Baskets Galore Blog

Yesterday morning the news broke of Irish Pork product recalls.
As our customers are aware we are sellers of the following Pork Products from Ireland, North & South.

Brady Family Ham
Jack McCarthy Pork Ham Joints
Ummera Smoked Bacon Rashers
Jack McCarthy Cured Back Bacon

Unfortunately due to the problems, the Basketsgalore Group will not be including these products in its Christmas Gift Baskets and hampers this year.
As of 8pm last night these products were withdrawn from sale on the following websites;
www.basketsgalore.co.uk,
www.basketsgalore.ie
www.irishgourmet.co.uk
www.giftbasketsuk.com


www.BASKETSGALORE.co.uk & www.GIFTBASKETSUK.com

All other fresh Irish meats and salmon are unaffected. Spiced Beef, Chicken and Salmon will still be available for sale. The hampers affected include.

Great Taste Award Hamper – Gold Edition
Great Taste Award Hamper – Silver Edition

The Baskets above will have the Ham replaced with Ummera Smoked Chicken Drumsticks, 250g. These products were amended at 8pm on Sunday 7th December. All baskets ordered after 20:00 GMT will have been advertised with this change.

Christmas Moet Banquet

The McCarthy Irish Bacon will be replaced by
Wicks Manor Farm Norfolk Back Bacon, 250g

Christmas Princes Choice Hamper
Christmas Royal Connections Hamper
Christmas Ireland’s Greatest Ever Hamper
London Irish Hamper

The 4 hampers above will see all Bacon/ Ham/ Pork products replaced with Wicks Manor Farm products. Ham joints will be 1.5kg in weight. All bacon products will be 250g packs. Where Ummera smoked Rashers are mentioned, these will be replaced with Chicken Drumsticks.

Wicks Manor Farm are members of Tastes of Anglia in England. We are delighted to be offering their products albeit unfortunately in such unusual circumstances.



About Wicks Manor Farm:

We apologise for any inconvenience caused to our customers by these late product substitutions. However, bearing in mind the situation in Ireland regarding Irish Pork products and the fact that it will take at least one week to introduce new pork in Ireland, Basketsgalore felt there was no alternative other than to act now and switch to British Pork products.

We chose Manor Farm on the basis of their quality, Gold Taste Awards and Membership of Tastes of Anglia. You can read about them at.
www.wicksmanor.co.uk/aboutus.htm
They are a real working farm, which is also a B&B.
They produce quality pork made from pigs reared in large open straw pens at Wicks Manor Farm. Products include pork joints and cuts, smoked bacon and ham, pork and apple burgers and sausages in many varieties. The pork is fully traceable and all animals live under the strict welfare regulations of Farm Assured British Meat. All pigs are fed with wheat and barley grown and milled on the family farm.

www.BASKETSGALORE.ie

Galway Christmas Hamper GTA-S
Galway Gold Christmas GTA-G

The Baskets above will have the Ham replaced with Ummera Smoked Chicken Drumsticks, 250g. These products were amended at 8pm on Sunday 7th December. All baskets ordered after 20:00 GMT will have been advertised with this change.

These are the only fresh pork baskets offered in Basketsgalore.ie

www.IrishGourmet.co.uk

London Irish Hamper is known as Irish Provinces Hamper and will be amended as advised in Basketsgalore.co.uk.

If customers should need any further advice, please do not hesitate to call or email us. Existing orders will be amended as per this news article.

Thanks for your understanding,

Basketsgalore

Labels: bacon, christmas hampers, ireland, irish pork, recall

Every year we receive requests to modify the range of baskets on sale.
Usually we can accomodate such requests if given sufficient time and we hate to disappoint our customers. However, in December, it is simply not possible for us to make any amendments to hampers until after Christmas.

The reason for this is that there are only 11-12 shipping days left until Christmas Day. Within that time frame we have to dispatch thousands of Gift Baskets and Hampers. Consequently by this time several thousand baskets are packed, bowed, cellophane wrapped and boxed.

The perishable products namely salmon and meats arrive next week and we put these in a seperate package complete with ice packs and pack them with the hampers.

During the year we can offer the create your own service, but unfortunately at Christmas the demand for our service is so high that we work long into the night and throughout the weekends just to keep up with demand.

Every day several hundred hampers are being dispatched and it takes a lot of time to make the final preparations for their journey to our customers' choice of destination.

