About the Festival
VisitNorwich Ltd co-ordinates and promotes the Festival, including a Food Fair showcasing local produce. Bringing together local farmers, food and drink producers, retailers, restaurants, pubs and cafes, the Festival’s theme to promote local produce, local talent and healthy eating holds no bounds.
The festival focuses on a number of key events, while encouraging local caterers (cafes, pubs, restaurants, hotels) to take part by holding events themselves or highlighting special menus and dishes. A requirement of those taking part is that they should showcase local produce. The event gets more and more popular every year. Over 500 people dine during the
Moveable Feast which involves a three course dinner which each course taking place in a different restaurant.
What's more over 2,500 people visited The Forum to take part in the
'Battle of the Bangers'competition to taste a selection of local bangers and vote for their favourite - and this was just in 6 hours!
This year's festival will:
1. Generate interest from visitors and local residents, drawing them to the area and boosting your business
2. Develop the reputation of Norwich as a food city and Norfolk as a food county
3. Place the area’s hospitality industry at the centre of the economic stage
4. Put businesses which offer outstanding quality under the spotlight
5. Bring local produce, local talent and healthy eating to the forefront
6. Generate even more media interest in our local food industry and those individual businesses taking part
Business Benefits for Participation
• The Festival marketing campaign with inclusion in promotional literature, advertising and sales promotions. In 2007 we produced
20,000 Food Festival flyers and
12,000 Events Listings which were distributed widely across the region including through Park and Ride sites, bus and train stations, hotels, participating venues and premium locations throughout Norfolk and beyond
• PR coverage as part of a programme of activity in local, regional and national media
• An entry in the Festival Event Listing guide – distribution
12,000
• Inclusion on the Food Festival website with 9 dedicated pages of consumer and participator information, including links to the websites of all businesses taking part
• Promotional opportunities with the Eastern Daily Press including a glossy Food Festival supplement
• A supply of point-of-sale materials
• Listings in the national food campaign guides and websites
All this plus lots more.....
How Can You Participate?
There are countless ways in which you can participate and we welcome anyone who wishes to try something a little different, in fact we challenge you!
Last year thousands of people attended the festival and we held over 485 events over 10 days featuring approximately 130 local businesses and organisations.
Some of the highlights from last year include:
• John Lewis Cookery Theatre starring 16 local chefs and a ‘Ready Steady Cook’ competition
• Produced In Norfolk Food Fair
• Farmers Market
• Model Farm (Young Farmers/Easton College)
• Battle of Bangers where 7 local butchers competed in the tastiest sausage competition.
• The Moveable Feast had 15 restaurants participating across Norwich with over 500 diners enjoying three courses, each in a different restaurant
• Special events like the ‘Celebration of Norfolk’ at Top of the Terrace, Norwich City Football Club with 120 diners
• A give away of 5,000 apples on National Apple Day
• Ritz masterclasses with John Williams, Executive Chef at The Ritz
• The Great Norfolk Sunday Roast – offered by restaurants and pubs using only the best local produce at 12 locations throughout the city and county
• Tastings – of chocolate, cakes, jams, deli treats, cheeses, wines
• Special Festival Menus at many restaurants, cafés and hotels
• Lunch Hour Food Festival - lunchtime talks on a range of food related science topics
You can make your participation as big or as small as you like, you can have a target market in mind or go for gold. Here are a few ideas for you to think about:
• Farmers Market / Food Fair
• Food trails
• Great Norfolk Sunday Roast event
• ‘Battle of the Bangers’ sausage competition
• ’Eat local’ with all food locally sourced
• Showcase local talent
• Healthy Eating
• Vegetarian
• Demonstrations – a masterclass from your own chef for restaurants and hotels or for retailers bring in a chef to show off your cookery equipment or demonstrate how your ingredients can be transformed using mouthwatering recipes
• Run a ‘have-a-go’ cookery event - link with a school or sell tickets to beginners to try their hand at cooking, invite a celebrity chef to take over your kitchen and inspire new cooks
• Promote your regional produce with food tastings, offer tours of your farms or market garden
• Give a talk about what you do best eg. tips for budding vegetable gardeners, are you a specialist in food nutrition? Do you know what to feed fussy children?
• Are you part of a cooking group? Run a coffee morning with homemade cakes and jams for sale and other locally produced food stuff
• Do you want to run a competition?
• Wine tasting
• Themed evening eg. Norfolk seafood
The main thing to remember is that this is your chance to showcase your product to a large audience that really care about FOOD. IT'S YOUR EVENT SO BE INSPIRED!
How do I get involved?
To help cover the costs of promotion and advertising, there is a small participation fee of
£75 + VAT (£88.13) per event or themed promotion. For this you will receive publicity as already stated above, and a branded pack of promotional information prior to the Festival.
If you would like to take part in the 2008 Festival please register online or contact clare.packer@visitnorwich.co.uk, call Clare on 01603 727979. For press enquiries please contact Deborah Watson at Lexia Media, email deborah@lexiamedia.co.uk or call on 01394 446490.