March update!

I have had a busy month and have been enjoying my life with the children and the Members of the Supper Club, and making the best of the time that I have had meeting new folks and getting out and about in Ayrshire with them!

The Supper Club has been meeting twice a week since inception, and this is working really well for us as not only does this keep the momentum going, but it gives people more opportunities to come along and meet us, and to find a date that fits into their schedules. I am always happy to try to work around people when this does not suit them, however, can also meet anyone on a one-to-one basis if it at least gives them the chance to meet myself or someone else from the group.

Rowallan Castle Estate

We have visited some smashing venues this month - which of course always includes our regular meetup every Saturday afternoon at the Black Cat Cafe at St Marnock Place in Kilmarnock.






We managed to visit one of the local craft fayres held by the BB in Galston, and I celebrated my 47th birthday at Wetherspoon's with a few of my new friends.

Some of the restaurants visited this month included the Dragon Royale in the High Street, The Salt & Barrell at the new Ayrshire College who held a Bond-Themed Dinner which was really well done, and the well-known Jefferson's Restaurant - all of which are in Kilmarnock itself. 

Bond Night at the Salt & Barrell

Glasshouse Restaurant at Rowallan Castle

Last week we had lunch at The Glasshouse Restaurant at Rowallan Castle Estate, and tomorrow night we are visiting the Cochrane Inn at Gateshead, just on the outskirts of town which belongs to the Costley and Costley Group. 

The prices of meals have been very reasonable, and in most cases we take advantage of 'Early Bird Specials' or 'Express Menus' advertised to members of the general public. 

Some restaurants offer a Loyalty Card where you can accrue points, and sign up for regular updates either by text or by email and this includes subscriptions to newsletters where you can be one of the first to hear about special offers, and forthcoming events.  I have joined a couple of these schemes where Loyalty Card points can be used to redeem discounts off future bills, or money-off vouchers and can highly recommend that you take advantage of these where available and membership is free.

On the marketing side things have slowed down a bit now that the initial set-up has been completed, so it is just a matter of focussing on the day to day running of the business and enjoying it. I must admit that most of my attention goes to managing the group on a daily basis on Facebook, as I find the daily banter and messages back and forth really interesting and create new events and administer stuff as much as I can. I always try to find engaging information and offers to share with our Members, and am always on the lookout for a good deal with either Groupon, or Itison that will allow us to sample local restaurants at a discounted rate.

I am not one of the most disciplined people in the world, so do not tend to follow a regular social media marketing plan, and update my media outlets including Twitter and writing posts to the Blog when I can. It is not an approach that would work for everyone, but it is one of the benefits of being your own boss I suppose :) and it works well for me as I only tend to do these things now when I am feeling inspired.

My meal at the Glasshouse Restaurant

The whole approach to events is a lot more relaxed now - particularly now that The Club has developed a regular following, and I have a lot more confidence knowing that people will be coming when they say they will. I am now making a conscious effort to 'check in' at venues on Facebook when I arrive so that the guests who are already on their way to the venue know that I am waiting for them. I think that this provides peace of mind for Members to know that they will be met by someone reliable, and that they will not have to face the anxiety of being the first one to arrive. I am also encouraging others to 'check in' too as it lets all their friends know where they have been and what they have been up to, and it gives the restaurant and the Supper Club a little bit of promotion at the same time which is always good :)

Bond Night Table Setting

Up until now, I haven't made a big point of providing testimonials for the venues that we have visited, but this week I updated my reviews on Trip Advisor and Facebook where I thought that feedback was warranted, or where the venue had earned an excellent review. I am also making a point of tagging the people who visit every venue with me, as we are still getting new members every week and I want them to remember the names of the people they dine with. 

I always encourage members at every event to befriend each other straight away, as this increases their social circle and provides them with the ideal opportunity to forge new friendships in the group - which is what this concept is all about.

