Delicious Producer Awards

Delicious Produce Awards

I was really honoured to be invited to be a regional judge for the inaugural Delicious Magazine Producer Awards. There are numerous food and drink awards these days including the ubiquitous Guild of Fine Food Great Taste Awards which receives tens of thousands of entries every year seeking the recognisable gold stars to adorn their products.

But there were no national awards which truly celebrated the best best artisan food producers, small scale farmers or makers, recognising their dedication and skill as well the provenance and taste of their products. Back in January 2016 the magazine asked readers to nominate their favourite dairy farms, fishermen, butchers, bakers and farms - 650 nominations were received.

Delicious Producer Awards

I was asked to judge entries for the East of England alongside far better qualified judges, food writer Thane Prince and chef Galton Blackiston. We spent an entertaining couple of hours reviewing all the entries to the area from tiny producers of chutneys and cakes available in a few local markets to some of East of England's most well known products from oysters to rhubarb. The process was rigorous scoring each entry on a number of criteria and Thane kept us all focussed and impartial! 

Our shortlist duly submitted to the final panel that included Prue Leigh, Peter Gordan and Sophie Grigson as well as Delicious editor, Karen Barnes and we all had to wait patiently until October when the winners were announced in the October magazine.

Hodmedod's British Organic Quinoa

I'm delighted to say that one of our favourite entries from the region went on to win the From the Earth Category - Hodmedod's Organic Quinoa was praised by the judges who said "We love the fact that it's grown in the UK. Plus the flavour is excellent: buttery and nutty, with a texture that pops in the mouth."

You can see the full list of winners on the Delicious Producer Awards Winners.

 

Enough Food Festivals already

It would be possible to spend every weekend of the year at a food festival - every city has one and most counties have more than one. Newspapers regularly recommend the best and there’s at least one website dedicated to helping us navigate them - it currently lists 338 - almost one for every day of the year. There’s sausage festivals, oyster festivals and local to me there’s an irregular Herring Festival and even the Peasenhall Pea Festival.

While I’ve overheard many a punter complaining about having to pay to go into a “glorified farmers market”, we still flock to food festivals in our thousands, they’re the new local fete or day at the fair and the civilised festival experience for those who don’t like camping and smelly loos.

But what do we find to do at these festivals? We get stall upon stall of indistinguishable jams and over-the-top cupcakes swamped by people eating their body weight in samples with no intention of parting with any cash. We fight our way through a stampede of buggies only to decide it’s too far back to the car to bother buying any meat and veg and we’ll stop off at Tesco on the way home.

We see the same band of hungover chefs, touted out by their publishers to publicise their latest book, being marched bleary-eyed onto the stage only to burn the onions because, after a night of boozing, it’s as much as they can do to string sentence together, let alone cook at the same time. Even without the help of hangovers the demos can be chaotic with missing ingredients, stoves that don’t work and interruptions from crying kids, snoring grandpas and ringing phones. If you’re really lucky they’re might even be a video screen focussed on a pile of washing up!

Don’t get me wrong, I am a great fan of food festivals, particularly the old guard and the innovators. Ludlow, the first in the UK founded in 1995 and Abergavenny, four years later, still have their hearts deeply rooted in celebrating local, seasonal food and drink - a harvest festival for 21st century. There are innovators like Bristol Food Connections which engages the whole city and both entertains and educates. These festivals are run on shoe-string, dependent on funding and hard-working volunteers to make them happen.

But there are too many that have just jumped on the band waggon with high ticket prices, corporate sponsors and an army of street food vendors serving raw burgers, warm beer and over-cooked paella with no local connections and ingredients from the cash and carry.

Meanwhile dedicated farmers and producers get up at crack of dawn come rain or shine, drive hours every weekend, to farmers markets which struggle to keep going because we’re not using them. You’ll find them there every weekend - because we need to eat every day not just on food festival day. You don’t have to buy a ticket, you can park close by and you can buy fantastic meat, veg and bread - quality everyday food, not just for treats.

