They’ve swapped life among the railway arches for one of Huddersfield’s top business addresses.
Taste Marketing Ltd, which operates tastecard – the world’s biggest diners’ club enabling members to dine at discount prices at restaurants across the UK – has moved from its Viaduct Street location to offices at prestigious Birkby Grange.
Birkby Grange, built as a Victorian gentleman’s residence, was latterly the head office of paving stone supplier Marshalls plc. For many years before that it was the headquarters of Birkby-based Hopkinson Valves.
Now Taste Marketing, which has more than 3m tastecard members and 7,000 restaurants on the books, has transferred its 65 staff to a stone-built three-storey grade II listed building – originally a barn – which stands opposite the main house at Birkby Grange. It also owns a number of outbuildings and an annexe on the site.
The main building is now owned by textile firm John Horsfall & Sons (Greetland) Ltd.
Taste Marketing brought in Bolton-based interior designers Whitespace Consultants Ltd to fit out the former barn with a modern look while retaining its architectural features.
On the ground floor, the project included creating a striking reception area with new signs on black glass panels; open plan office space; a meeting room and a breakout area with grass-effect flooring, picnic bench-style seating and moulded tables while on the first floor is the customer services department with meeting spaces.
Taste Marketing director Matt Turner said: “It is a lovely setting and we are well-pleased with it. The fit-out respects the building while bringing the inside into the 21st century. It provides us with 6,000sq ft of space for our marketing, sales and accounts staff.”
He said: “We had been looking for years to find somewhere we thought would be worthy of being a headquarters building and we were struggling to find somewhere suitable. We were almost worried that we would have to move out of the area. When we saw this building was available, we thought it was fabulous. When you get here you cannot help but be impressed.”
Mr Turner said: “The way the business was growing, we could no longer stay in start-up style offices. We are the largest business in our industry in the world and now we have somewhere we can happily bring people to see us.”
Starting as tastelondon with just 150 restaurants in the capital, the business has grown to cover independent restaurants and chains across the UK, adding at least 300 hundreds new restaurants every month. Those taking part range from PizzaExpress, Strada and La Tasca to hotel restaurants such as Hilton, Holiday Inn, and Ramada.
Together with sister operation Gourmet Society, based in Manchester, the business has more than 4m members, 10,000 restaurants operating the scheme and more than 100 staff.