From now on, I will be taking extensive photos of the venues and the food we are served, and am in the process of designing a feedback card for the Members to fill in that I can hand into the restaurant when we pay our bill, and so that I can also find out for myself whether they were pleased with the venue we visited on that occasion.

The Salt & Barrell held a fantastic Bond Night

During our meals, phones are always present as many of us have children or partners to keep in touch with. However, quite often I will miss calls or notifications sent to me on Facebook during this time as the phone is usually left in my handbag. 

I have to admit that I made the mistake a few weeks back of going through my phone while some of the others were having a conversation in front of me, and have made a conscious decision not to do that ever again as it is an anti-social habit. 

Accessing a mobile phone at any time of the day or night is completely addictive, and it is scary how quickly it can distract your attention away from everything else, and has become a terrible force of habit for so many of us these days.

Whenever we eat in the house, my children are not allowed to have their phones at the table, and I usually enforce the same rule when we eat out at restaurants as well. It is not that I am trying to focus their attention on me, it is just that we have so little family time these days, and want to make sure that we have the chance to talk to each other properly. They probably think that I am bit old-fashioned but I have to admit that I like it that way. We are surrounded by so many distractions these days, and I think that as a society we have forgotten the art of communicating with each other. 

Cheap and cheerful for my birthday celebrations!

On a personal note, I have noticed a growing trend where people are coming away from social media as the number one preferred form of communication, and there is a renewed focus on providing face-to-face customer service to clients once again. I always thought that there is lot to be said for providing the personal touch when you are dealing with people... and a quick conversation can often save so much time and is a lot more rewarding. It is an interesting time in marketing just now.

This week I found another person wanting to start a friendship group in Irvine and I contacted her right away as want to see the group do well - regardless of whether they are associated with our Club or not. The Kilmarnock Supper Club has been a massive learning curve for me in so many ways, and I must admit that I would love to see this develop into a national franchise some day, but it has shown me how such a simple thing can make such a massive difference to other people's lives, and only wish that I had done this ten years ago!

Now that the nice weather has finally arrived, and the nights are stretching, our choices for venues will continue to grow further afield in April with a potential visit to The Gailes at Irvine, and McChristie's at Crosshouse on the horizon. In May we are going to eat at the Fairburn Hotel on the day of the Mauchline Holy Fair, and the Ayr Country Show is back again which is always fun!

On a final note, I hope that you continue to follow our news updates, and interact with members of the Club. If you have not joined us already on Facebook, please feel free to do so at the following link:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheKilmarnockSupperClub/

Tamara :) 

Our blog stats have gone over the 1300 mark!

I have been blogging for probably ten years now and started with the original AOL journals in 2006 which had fantastic features for uploading photos and creating photo albums. I have always been an avid blogger and facebook fan, as since moving over to Scotland I have literally taken thousands of photos which is also one of my passions.

Having come from a Sales & Marketing background - both of which are extremely interesting fields to work in - I have always been fascinated by where my clients or readers originate from as this will tell you which of your ads are working and which ones are not.

I personally must admit that I prefer the blogger format, but these days wordpress seems to be the most popular programme for getting views online, and am teaching myself how this works so that I can build my brand new website. I have tried this before and it isn't easy I can tell you and I am sure that there are teenagers out there who can code much better than I will ever be able to. But I am determined to do it and it will allow me to launch my website as soon as possible, instead of trying to save up the money to pay someone else to do it.

You know how people show counters on their blogs and pages, and if you have ever employed anyone to do your marketing for you in the past - they will always be quoting the number of 'hits' that you have had - or 'impressions' from people who have seen your Google, Facebook, Pinterest or Instagram advertisements online. 

Well this is a perfect example to show you - these are my stats for the blog page. At first I was excited at the number of 'hits' that I have had, but upon closer inspection - a very high proportion of my views are from overseas - approximately half in fact.

Thank you very much for following our blog!

Membership Drive

The past two weeks have been very busy at the Kilmarnock Supper Club and for me in particular.