We need to stop seeing food as entertainment, going to food festivals to scoff all the samples andspot our favourite celebrity chef in the flesh. Neither should it be the one day of the year we choose to shop from local food and drink producers - we should support them all year because they are there for us all year and we need to eat everyday.

Long live food festivals - but longer live farmers markets!

The original version of this article appeared in Delicious Magazine September 2016.

School of Artisan Food: Food for Thought

School of Artisan Food: Food for Though Lectures

It's a long old way to drive from east Suffolk to the depths of Sherwood Forest and beyond to the School of Artisan Food, but the annual Food for Thought Lectures have become a firm fixture in my calendar.

The School of Artisan Food was founded around the same time I started Food Safari with a similar ethos to teach people about food with hands-on courses with a particular focus on fermentation - from bread, to cheese, beer and curing meat. Its home is an incredibly grand building which housed the fire engines for the enormous (15,000 acres!) Welbeck Estate, home to the Dukes of Portland.

The Food for Thought Lectures run over a May weekend as two days of talks and discussions with some of the country's most interesting and engaging food writers, journalists and chefs. The audience is small, intimate even, and it's a lovely opportunity to meet new people and chat with old friends. The programme has no specific theme and discussions including the inimitable Jeremy Lee of Quo Vadis entertaining us with food memories and some favourite food books from Eliza Acton, to Florence White and Dorothy Hartley.

Joanna Blythman talked on the subject of her latest book Swallow This about the problems of processed food and so called 'Clean Labels'; Bee Wilson spoke on her brilliant book First Bite: How we Learned to Eat and the inspiring school food campaigner, Jeanette Orrery, talked about her in-the-field experience of school food and the incredible work she's done on the School Food Plan.

We also heard from some of my favourite chefs and food writers, Olia Hercules, Itmar and Sarit from Honey & Co; food historian Ivan Day and art historian Andrew Graham Dixon.

I will certainly be back next year.

How to do your own PR and get results!

How to do your own PR

Getting your story in the press is a great way to get your message out there, raise awareness of your brand and even generate sales. But there’s lots of competition for those column inches, in print or online. How do you get your story to stand out and get the coverage you’re aiming for?  Here are my tips for doing your own PR.

1. Be Social

PR stands for Press or Public Relations - the emphasis is on relations. Go out and build relationships either through social networks, attending events or picking up the phone and getting out meeting people.

Use social media like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to build your fans and advocates and they will do your job for you telling their friends and spreading the word.

Connect with relevant journalists on social media or seek them out at events you attend (press badges are often easy to spot). Don’t be afraid to introduce yourself and hand over a business card or better still a sample. You’ve then got a good excuse to follow up with them.

2. Be an Expert

Whether you are a cheesemaker or an insurance broker you have expertise in what you. If you demonstrate this expertise through a blog or social media journalists will identify you as someone to speak to in their research. For example if you are an vegetable grower and blog about the impact of a wet spring on the asparagus harvest and share that opinion on social media or even send it direct to the press, journalists may call for a further comment to quote in their piece.

3. Be an authority

Make sure you know your facts, have some figures to hand, journalists love data, such as the size of the UK asparagus market or your own increased volume of asparagus sales over the last five years. Have an opinion and don’t be afraid to share it.

4. Be targeted

Do your research. Buy the newspapers or magazines and spend time looking at online publications. Think about their approach and themes. What do they cover and what don’t they cover?  How can you make your story relevant to them?  It’s often worth having several angles of the same story up your sleeve, for example one for the local media that focusses on the local connections, one for the national food press and one for the trade press.

Create a list of the relevant journalists by reading the magazines or papers. Magazines usually have a boiler plate at the front with names of key staff and some contact details. Papers can be a bit harder to get contact details for but google is a powerful tool and you’ll be surprised how often you can track down someone’s email address!  You can always pick up the phone and ask who is the relevant person.

Build a database - keep a record of the names and contact details of your target list of journalists. Keep a record of what you have sent them and when and a note of how they responded. The more information you can add the better and don’t forget to keep it up to date.

