetley began selling it in 1837 and to this day, are a well known and well loved brand. We certainly give them our thumbs up in the office!

After water, Tea is the most popular natural drink in the world and Tetley understand this and know they must make the perfect blend in order to stay ahead of the market. Their tea bags are filled with a mixture of herbs and spices and can be found in many interesting and delicious combinations. However you like your tea; strong, milky, black, fruity, green delicate or even caffeine free, Tetley will have the brew for you!

Right now at Office 365 we have a fantastic special offer on our 440 pack Tetley Tea Bags! When providing hot beverages for your busy office, you’ll need to buy in bulk to make it through the week; we find this bag does just the ticket!

• High quality tea with an all-round flavour for the perfect cuppa
• 1 Cup Tea Bags
• Quantity 440
• RRP £15.93 – Our price - £12.99!

Tetley ensure that they secure a viable future for the global tea industry through their active membership of the Ethical Tea Partnership (ETP). This is a non-commercial alliance of over 20 international tea packers who share a vision for a thriving tea industry that is socially just and environmentally sustainable. The ETP operates in all the major tea growing regions – Argentina, Brazil, China, India (Assam, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu), Indonesia, Kenya, Malawi, Sri Lanka, and Tanzania. Together these supply over 85% of world tea exports.

Go on, treat yourself! It’s the New Year and you’re back in the office wishing you were still in the comfort of your own home! Well then why not bring some home comforts, into the office? The business did well in December and you hit the expected targets, in fact, you smashed them as your Christmas special offers went down a storm! So why not indulge a little and give yourself a much needed reward for all your hard work?

As long as the break room has beverage facilities (and no, by this I do not mean a tap!), maybe a hot drink vending machine, coffee maker, or at the very least a kettle, then why not give yourself a luxurious little bonus which is all for you! Imagine it now; you walk through the building wishing a good morning to all your staff, before you open the door to your own office and breathe in the smell of fresh coffee, mmmmm. That has to be the perfect way to start the day; close the door behind you, pour a cup and sit back and enjoy while you read through your emails and check your voice mails, the perfect way to take the pinch off the gruelling morning start!

Our recommendation to you is the Morphy Richards Nesta Filter Coffee Maker featured. We love this coffee machine and feel it ticks all the necessary boxes and more! For a very reasonable price, you can wake up to the smell of freshly brewed coffee, or step into the office and enjoy a coffee already brewed and waiting thanks to this programmable filter coffee maker. The Nesta model comes with an insulated tank and allows for one handed dispensing for convenience and speed. In fact the brand even throws in a free insulated travel mug! So next time you’re called out of the office before you’ve even sat down, pour your coffee into your travel mug and away you go!

• One hand dispensing filter coffee maker with programmable timer
• Black plastic with stainless steel plated front with LCD display
• Versatile brewing – 4 brewing strengths
• 12 cup capacity
• Auto shut off adjust to customise between 0 and 4 hours
• 950W
• Paper filter
• Insulated tank to prevent heat and flavour escaping
• Drip tray
• Non slip feet
• Now just £95.95 inc VAT‼

Consistently reviewed with 5 stars and with the reassurance of a 2 year guarantee, we are completely confident that you’ll love yours! To order simply add to your basket via the product link above, or alternatively to check stock and make orders, call a member of our Office 365 team on 0870 766 1624!

If your staff are anything like me, then they’ll need that caffeine kick before they start work in the morning. Often getting to work on time can be such a rush; coffee and breakfast come a measly last, and at 9am every morning, you’ll find an office filled with very dopy, half asleep and agitated employees. Give them their fix! Ensuring that you’re cupboards are always kept in supply of decent coffee will mean that you can be sure that your staff will always start the day well. Happy staff means better productivity.

I’m serious, a morning of work without coffee, you may as well put me down; I’d be no good to anyone! Probably a little alarming how dependant so many of us are to the big C, but it must be seen as your duty as an employer to provide it! It needs to be considered as much an essential as paper and ink cartridges; do not let your stocks run dry!

Coffee provides a caffeine and often sugar surge for your staff whilst even boosting their moral, making them feel valued. If you can get all this from one cup of coffee, then it’s well worth every penny.

Here at Office 365, we have an abundance of different coffee brands such as Cafe Direct, Clipper, Douwe Egberts, Fairtrade, Kneco, Lyons, Maxwell House, Nescafe, Nestle and Twinings. One of our favourites here at The Office 365 office, is Nescafe not just because they’re variety of different coffees have always put s smile on our faces, but because of what they stand for as a company.  Nescafe’s passion for purity has been with them ever since they began nurturing and capturing their special beans over 70 years ago.