I have created our profile page in Google and Google Plus, but it took me a while to get my head around the various systems they employ, as there are a lot of pages where you can display your information. In addition to this, the system has created two different profiles for me and I will have to get them merged at some stage.

This year I have started a Company, rather than a Business, and therefore there are different registration processes involved in getting organised for this. But all in all it has been very interesting and I have enjoyed it. This is not the only business that I run, as I am also self-employed under a company called SPiN ADMIN which was started in June of last year for freelance work. It has been an enormous learning curve for me the last twelve months, as I had never run a business before in Scotland, and it was a lot of work to set things up.

You need a Business Registration Name or CRN to utilise advertising outlets like 192.com and Yell.com, and I also wanted to protect my intellectual property for this concept. You also need to send the Registration Certificate to Facebook, along with a copy of the Articles of Association to become verified and get a Company or Business page so it is just as well I had already done all of this!

Up until two years ago, I had never used Twitter before and made some mistakes along the way with my first account. However, it is a fantastic medium for broadcasting blog updates to food companies and followers in the food industry, and I hope they enjoy these updates. I like to tie all of my social media outlets together in order to minimise the work involved, and have to follow a regular plan to stay on top of the sites every week. We now have 168 Twitter Followers!

In the last two days I have scaled back some of the publicity and accounts for SPiN, so that I can concentrate on administering the new accounts I have set up for the Kilmarnock Supper Club on a full-time basis instead.

These include Pinterest, Blogger, Twitter, Instagram and Google Plus - all of which have their place in the world and are great at attracting followers and getting the name of your business recognised.

I have just created an advertisement for the first time on Google which should be starting today, and it will be targetting new members to the Facebook Page from a 40 mile radius around Kilmarnock. Again it is the first time I have ever done this, and took me a while to create the advertisement as there is not a lot of space for words. I am also a stickler for layouts, and had to preview this a few times before I was happy with the final product to make sure it looked okay in the various formats, ie. mobile, desktop and tablet. It can be a fiddly process to complete. I have also registered the Company Name and had it verified so that we now come up in a name search on Google itself - along with some fantastic results for everything else already set up!

The Google Plus pages are now open for reviews and members who have been to our events can provide feedback and a star rating based on their experiences to date. I hope that everyone who can recommend our services would take a few minutes of their time to give us a review!

The blog has already had nearly 900 views, and 7 new members have joined our group in the last week and a half. Five of them came along to the Clubhoose (The Black Cat Cafe) on Saturday last weekend, and we hope they will be back.

The turnout at each of our events is always different as everyone has busy lives and just shows up when they can. It's a nice way of operating as they are not locked into anything in advance, and don't have to pay upfront for tickets, food or transport. I must admit that I enjoy a casual arrangement with everyone, and there have been no problems with this Pay-As-You-Go system to date.

If you are a member of any other groups on Facebook you will notice that they will have rules posted at the top of the page, which must be read and followed when contributing to the page, ie. making comments, or adding posts. I have purposely tried to avoid setting up any rules on our Group page so far, as I don't want to have to tell members how to behave when they are grown adults.I simply expect everyone to be nice and enjoy themselves. So far to date, this system has worked well.

We have a Closed Group which means that only members can write and view comments on the page. This is also the only way that you can view our current Calendar of Forthcoming events! If you want to become a member, then this is the place for you to join up with us!

https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheKilmarnockSupperClub/

All of the members are lovely people, and everyone gets along and enjoys the company. The Saturday venue is always the same, but the events held during the week are always at a different venue. As this is a Kilmarnock Club, most of the restaurants we visit are in the township itself. But with the onset of Summer as the weather improves and the evenings run longer we will travel farther afield.

This is a picture of our Official Facebook Company Page which anyone can read and make comments, and where current members can provide reviews for the General Public to see. Please do not feel obliged to do this if you are a current member of the Group and prefer for your profile as a member to remain private.

https://www.facebook.com/pg/TheKilmarnockSupperClub/reviews

If you have any questions whatsoever, please do not hesitate to email me directly at:

thekilmarnocksupperclub@outlook.com or text my mobile on 07711 584979.

