Archive for the ‘Photos’ Category

Yes, we’re moving…but the shop isn’t!

February 15th, 2012 | Tags: shop, stock, warehouse
Posted in News and Updates, Photos
No Comments »

Just a quick blog post to update you on our plans. We have recently moved the warehouse to bigger premises (MUCH bigger! See the pic below). But the shop is staying just where it is so you don’t have to worry you won’t be able to find us!

The new warehouse - before we moved the stock in - it's HUGE!

The reason we’ve moved to a new warehouse is to increase the amount of stock we can hold. We know that one of the frustrations you guys experience is items being out of stock. You, quite rightly, want to be able to place an order as and when you want, not hang around waiting for the stock to come in on our near weekly deliveries. That’s what we want too, so now we can hold probably around three times as much stuff and keep things in stock for longer.

Obviously deliveries will be an issue still – we can’t control what is available on the other side of the pond or the ships that bring it over, but hopefully this move will help a LOT!

Stocked shelves - always (mostly!)

Now as I said, the shop is staying right where it is. If you know where it is then you’ve no need to worry. If you don’t and you want to pay us a visit then you’ll find us here:

American Soda
Alexandria Drive
off Lord Sheldon Way
Ashton-under-Lyne
OL7 0QN

It’s really not that far from Manchester city centre at all. What will you find? All your favourite American food, drinks and sweets, helpful, friendly staff and the opportunity to browse the shelves at your leisure and see just what you’ll be enjoying when you get it home. The shop will have pretty much everythig we currently have in stock and on top of that, we’d really love to meet you down here.

So when you’re in the area pop in and say hi.

Our Top 10 Faves From Your Fantastic Photos

December 19th, 2011 | Tags: facebook albums, top 10
Posted in News and Updates, Photos
8 Comments »

Throughout 2011 we’ve been collecting the photos you’ve submitted via Facebook and Twitter and featuring them on our Facebook page in the Your Fantastic Photos albums (here and here). In total we’ve collected over 250 and we’ve loved each and every one of them. As we’re nearing the end of the year, we figured it would be a good idea to choose our Top 10 and showcase them here on the American Soda blog. (more…)

An Inside Look At American Soda

October 5th, 2011 | Tags: american soda, offices, warehouse
Posted in News and Updates, Photos
11 Comments »

It’s just over a year since we moved into the new warehouse, offices and shop in Ashton and what a year it’s been! We’ve met some amazing people and made some new friends during that time and the premises themselves have undergone some radical changes too! I want to give you an insight to how things work round here (and how the place looked when we first moved in!), so here’s a little photo walk through American Soda HQ.

I often like to look at these pictures just to remind myself how much has changed. This is one of the earliest views of the upstairs working area and to the right of that, how it looks now! It is completely different. We now have somewhere that we are really proud of.

Stairs, however, are amazingly still stairs…

Look at the difference here. On one hand we have an empty warehouse with NO stock and now we are bursting at the seams!

Let me just tell you, we recognise that without you guys we would have no need for any of this infrastructure and we’re so pleased to offer you the goods we do. Keep the requests coming in (via the tool on our homepage, Facebook and Twitter) as we love to know that we are giving you what you want.

One of the main reasons to move to this new facility was down to your suggestion that we needed a shop. We knew you would only accept the best so we tried to get that for you. We think we did a pretty good job. It has been great having the shop because so many of you come from miles away just to see us and that makes us feel great. The bike is a great feature, come and visit the shop and this will be waiting for you upon entry.

(At this point, I’d like to remind you that if you check in at American Soda on Foursquare, you’ll get a free pack of Now & Later and a 10% discount code to use online when you make your next order. THAT’S how much we love you!)

Pete and James pretending to do some work…

The table below is where we often meet (for dinner normally!).

And that is Aydin’s usual reaction to the suggestion of lunch!

This is a little office in the corner and it is where I like to sit and think.

And finally…this is a door and a window. Exciting I am sure you will agree!!

I hope you enjoyed this little photo walk (and trip down memory lane!). If you’ve any questions, leave them in the comments below and I’ll do my best to answer! We want to keep you up to date with what we do, we need you to help with this. Keep the suggestions coming in for new products and keep entering our competitions, we love that.

Cheers for now!
- Jordan

Announcing our photo contest and £100 winner…

September 9th, 2011 | Tags: american breakfast, lucky charms, photo contest, pop tarts, winner
Posted in Competitions, News and Updates, Photos
4 Comments »

After 112 entries, hours spent picking 10 finalists and over 1,000 votes we finally have our winner!

But before we announce who the lucky recipient of the £100 prize is, everyone at American Soda wants to say thank you to everyone who entered and / or voted in this competition. We all had a great time looking at your creative photos and each of us had our favourite that we were secretly rooting for!