The beautiful white flowers of a coffee bean plant are similar to jasmine and nod gently in the breeze. In time, these blooms turn into green, then scarlet berries and inside each vibrant red fruit, lay two precious coffee beans. To bring their customers 100% pure coffee, Nescafe work in perfect harmony with nature. They capture coffee at its brightest to give you the 100% Nescafe taste that their customers so obviously love.

Take their Nescafe Original Coffee Granules for instance. Always a popular choice in the home and office, the original Nescafe coffee never fails to please.

• Instant coffee granules of consistent high quality and smooth flavour
• A careful blend of three types of the finest coffee beans to capture a great tasting coffee with a rich, smooth, full flavour to get you going for the day
• 500g Tin
• Just £24.50 INC VAT!

The Green Bit

At Nescafe, they aim to bring their customers quality products that are produced in a more sustainable manner, from bean to cup. In fact Nescafe is the only one brand within the Nestlé family where quality goes well beyond the product itself. Their commitment to great tasting and trusted products has and always will be tied to their respect for the environment and the people they work with, including the farmers who supply them, their employees, their consumers and the communities where they operate.

Coffee is regarded by Ethiopians not just as a drink, but as medicine and food. About 85% of the population earns their livelihood from agriculture, with almost 2000 square miles dedicated to growing coffee. In Ethiopia, 500 kilometres south of Addis Ababa, in the Gedeo Zone of Kochere Woreda, lies the village of Hama. For the roughly 6000 households in that region, the most important crop is coffee, or more specifically Yirgacheffe Arabica. The region is known as one of the finest coffee-producing areas in the world, and Yirgacheffe Arabica is recognised as one of the best coffee beans in existence. Despite this, local farmers were still facing problems of shrinking production and growing debt. 

If farmers could not make a profit, there would be no point in their continuing to grow coffee. In the past some farmers ran out of cash before their next coffee crop was ready to sell. This meant they either stopped tending to their coffee plantations, or resorted to borrowing money against the proceeds of their crop of the following year, leaving them in even greater debt. To help farmers get through the off-season during the first three years of the project, Nescafe introduced a second payment for their coffee.

Previously, coffee beans were stripped of their pulp in the region using very old-fashioned equipment. This required vast amounts of water, but it also meant that the stripped pulp – a potentially valuable source of compost – was not only wasted, but it actually became a source of toxic pollution in the rivers. The decision was made to import modern pulping machinery from South America – a first in Ethiopia. While the old traditional machines used up to 50 or 60 litres of water for every kilo of dry parchment coffee, the new ones could do the same job with only two or three litres. Not only that, but with improved techniques the pulp from the washing station could be turned into useful compost for farms. At the same time, a dedicated full-time agronomist was able to initiate farmers in better, more efficient and more environmentally-friendly agricultural practices. Nestlé also hired an engineer to install the new machines and train local people in their use. The washing equipment has proven so successful that others have been ordered by a cooperatives union, with Nestlé providing technical assistance for their installation.

Ok, so you’d like to impress these new prospective clients you have coming in next week so you aim to make the meeting one that will stand out and will wow them with not only your professionalism, and fabulous business assets, but with your organisational skills too. You plan to make them feel as at home, welcome, comfortable, and yet ‘blown away’ as humanly possible and are pondering quite how you’re going to pull this one off. The idea is to have them as enthusiastic as you are about being onboard with your company and so now’s the time to pull out all the stops to make this happen.

First of all you need to think about meeting room furniture. Do you have current meeting room pieces already in place? Are you likely to be holding many meetings with prospective clients or with this particular client once they accept your proposition (thinking optimistically here!)? If so you may want to look at the state of your existing furniture; is it suitable or will an upgrade be needed?

Next you need to look at some way you can tell the rest of the office that you are holding a meeting; the last thing you want is for your staff to come bursting into the meeting room – not very impressive! Think about whether you would prefer a floor standing sign which displays that there is a meeting in progress or whether you would prefer a sliding door sign which indicates ‘meeting room engaged’ or ‘meeting room vacant’. There are plenty of meeting rooms signs available to choose from, you just need to consider your budget.

You will obviously need to make sure you have all the essential presentation supplies, whether this be flipcharts, flipchart markers, OHP machines, projection screens, interactive copyboards, pointers, whiteboards and so on. Do remember to prepare for your meeting; will you be using flipcharts, whiteboards, OHP’s or copyboards to broadcast and present your ideas? Whichever you choose prepare before you get in!

