Taste Cheshire entertains the Irish – now there’s a change! #Blog

Stephen Wundke
21st February 2019

Taste Cheshire,  was approached by Donegal Enterprise, from Ireland to put together a fact finding, food and drink tour across Cheshire for 16 delegates from the new Donegal Food Initiative and we have had a fabulous 3 days showing off our members.

Jonathan Fell tells the Ice cream Farm Story

Margaret Campbell of Donegal Enterprise Office at Donegal Council, approached us to ask if we could put together an itinerary of successful Cheshire Food and Drink operators from within our membership, as they were bringing business people from across their County to look at our successful model and just how we support the Food and Drink Industry. We were delighted to help and over the last 3 days they have visited some of our outstanding members, like, The Hollies Farm Shop, Bellis Fruit Farms, both The Ice Cream Farm and Backford Belle’s Ice Cream Farm and on their travels they have learnt how to make Pork Pies with Marie Powell, seen the award winning Harthill Cookery School with Brian Mellor and even tasted beer and Gin at Weetwood Ales. It has been a very full itinerary with 17 different operators right across the county opening their doors to help fellow business people understand what makes them tick and how they have succeeded against the odds in many cases.

Brian Mellor talks Cookery Classes at Harthill

It is a measure of just how far Taste Cheshire has matured, as the voice of some 200 Food and Drink stakeholders, that we not only have Donegal reaching out but we recently concluded a deal to feature Cheshire at London’s Borough market in the month of June, the first event of its type and we are working with Parliament at Westminster to update them on how the Food and Drink industry is performing. Every week we talk to over 30,000 foodies through our member emails and our social media and helping out our colleagues in Ireland this week has been a big thrill for all of us at Taste Cheshire.

Our next highlight of course is the Taste Cheshire Food and Drink festival, where over 30,000 people are expected at Chester Racecourse this Easter and today we announced another huge event in September called Deva Fest of which Taste Cheshire is an integral part. The Taste Cheshire goal was always to be a route to market for the independent food and drink operator and to brand Cheshire as “The County of Food and Drink” That job is far from over but we are definitely heading in the right direction.

Well done to all our members who spoke so passionately to our Irish guests. I can assure you that to a man and woman they all said they would be back to visit Chester and Cheshire. You made it very special for them and they loved it. Take a bow Cheshire.