In the end though, the winner was determined by you and your votes and that winner is…

An American Breakfast by Holly Davies

An American Breakfast (Lucky Charms & Pop Tarts)

Congratulations, Holly!

This was actually one of our favourites too. We liked the quality of the shot, the simplicity of it, the array of colours the composition and, above all, the fact that it made us want that breakfast! Oh, and the cute cat helped too.

Fantastic work. We assume Holly will be investing her £100 in more Lucky Charms and Pop Tarts!

Here’s how it panned out in the voting. It was pretty close at the top, as you can see.

An American Breakfast	19%
Sweet summer	18%
WANTED – Strawberry Fanta	17%
emperor smithy protecting american soda castle	14%
The beauty of American Soda	10%
American Soda Safari: Can you name all 6 American treats?	7%
Lady Liberty holds a torch for AS goodies!	6%
Another special delivery from American Soda being unloaded!	4%
Root Beer Monkey	4%
Amurrrika	1%

WIN £100 with JUST a photo in our latest competition!

August 15th, 2011 | Tags: albums, facebook, orders
Posted in Competitions, Photos
No Comments »

If you’ve liked us on Facebook then you’ll know we created a photo album on our Page that we’ve been rapidly filling with pictures you’ve been sending us, photos of your latest orders, your culinary creations using American Soda products and all manner of other pics.

Such has been the amazing response to the album (over 180 photos already!) I’d like to reward you all by giving you the chance to win £100 to spend with us, simply by sending us photos of your American Soda orders. We send out over 1,500 individual orders each week, so there should be plenty of you with stuff to photograph!

However, I don’t want just ANY photo…I want you to be creative, innovative, I want you to display imagination and / or artistic talent, I want to be blown away by your photos!

What do I mean by that? Well, rather than a photo of your order unpacked on the kitchen side, as good as they are to see, why not try an unusual location, a unique way of laying it all out or some really creative use of the camera with lighting, close ups, that sort of thing. We’re not after world class photography, just a bit of imagination.

After all, there’s £100 up for grabs. And to make it even more interesting, it won’t be the American Soda team and I that choose the winner – it’ll be you! Once we’ve chosen some of our favourites, we’ll let everyone vote on them to determine the overall winner!

To enter your photos and be in with a chance of winning £100 to spend with us, visit our Facebook Page now. Full terms and conditions are on there too. And don’t worry, if you’ve already had a photo included in the Facebook album, you can still enter it into this competition.

Here are a few of the pics from the Your Fantastic Photos album that caught my attention, just to give you an idea of what I’m after…

The clever inclusion of a small baby turned an ordinary American Soda order into a photograph to be proud of!

An extreme close up of these Dark Chocolate M&Ms caught the eye, big time.

Not only is this a beautifully taken photo, I loved the thought that went into stacking up the root beer.

It's not always about the product...personalise your photos by including yourself!

So what do you think? Can you be creative enough to win £100?

I can’t wait to see all your entries, so get snapping and enter here.

Cheers for now!
- Dave

Last Chance to enter our Captain America Colouring Comp – winner announced tomorrow!

August 8th, 2011 | Tags: captain america, colouring competition, summer holidays
Posted in Competitions, Photos
No Comments »

Hi there.

Just a quick one to remind you of our Captain America colouring competition in which you could win £15 to spend on your favourite American sweets. And it’ll give the kids something to do during the holidays!

You’ve only got until the end of today as we’ll be announcing the winner tomorrow to get your entries in so download the pictures below, pass them to your children to colour in, then scan them in (or take a photo of them) and email them back to jordan [at] americansoda [dot] co [dot] uk to be in with a chance of winning. You don’t have to send all three back, just one will do.

Captain America Sketch #1

Captain America Sketch #2

Captain America Sketch #3

In the meantime, take a look at this brilliant selection of entries so far – you’ve got some tough competition there, but it’s not all over yet. Get your kids colouring now!

Look forward to seeing what your kids come up with.

3 More Wills & Kate Cake Comp Entries!

April 26th, 2011 | Tags: kate middleton, prince william, royal wedding, wedding cake
Posted in Competitions, Photos
No Comments »

As the wedding of the year gets closer the competition is hotting up! Over the Easter weekend (and I hope you had a good one, by the way! ) we had three more entries to our Wills & Kate Cake Competition and your imaginations are clearly working overtime. Take a look at these:

Frank is clearly a fan of Baby Ruth bars but it was the marrying of Big Ben with the Statue of Liberty atop the cake that caught our attention with his entry. Great work!

Clare Law’s entry (related to Frank I wonder?) is far and away the most detailed and I have to confess I love this one as it incorporates some of my favourite American sweets and drinks. The idea of an American Soda London bus tour is intriguing too…

I’m not sure Wills and Kate would appreciate this design but it certainly had all of us at American Soda doubled up laughing!! A right royal throne indeed, and a good play on the happy couple’s initials. Genius!