You can join up as a member on our Facebook Group Page and send me a join request anytime:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheKilmarnockSupperClub/

Our next event is at the Bar Luca this Friday evening, and on Saturday at the Black Cat Cafe at 2pm.

Best regards always,


Tamara Campbell.

Welcome to the new 'Clubhoose'!

Hello everyone! 

Some of the members visited the Black Cat Cafe today to take photographs of our new 'Clubhoose' and to go over arrangements for our Saturday afternoons in Kilmarnock!

I am delighted to say that there is plenty of parking right on the front door, and these photos will show you the fees applicable as it is not always free (just be careful)!  

There is wifi on the premises, so we can go online and get you up and running with your social media. A very big thanks to the owners for allowing us to use this beautiful space. Also, the hut is available for private night-time events if anyone would like to hire it out for a small function with friends. 

I will book this as a venue for us to get together on a casual basis once a month, and it will be a BYO plate affair and a cheap night out for everyone.

Tamara Campbell

The Kilmarnock Supper Club

@thekksupperclub

Our inaugural event was a huge success!!

  

The first meeting of the Kilmarnock Supper Club was held on Saturday, 14th January at the Franklin & Sloane Restaurant and it could not have gone better ! 

Fifteen people in all showed up for this inaugural event, and it was a fantastic afternoon! Everyone was really happy to be there on the day and had been looking forward to it all week, but there had been more than a few nerves all round.

We had a really nice mix of ages - with 13 ladies and two men! Wherever possible in the future I will always try to have communal dining tables where everyone sits in one big long row, but for the purposes of this group we were broken into smaller tables - all of which gelled with each other extremely well. These are some of the comments from people who had RSVP'd on Facebook before coming to the event:

I'm also very nervous about today and was for cancelling but I'm not going to and am sure I'll be walking past a few times before I actually come in x

Every 2 mins I'm all for cancelling. But hard bit is stepping in and that's over with in a second xx

I am the same but telling myself it just the same as going into m/s costa etc and starting to chat to someone it's only going for a coffee etc not major surgery

Nothing to be nevous about gorgeous people. You all do braver things than this every single day. 

Can't wait to meet you all for this exciting new adventure. 

I believe this will change a lot of people's lives in respect of not feeling lonely and getting out more.

I think it will be good and there are a LOT of people all feeling the same and in need of a wee night/day out and make new friends xx

A few of the guests had arrived before me and I walked in at five minutes to two with my girls! I was mortified as had wanted to get there nice and early for everyone, but couldn't find any name labels in the house and tried to get them from Tesco enroute!

Anyway, I introduced myself to the group and paired everyone off with a buddy to work with straight away and handed out some worksheets. I gave them a pen and a card each and a list of icebreaker questions so that they could get to know each other. I told them that they were to fill in the Registration Cards for their buddies, and introduce that person to the group instead of talking about themselves. I know for a fact that there literally nothing worse than taking turns at standing up and introducing yourself to a roomful of complete strangers and it used to make me feel sick and went red every time.

After that the tea and coffee were made available in a corner of the room for us to help ourselves, and scones were served direct to the tables. I stood up and gave the group a really big welcome and told them how brave they were for coming along - along with a brief introduction about myself and my reasons for starting the Club, and then each of Club Members took turns at introducing their buddy. Every story we heard was just so interesting, and it was really great fun.

After that I brought out this little gimmick bear called a 'Worry Monster' that I had bought from The Range the previous day, and I got everyone to write down their biggest fear in coming along to the event. My two children were observing everything and remained quiet drinking their cups of tea in the background, but I wanted them to come along with me to learn about the lives of other people and so that I could teach them how to run events in the future. They thought that the Worry Monster was a little bit embarassing but I persevered with it nonetheless!

I started off first as my greatest fear for the day 'was that no-one would ever show up' as I have been stood up in the past and it is absolutely humiliating. But there were so many people there who made similar comments and so I read out all of the fears back to them so that they were able to realise that they were not the only ones who had had the same misgivings.