We remember seeing a hamper from another company and it was a simple wicker basket with very densely packed straw. The products were miniscule. If we'd have received it, we'd have been very disappointed. Our wicker baskets all have a Christmas bow and contain regular sized items. Every jar item is bubble wrapped and the contents of every basket are decided in advance to ensure that there are no empty spaces. This prevents friction and reduces chances of things breaking.

The products are also specially arranged to ensure that heavier items are not placed on top of lighter ones and that everything is level.

Our bamboo hampers are cellophane wrapped with a bow tied around them. It is this attention to presentation, which takes so much time and is so appreciated by our customers and the recipients.

Making an amendment at this stage is not simply a case of swapping or adding, it can take up a lot of time and it also introduces human intervention. The system has to be streamlined and automated as much as possible in order to cope with the volume of orders.

We hope you understand and that you can see something you like from the wide range of hampers on offer. We just wanted to explain why we can't accept modifications at this stage for individual orders and apologise if we haven't created a hamper to suit your wishes.
If that is the case, just email us with your hamper suggestions and we'll consider them for next year.

BG

The Christmas Hamper buying season is well and truly upon us with ever more numbers of hampers being assigned new homes. We have over 60 different varieties this year and every type is still in stock as I write this at 5.10pm on Friday 5th of December, 2008.

As anticipated our new range of Sub £40 Baskets are selling very quickly and we expect to be fully sold out of this range by the middle of next week. Christmas Traditional Celebration and GTA Silver are under heavy pressure, but stock levels of these products are extremely high so should still be for sale right up to Christmas.

Other trends this year are a reduction in expenditure by corporate customers. However we have many more customers as word has spread of the quality of Basketsgalore & Irish Gourmet. It really is a case of better to have 100 companies spending £1,000 with you rather than 10 spending £10,000 each

So for your own interest here is a list of the Top 10 Selling Baskets so far.

1) Traditional Celebration £54.99
2) GTA- Silver £79.99
3) Christmas Tea & Biscuits £28.99
4) Traditional Feast £69.99
5) Luxury Cheese & Biscuits £49.99
6) GTA-Bronze £59.99
7) Gourmet Taste Basket £64.99
8) Cheese & Wine £42.95
9) GTA-Gold £109.99
10) Ploughmans Hamper £34.99

Interestingly, the top 5 selling hampers are all non alcoholic. However this could be slewed dramatically by search engines. Many years ago, we created a range of non- alcoholic baskets meaning containing no wine. Our non alcoholic baskets contained such things as brandy butter, and brandy laced Mincepies, which sparked controversy when they were featured in the Sunday Times. So we’ve indicated which ones are completely alcohol free this year.

We can turn your order around within 24 hours at this stage, but the sheer avalanche of orders which comes in next week means that some orders will take 48 hours to process and deliver.

As in the past we’ll work right the way up until Christmas but hamper availability reduces every day from next week, so please order as early as possible.

Basketsgalore

Labels: christmas hampers, christmas shopping, gift baskets, online gift basket

Every year since the company was formed we leave it as late as possible to pack our hampers. The reason for this is the presence of so many fresh goods in a Basketsgalore Gift Hamper.

This year we feature Robert Ditty of Castledawson's Sweet Brandy laced Mince pies. If you don't like mince pies, you will like these. It never ceases to amaze me to see boxes of mince pies piled up in the shops from August/September. Of course it would be an awful lot easier to buy long life mince-pies as they can be packed away earlier, but the compromise on quality makes it a non starter as far as Basketsgalore is concerned.

Our Christmas Puddings are made by a local baker from the foothills of the Mourne Mountains in Newcastle, Co Down. O'Keefe's Bakery utilising the name of Corn Dolly Bakery. It's light and fluffy with a rich fruity tang, a million miles away from the stodgy fare of mass market puddings. Like many things in life, you usually tend to get what you pay for and Christmas Puddings are no exception. O'Keefe's products are only available through their own coffee shops and delicatessen outlets.
We also feature Ditty's Brandy laced Christmas Pudding, which whilst a little heavier, has a stronger taste to it on the basis of the brandy. So Basketsgalore customers can choose between light and fluffy or rich and distinctive when selecting their hamper this year.

