Workshops
I run cookery experiences and I sell vouchers for them, so take what follows with that in mind. But I also know the dirty secret of the experience gift industry, which is that a large share of vouchers are never redeemed. The big experience companies count on it. The gift gets given, the thought lands, and the day never happens.
If you are buying one this Christmas, here is how to pick one that gets used.
This is the first thing to find out and the one most listings are vague about. Some cookery experiences are a demonstration: a chef cooks, you watch, you eat. Others are a class: you cook, with help. Both are fine, but they are different gifts.
A demonstration suits someone who loves eating and is nervous about cooking. A class suits someone who already cooks and wants to get better. For most people a class is the better gift, because doing something is what makes a day memorable. At our workshops everyone has a knife in their hand within the first half hour, and I would be suspicious of any experience that cannot tell you how much of the day you spend doing rather than watching.
Ask the group size. A class of twenty-four with one chef is a lecture with a lunch at the end. A class of eight is a day where you learn something. We cap ours at a number where I can stand next to every person at the fire, because that is the only way anyone learns to cook over one.
Read the listing with a cynical eye. Does the price include the food you cook? The meal at the end? Drinks? Something to take home? A voucher for a £90 experience that then charges for lunch is not a £90 experience. Ours includes everything we cook, the feast we eat at the end, and usually a piece of the animal to take home, because sending people away empty-handed from a butchery day would be strange.
This is where most gifts die. A voucher valid for twelve months, for an experience that runs six dates a year, in a season the recipient is busy, is a voucher that expires in a drawer. Look for:
A general "cooking class" voucher that can be used for anything is flexible, and flexibility is the enemy of a gift being used. A voucher for a specific thing, a whole deer butchery day, a fire cooking masterclass, a bread course, is a gift with an idea in it. The recipient knows what they are getting, they can look forward to it, and they are far more likely to book it.
The experience gifts that get redeemed are the ones with a clear picture attached. Nobody wakes up excited about a Food and Drink Discovery voucher. People do wake up excited about the day they are going to learn to break down a whole deer and cook it over a fire.
- Cai
Find out who actually runs the day. A big experience brand sells thousands of experiences it does not run, through partners it may never have visited. The listing will have a stock photo and a paragraph. If you cannot find out who the chef is and what they have done, you are buying a lottery ticket. If you can, and they have a name and a face and a history, you are buying a day with a person.
Since I have been telling you what to look for, here is what you get with us, so you can hold me to it. Small groups. Hands-on from the start. Everything included, including the feast and something to take home. Vouchers that do not quietly expire. Dates published months ahead. And it is me teaching, at a fire, with a deer. The full picture is in the gift guide, and what a day actually looks like is here.
Buy the voucher that will be used. It is the only kind worth giving.
