Here’s this week’s Souper Five, a brief roundup of things that have caught our eye over the past few days.  We’re talking Kombucha, the Pub of Good Deeds and Spotify Wrapped, amongst other things…

December

It might be cold outside, but the season of goodwill is finally in full swing, and we’ll say Amen to that. The decorations are up, the mulled wine is in full flow and there’s a brilliantly tacky Christmas playlist on repeat. There’s also plenty going on near us to help us get into the festive spirit and so far we’ve been to the local Xmas lights switch on (bravo, Chapel A) and the brilliantly unique Christmas tree festival in Otley (make sure go next year if you didn’t make it this year).

Kombucha

We decided to try out Kombucha this week in an effort to find a non-alcoholic drink we could enjoy in amongst the booziness of the festive period. Our verdict? Seriously impressed – it is delicious!

Touted as the next big ‘thing’ in the world of drinks, Kombucha is a tangy drink made from fermented tea that people in Asia have been swigging for thousands of years. As well as tasting great, it’s healthy too, so we can see why sales are set to rise 25% year-on-year until 2020. If you’ve not tried it yet, you should (you can get it in Waitrose, in case you’re wondering.)

The pub of good deeds

The Christmas season can be hard for some people, but amongst all the festivities and gift-giving, it’s easy to forget that not everyone is lucky enough to have people to celebrate the big day with. That’s why we loved reading about the Alexandra pub in Wimbledon, which is helping out those who are alone this Christmas. The pub announced on Twitter that they’ll give a free turkey dinner and a beer to anyone who’s alone on Christmas day, with absolutely no strings attached. All leftover food and customer donations will also be given to a local homeless shelter. What a lovely thing to do – we’ll definitely be popping into this boozer next time we’re in London.

The Shed at Dulwich

Hats off to journalist Oobah Butler, who managed to fool Trip Advisor and feature as London’s number one restaurant on the review site with an imaginary ‘appointment only’ restaurant, his shed! Despite never having served a meal and posting fake photos of food constructed from shaving foam and bleach, his shed-based restaurant generated rave (fake) reviews on Trip Advisor and mass hysteria on social media (and tonnes of media coverage since it was revealed it was all a stunt too).

Once Oobah had hit the top spot on Trip Advisor, he celebrated by hosting a one-off event, where he served up Iceland ready meals disguised as posh nosh, which diners raved about on social media in their droves.

We love this stunt, which not only demonstrates the power of reviews, but also that you definitely shouldn’t believe everything you read on the internet. Oobah, if you’re looking for a job in PR, can we hire you?

Spotify songs of 2017

As huge Spotify fans, we’ve been having loads of fun with Spotify Wrapped this week, the annual feature that lets subscribers see the stats behind their listening habits.  Wow, what can we say, ours surprised us, but despite our somewhat questionable music choices, it’s fun to see our listening habits laid out in front of us. After discovering we spent a ridiculous amount of 2017 listening to Joe le Taxi by Vanessa Paradis, we then discovered our favourite genre is Chamber Psych (who knew) and that we spend an average of six hours a day streaming music across the office.