We feature fruit cakes and Porter cakes from both Bakeries, which are members of the newly created Company of Irish Bakers, headed by Robert Ditty, which is a Marketing group set up to distribute artisan products throughout the UK and Ireland.

Finally, we've commissioned a new type of biscuit especially for our customers. These are Milk chocolate enrobed caramel shortbread. Simply the most delicious biscuits you will ever taste. If you're a lover of chocolate, these will delight and amaze you.

Basketsgalore doesnt put items in a hamper to make them look better value, we put only the best products in our Gift Baskets and the distinction is why people choose us.

Basketsgalore offers delivery to the UK, many European countries and also to Ireland. We often find that Irish deliveries can be more difficult due to Ireland not having a postcode system. Dublin is an exception as it is so big, it is divided into numbered areas. Due to the majority of Irish address not having postcodes it really helps to have the full address information included when ordering. Some helpful customers also send through some direction or name local landmarks – we love this!

In the event of any delivery difficulties, people often ask us ‘how come they have been sending letter to the address for years and the postman can find it ok’? The difference is that our parcels are sent via a recorded courier service rather than in the post.

Courier drivers are usually locals too, but will not be in each area as often as a postman on a daily round. With this in mind (as well as no postcodes) it can be difficult for them to locate some addresses. An example of a tricky Irish address:

The White House
Midleton
Co. Cork

This is also why couriers ask for a phone number to be included for the recipient. This way if they are having any difficulties they can phone to ask for directions. When customers order from America or Australia & include their own number for the delivery this is no use. The drivers are unable to dial internationally & also it is unlikely that someone in another country will be able to give directions! (unless of course they have lived there!)

Customers can also be worried about giving the recipients number in case the surprise of the gift is spoiled. The driver will only phone when he is trying to deliver the parcel, so maybe a couple of hours in advance. Also the driver has lots of parcels, and has no idea what is inside each one. He or she will simply say they are trying to deliver something; they cannot spoil the surprise, as they don’t know what is inside! Sometimes they won’t ring at all because they can find the address ok.

Another reason to include the number is in the instance that the recipient is not at home to sign for the parcel. In this case, the driver leaves a calling card advising a delivery attempt has been made. If the recipient doesn’t ring up about having the parcel re-delivered after a few days, the courier company may ring to remind them. Sometimes calling cards can go missing or cannot be posted (deliveries to flats or private properties), so the contact number is again really useful.

We hope this helps explains a few of the reasons behind certain things we do or ask for. We are simply trying to help get your parcel delivered as quickly and efficiently as possible. And remember if you can provide a landline & a mobile number for the recipient we’ll love you even more!!

As you can imagine Christmas is one of our busiest times here at Basketsgalore. We also operate the rest of the year round, when customers can pick a “preferred delivery date”. At Christmas we have to narrow this down to a “preferred delivery week”. Other hamper companies remove this option altogether, and you are only allowed to pick December or Christmas delivery.

We do our best to accommodate your preferred week in December, but with thousands of hampers being dispatched each day I’m sure you can understand why we can’t guarantee specific delivery days or weeks.

Courier companies also get swamped with deliveries during the Christmas Season, so even if parcels are sent on a 24-hour service, we ask that customers understand that delivery can take a little longer than during the rest of the year.

Although you may be tempted to pick a delivery date as close to Christmas as possible, we advise picking slightly earlier dates to make sure your gift arrives on time. Sometimes the recipients may not be at home to sign for the parcel, and then they may take a few days to ring up & ask for re-delivery. Don’t worry about the best before dates on food items, they will all have a long enough shelf life to be fresh for Christmas.

Hasn’t this year just flown in! In the office we can’t quite believe it is nearly that hectic time again…. yes Christmas is just around the corner!! With this in mind Basketsgalore’s new 2008 range of Christmas gift baskets and hampers are now available to buy online.

Once again we have SO many yummy baskets to choose from you’ll be spoilt for choice! We recommend getting your order in early to guarantee you get the basket you want. People often ask us for recommendations, but we would like them all!

Our dedicated Christmas website allows you to shop by price, category and in your own currency. Finding the perfect Christmas gift basket has never been so easy!

You can see the full range at www.christmas.basketsgalore.co.uk

We have some old favourites available again, like our famous “Great Taste” range, and we have also introduced a new range of sub £40 hampers for everyone trying to be careful with their Christmas budget!