I have to give the staff at Franklin & Sloane a huge thankyou for allowing us to have the use of the library, and for looking after our group so well. The venue was absolutely perfect and we had the whole room to ourselves.

I took the children out for dinner at one of the wee pubs nearby, and we had a big debrief about how we felt that the meeting had turned out. 

All of the feedback so far has been extremely positive, and everyone is looking forward to meeting up again. Here are some of the comments made afterwards by the Supper Club Members on Facebook:

I had a lovely afternoon. Very glad I overcame the nerves and looking forward to the next time and getting to talk with more of you xx

Enjoyed meeting you ...felt like I already knew you....we knew a few people and share the same kind of job xxxxx (this was for another member of her table)

I felt our table just blended well - not only did I meet new people I got advice on a health matter - met someone who lives near bye that wants to go walking and urself - bet we could have great chats (for another member)

Was a HUGE success this afternoon .....I was MORE nervous in what the hell am I going to wear as it has been THAT long since I went out socializing that I am always just dressed in casual wear to go to work lol 

I can't remember the last time that I have had such a mentally fulfilling week!

Until next time, Tamara xx

Join us at The Kilmarnock Supper Club - a social dining club for the Over 40's!

Welcome to the Scottish Supper Club - an innovative new social dining club for the Over 40's in Ayrshire!

I started this group on Facebook in an effort to meet like-minded souls, and in the very first week since inception we have signed up nearly 100 members.

'The art of making new friends' has become almost obselete in this age of rapidly-advancing technology where dating websites have 'become the accepted norm' for thousands of people who go on-line looking for love. But having done the 'internet dating' thing and written numerous versions of humiliating profiles on-line for myself, I still had not found what I was truly looking for - a group of friends who understood and accepted me for who I am.

Since emigrating to Scotland from Australia ten years ago with my two girls, and as a single mother who did not drink or party very much, I have found it difficult to make new friends here. I was often the one to make the first move, or was too shy or too much of a 'loner', and eventually after several disastrous attempts I gave up altogether!

So anyway, this year was a brand new year for me - it was 2017 and time to get my life in order at long last! And so, after yet another night sitting alone on my couch eating chocolate and making things worse, I decided to be brave, and to take that first gut-wrenching step towards a new life for my family and started the Kilmarnock Supper Club as a group on Facebook.

Unbeknownst to me, I have discovered that there are literally hundreds of people out there who - through no fault of their own - have found themselves alone again, and feel like they are the only ones. Just like me they are looking to make new friends and share fun times with people their own age - mix with a group of friends who share similar interests, and now - I am delighted to say - that we have all of us found each other! and what a change there is going to be!!

Some of our members have divorced or separated, others have children who have grown up and moved out of home, some of us have lost partners who passed away far too young, and others work shifts - but all of us know what it is like to feel alone, not really knowing what to do or where to start again...

This group has been modelled on the dining clubs I knew from Australia - where complete strangers can get together for a sumptuous dining experience at communal tables on a regular basis! We will be organising regular events, with a particular focus on enjoying the very best Scottish food and wine that this country has to offer! In addition to this, we will be organising daytrips to music concerts, markets and arts events, and food/wine festivals throughout the whole of Scotland and are putting a calendar of events together as I speak!

Membership is free for anyone who wants to join us, and is open to locals and visitors alike! The Scottish Supper Club will always be like that - and I believe that you should never put a price on offering friendships to anyone - or take advantage of those who need them most.

So when will YOU make the decision to join our Social Dining Club - what have you got to lose? Please don't be shy - we have all had to take that very first step - just join up now and come along to one of our events with an open mind - and see what happens next!!

http://www.facebook.com/groups/TheKilmarnockSupperClub/

http://twitter.com/thekksupperclub

or email thekilmarnocksupperclub@outlook.com.

May I wish you all the best of luck! Tamara ;)