A scattergun approach doesn't work. Think carefully before sending your news - is it relevant to that person or publication. Make the covering email personal and highlight why you think it is relevant to them.

4. Be concise

Whether you’re telling your business story face-to-face or writing a press release you have a just a minute to get your audience's attention.

I still regularly think about an acronym I learned 20 years ago: AIDA which stands of Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. You need to get your readers attention, engage their interest and encourage them to take action whether that's buying your product or writing about you.
 
Journalists receive dozens of emails a day and many will go unread so make sure you get a compelling heading in the email subject line to get their attention and make sure they’ve not lost interest by the time they get to the key part of your message. Think about the key points you want to get across (sometimes called the top line), why should they be interested and don’t forget the what, where, why and when.

A press release shouldn’t be more than a few paragraphs long and fit on one side of A4 (and this doesn’t mean size 8 font!). Make it easy to read with good line spacing. You can add a few notes on a second page and don’t forget to include your contact details.

5. Be newsworthy

A press release is not a sales pitch. Don’t over-hype the story or exaggerate - be genuine and honest. Write objectively as if you were writing something you’d read in a paper or magazine.

Think about what makes it a story that they’ll cover (this will depend on the type of publication). Do you have data or research that shows a new trend or a nutrition benefit to your product? Do you have tips to share or inspiring recipes.

6. Be visual

Include one or two photos as thumbnails in the copy.  Have good quality high resolution images to hand. Dropbox is a great way to store and share high resolution files. Include links to to Dropbox or offer to share them on request.

7. Be smart

Make it easy for the journalist. Put the story in the email and don’t assume that they will open an attachment. If you send an attachment send it as a pdf document that can be opened on any platform.

8. BE APPROACHABLE

Remember to include your contact details and offer to answer any questions or send samples.

Invite them to visit you or meet for a coffee. Journalists are real people and this is all about building relationships.

9. BE PERSISTENT

Silence doesn’t mean rejection - journalists are busy and often inundated. If you don’t receive a response it’s fine to follow up after a few days or a week but avoid becoming a pest by chasing them too many times, that won’t yield results.

If they are not interested in your story ask them if it’s ok to send them other news in the future and ask them what sort of things would be relevant to them.

If you would like more advice or help about PR do get in touch, I'd be happy to help!

 

How to be successful at Food Festivals

If you are a food or drink business thinking of taking part in a food festival here are my top tips which I hope will help!

FOOD FESTIVAL TOP TIPS

1. Understand the different kinds of festival

Food festivals fall into three categories:

  1. Authentic festivals which celebrate local food, farming, and cooking (e.g. Abergavenny, Ludlow and Aldeburgh). These festivals are not commercial, no big brand names but they do attract a good engaged audience.
  2. Trade shows for the food sector like Speciality Fine Food Fair or the Farm Shop & Deli Show are an opportunity to meet buyers from independent retailers, wholesalers and supermarkets. They are expensive to attend but can be a worthwhile investment it if you are looking to grow your business; it’s often worth the cost in the long term.
  3. Commercial consumer shows such as Foodies, BBC Good Food and Taste Festivals - these are my least favourite! Visitors go for a day out, often to eat and drink and try as many samples as they can. They tend to be expensive to take part in.  If you sell alcohol or street food they can be fun, but if you're selling fresh or store-cupboard food I'd give these a miss.

2. Do your research

It’s important to research and visit food festivals before you book yourself in. Talk to other producers who’ve taken part in shows before. The food community is supportive and collaborative so they are likely to want to help. It’s also worth giving the organisers a call. Find out who the typical visitor will be, visitor numbers and if buyers or press are attending.

3. Set your objectives

What do you want to get out of attending - do you want to just make a profit on the things you sell that day, is it about reaching a new audience to raise awareness about your brand or is it to meet buyers from retailers or wholesalers, or chefs.

These are all good reasons to take part in shows, but you are unlikely to achieve all three in one go! 

4. Work out the overall cost

Do you need accommodation for you and the team and will you make enough to cover the cost of petrol to travel 200 miles?  