Last but not least, please them! It’s so true, the way to a person’s heart is through their stomachs and so what better way to put a smile on their faces than to give them tasty food and beverages! We have plenty of meeting room drinks at Office 365 including tea’s hot chocolates, coffee’s, juices, soft drinks, milk, soup, squashes and water! Our range of meeting room biscuits includes options such as HobNobs, Fox’s assorted biscuits, chocolate digestives, Cadbury mini fingers, Crawford teatime varieties, Oreo biscuits and so many, many more! So stock up on all the goodies and give them a tasty selection that is sure to sweeten them up before you even get started!

Last year we recommended to you our faithful and loyal customers, a fantastic Christmas gift idea; the Christmas Hamper. However we ended up inundated with people looking for Christmas Hamsters! So today we yet again bring you the announcement that Office 365 sell gorgeous Christmas Hampers, the perfect gift for staff, clients and customers with plenty of different options to choose from. But please, if you’re looking for the perfect Christmas Hamster, you’ll need to go to your local pet shop! I really don’t think you’re child would be particularly pleased with a basket filled with nice grub instead of their new squeaky friend, just as Vice Versa, I’m not sure what your clients would think if you bought them a hamster?  We are Office 365 for a reason, buy your animals elsewhere!

This year instead of offering you ready made hampers, we’re giving you the chance to create your own! All you need to do is find the box or basket that you’d like to present the goodies in and we’ll do the rest. Take your pick from a large variety of different goodies and treats that would put a smile o the face of any recipient. But what’s more, it doesn’t even have to be a food hamper, take a look at your options;

• Food – Choose from items such as Cadbury’s chocolate fingers, Cadbury’s biscuit selection, Crawford’s biscuits, Fox’s biscuits, Fair-trade biscuits and many more from Maryland, McVities, Oreo, Go-Ahead and Traidcraft. We also have various different chocolates and sweets available from Cadbury’s, Divine, Fox’s, Mars, Mentos, Nestle and Twix. Finally select from various different hot and cold beverages and you have the perfect hamper selection!
• Stationery – Why not create the perfect hamper for your child starting school, college or university, or indeed the ideal hamper selection for your friend or loved one starting their new job? Select from a wide variety of pens, paper, rulers, ink, pads, envelopes, labels, files, pockets, diaries and calendars. With a great selection of all these bits and pieces, your child, friend or loved one can be all prepared for the year ahead!
• The Clean Freak – Do you have a Mr Muscle in the family, or maybe a washer woman? Do you know someone close to you who just loves to clean? Then why not buy them their dream cleaning hamper collection? Choose from various kitchen and bathroom cleaning products, towels, polishes, bin liners and so much more, what a treat!..

You get the idea; at Office 365 you can tailor the hamper to the individual, you just need a touch of imagination and a box or basket. If you’d like some help choosing or are in need of more information, please get in touch, we’re always happy to help! – 0870 766 1624

When we hear the name Buxton, up pops an image of a bottle of Buxton water in our minds…well it does with me anyway. The brand is huge across the entire globe with sales growing by 9.4% in the UK last year where other leading brands saw a fall in sales of a similar percentage. In fact, Buxton Natural Mineral Water is the Official Water Supplier to the England Cricket Team!

But why is it, when tap water in this part of the world is as safe as it can be; that sales of bottled water have been so successful?

Water can never be purer than when it falls as rain. However, once it hits the ground, this all changes. It passes through the soil, moving underground through passages and caverns carved over millions of years, corroding the rock and dissolving metals, salts and minerals on its journey. It is this process that changes the character of the water, depending on the type of rock it contacts. This water eventually arrives in underground lakes or aquifers, in its purest form. This is the source of most bottled mineral waters, the obvious attraction – complete clarity. Not so hard to get your head around now huh?

According to the British Geological Survey, Buxton water that emerges from the Peak District source today fell as rain over 5000 years ago! Travelling at a depth of 1500 meters, Buxton water voyages through ancient limestone, filtering on its way. It acquires a natural balance of minerals on its epic journey, giving it, its distinct and invigorating flavour. Above this limestone aquifer is a layer of volcanic lava, which has the effect of confining the water to the limestone region and protecting the aquifer from surface contamination.

Do you have an up and coming event, meeting, conference or an office of thirsty people? If so, get your hands on our Buxton Water here, available at the cheapest prices on the net, guaranteed with our price match policy. Looking for a lot? If you have a large order request, we can fulfil it. Just ask us for a quote online or by calling 0870 766 1624.