I’ve been really impressed with the entries we’ve had so far and I want more – you’ve still got until midnight this Thursday (April 28th) to get your entries in to be in with a shout of winning our Complete Cake Making Kit so get baking or sketching and add your entry here.

Thanks a lot!

- Dave

Wills & Kate Cake Competition Entries So Far

April 18th, 2011 | Tags: kate middleton, prince william, royal wedding, wedding cake
Posted in Competitions, Photos
1 Comment »

Wel, our Wills & Kate Cake competition has been open for a litle while now and we’ve had some great entries so far. Remember, you could win a Complete Cake Making Kit packed with cake mixes, frostings, icings, decorations and even pie cases – all you have to do is design a truly original, unusual cake for the happy Royal couple.

Full details and entry form here.

In the meantime, take a look at the entries we’ve had so far.

This was the first entry we had on the day of launching the competition. In our opinion, it set the bar pretty high. Kelvin Payne has designed a cake not FOR the happy couple, but OF the happy couple. Definitely original and just the sort of thing we were after.

Stacey B went with a more traditional type of cake, but we love the crown on the top. Very royal, very appropriate for the future King of England and his bride. Like the lettering on the cake too.

Sticking with the traditional, Chelsea Hurrell entered this cake design. What we like about this one is the thought that has gone into the little details, right down to the key Chelsea gave us: 1 – silver sugar balls; 2- pink piping; 3 – roses pink. Beautiful.

Joanne Sowinska has picked up on the truly royal overtones of the colour purple and produced – and baked – a cake design accordingly. It’s the feathers that really set this off though, a fantastic idea.

This was the first entry that really blew us away. Grainne Halligan has gone ahead and created the most decadent wedding cake we’ve ever seen! Or in this case, a Giant American Chocolate Wedding Cupcake! And of course, we love the American Soda branding!

One cake? Chris Gorman laughs in the face of the idea. Instead, Chris has gone for a tower of cakes, or rather, a tower of Whoopie Pies! Chris says they are fantastic when made properly, with Crisco Shortening, Hershey’s chocolate and Marshmallow Fluff. Who are we to argue?

Finally, what about this from Becky Newell? Becky picked up on the real English event that is the Royal wedding and applied it to her cake, coming up with a traditional English breakfast inspired design. It looks good, is bound to taste good and is really fighting hard to be our favourite so far!

Brilliant entries so far, we’re sure you’ll agree – but can you do better? Remember, it’s not fantastic art we’re after, it’s originality of thought and design.

Enter your design now to win this lot:

Duncan Hines Classic White Cake Mix

Betty Crocker Whipped Fluffy White Frosting

Nestle Premier White Morsels

Nestle Milk Chocolate Morsels

Duncan Hines Strawberry Supreme Cake Mix 517g

Betty Crocker Whipped Whipped Cream Frosting (340g)

Hershey’s Semi Sweet Chocolate Chips

Duncan Hines Confetti Cake/Cupcake mix (517g)

Betty Crocker Cup Cake Icing Petal Pink

Betty Crocker Cup Cake Icing-Buttercup Yellow

Keebler Graham Pie Crust (6oz)

Keebler Ready Pie Crust Chocolate (6oz/170g)

Jell-o Oreo Cookies and Creme Filling

Jell-o Lemon Instant Pudding & Pie Filling

A Wedding Cake with a Difference

April 7th, 2011 | Tags: facebook, royal wedding, wedding cake
Posted in Competitions, Photos
1 Comment »

One of the reasons I like our Facebook Page so much is that our fans often share some truly brilliant things with us. Like this, from Helen Marshall:

Posted to Twitter by @pickassoreborn, Helen reckons someone got a headstart on us with our Wills & Kate Cake Competition and I reckon she might be right! Not sure the Royal family would go for a pork pie wedding cake, but you never know! At £150 the price might be a bit steep too.

Speaking of our competition, you could win a Complete Cake Making Kit, including genuine American cake mixes, pie crusts, fillings, icings and decorations, just by designing your own wedding cake for Wills and Kate. Check out the full details on how to enter here.

And a big thanks to Helen for sharing that cracking photo!

Dave

5 Funny Mother’s Day Cards

March 30th, 2011 | Tags: funny, mothers day, mothers day cards
Posted in News and Updates, Photos
No Comments »

With Mother’s Day fast approaching (Sunday April 3rd!) thoughts turn to cards and gifts with which to shower our beloved parent. What type of gift we give is a personal decision for each of us, it could be flowers, candy, cake or jewellery, but when it comes to the card you are at the mercy of the card manufacturers and many, let’s face it, are just too sickly sweet!

Look hard enough though, and you’ll find alternatives. If your mum has a sense of humour then (hopefully!) she’ll love these cards almost as much as we do! Check them out:

One for the son to give, no doubt!