Don't forget all the costs involved, many shows charge extra for electricity, so if you have a product that needs to be refrigerated or power for laptops do make sure you factor this in. 

If you're aiming to make a profit be sure to factor all these costs in. 

5. Think about stand presentation

Do a test run at home, set up a stand and try arranging things in different ways. Get friends to give you feedback. Build height into your stall and use props to give it life. Have clear signage and labelling to make it easy for people to see what you are selling. A pop up banner that tells your story and provenance costs under £100 to produce and is a worthwhile investment.

5. Build up loyalty once you’re at a show

Run a prize draw so you can collect email addresses and send out an email newsletter. This will help you keep in touch with customers and get feedback. For instance, your newsletter can be sent to people who attended a particular show and could then link to Survey Monkey to get feedback on your products from that show. You can also then tell people what other shows you are attending or where they can buy your products.

6. Find ways to draw people to your stand

Encourage people to taste things - it makes it easy to engage with people and draws them to your stand. They may not stop and look otherwise. If you’re selling food, it’s all about the senses, so people need to be able to see, touch and taste the product. The sort of people who go to food shows are into exploring and discovering – and it’s a great way to get your product out there and get people to try it.

7. Tell your story

Engage with people as they pass by and find ways to open conversation with them. There's nothing more off-putting than seeing someone behind a stand, sitting down, on their phone, looking like they'd rather not be there! Ask them questions to open up a conversation and create an opportunity to tell them your story.

If you're not there to run the stand yourself, then make sure the person who is can to talk to people about the products and your brand story too. 

Suffolk Food Safari

We're incredibly proud of the abundance and diversity of food and drink produced in Suffolk and like nothing more than to show it off!  

While we know Suffolk is special, many people from outside the area have never visited and don't know about the wonderful coast and countryside here let alone our rich network of food and drink businesses.

Once or twice a year we bring a carefully selected group of food journalists and bloggers to come on a Food Safari and go behind the scenes at some of our favourite food and drink producers. It always amazes us how much even well-read and knowledgeable food writers learn on these trips.

In June we welcomed 10 food writers and bloggers to Hillfarm Oils and Blythburgh Free Range Pork on a two day trip. At Hillfarm they learned the Fairs family story of switching from growing rapeseed as a commodity to turning it into a special quality ingredient. They walked out in the fields to see the seeds ripening in their pods, saw the oil being gently squeezed out by the presses, sat on a huge tractor and combine harvester and met award winning baker David from The Cake Shop Bakery to discover why he uses Hillfarm's Cold Pressed Rapeseed Oil in all his bread.

Few people really understand meat labelling and at Blythburgh Free Range Pork we saw first hand what real free range pig farming is, and learned the welfare benefits compared to Outdoor-reared and Outdoor-bred pork ultimately producing better tasting meat. Father and son Jimmy and Alastair Butler took us around their famous farm on the banks of the river Blyth with views to Blythburgh Church and Southwold Lighthouse and we saw hour-old piglets and rowdy teenagers.

Back at the Butler's home we were joined by local butcher, Gerard King of Salter & King in Aldeburgh. Gerard gave us an insightful and amusing butchery demonstration breaking down a side of pork and showing us the usual and unusual cuts as well as the quality of the Blythburgh meat.

Mrs Butler, Pauline, had prepared an incredible pulled pork lunch with copious bread, salad and cheese to go with it and we were made incredibly welcome in their family home. 

Thank you to the Butlers and the Fairs for welcoming us to their homes as well as their farms!

We're also grateful to all the Suffolk producers or donated produce for lunch at Hillfarm.

AspallThe Cake Shop Bakery, Edward's Cordials, Fairfield Crisps, Fen Farm Dairy, Lane Farm Suffolk Salami, Munchy Seeds, Paddy & Scotts Coffee, Pinney's of Orford, Scarlett & Mustard, Suffolk Meadow, Sutton Hoo Chicken, Whitewood Dairy, Woolf Evans