Held on Saturday 1st October in the market hall in the centre of Brecon, this is one I didn’t attend as I went to Bridgend and one I didn’t get much positive producer feedback from. But on Saturday, I had a meeting in Brecon and called into one of my regular coffee shops in the midst of the town.
Chatting with the owner, I was disappointed and angry to learn that this coffee shop knew nothing about the food festival taking place about 5 minutes walk from their premises until the morning itself!
What a farce. I am fed-up of repeating myself on lack of PR & Marketing of many food festivals, and no doubt you are bored of my reports too now, but if organisers cannot manage to inform their local shops and supply decent sized posters and flyers, to plaster the town with, then why are they bothering at all?
This particular coffee shop hadn’t geared up for any extra trade. They’d not produced extra stock and more importantly – not brought in any extra staff. It’s back to my regular grumble, communicate, join up the writing, make everyone aware of what’s happening and encourage the locals to support this event and also bring in the visitors too.
After this year’s festivals, I hope Wag engage brain and have a serious re-think, not only about how they allocate their funding, should there be any, but how this money is spent. Are celebrity chefs really worth bringing in? If Wag allow this situation to continue yet again in 2012, then it’s up to the food producers to vote with their feet and raise their voices to get some basic improvements made.
Breconite
October 17, 2011 at 3:41 pm
the hot weather made the market hall uncomfortable
but that does not excuse the organisers from not telling the town loudly and clearly what was happening
it’s sad that the stallholders are driving a fair distance and paying for pitches and the organisers don’t do their part of the deal.
I’m a regular reader or think its subscriber but didn’t see anything about it in the latest issue, no advert or a piece saying what was happening at the festival
with such a foodie title that surprised me
admin
October 17, 2011 at 3:50 pm
Thanks for your comment.
Thanks also for being one of our many subscribers – we apprecaite your support
as regards a preview on Brecon it’s not fair for me to do this for festivals that are not advertising with us. If festivals do advertise with us, then there are opportunities for a preview in the relevant issue, plus for all their press releases will automatically go up on welshcountry.co.uk too
The festivals need our support, but we also need their support as well.
local lady
October 18, 2011 at 1:51 pm
I live in Brecon and knew nothing about this food festival which was very annoying
I do not understand how festivals can get government money and then do so little to promote the event even to local people. That’s senseless and wasteful
the more I read on this site the same messages are repeated and it appears to me that wag need to tackle this issue and stop wasting so much money.
As a subscriber to Welsh Country, which is the cheapest way of getting it, I do get why this particular festival wasn’t featured but surely an advert would have been sensible for goodness sake!! The magazine is fabulous for local food and is a delight to read. But they need advertsing and you can’t expect them to do a lot of work for nothing. That would not be fair guys.
I’m sure the producers didn’t do that well and yes the heat was an issue but more people would have been welcomed.
Cardigan Lover
August 14, 2012 at 1:40 am
I hire P.A. systems to Cardigan river and food festival. It only gets partial funding and the costs have driven the organisers to charge £2:50 per adult. They do this to balance fairly low stall costs with the high costs of running the event. Before someone says I bet you charge a lot for the P.A. systems so you drive up the costs, I don’t. In fact, I provided three systems for a third of the price the CHEAPEST competitor quoted. I know the two paid staff that spend most of the year organising and fully promoting the event work almost twice the hours they’re paid for and tens of volunteers put in huge amounts of hours to fully promote the event. The festival is under fire from some locals who don’t like the entry fee, but the truth of the matter is that the event would have died years ago if it didn’t and is one of the biggest tourism draws of the summer season. Even the council charge nearly £1000 to close the car park site the event utilises. It would really benefit from the extra wag funding.
admin
August 14, 2012 at 9:06 am
As far as I am aware wag only partially fund any food festivals. Many food festivals did not get any funding this year. It is hardly my role to back wag, but they simply haven’t got the budget to put 30 -40 festivals one each year and fully fund them. Wag funded this event to the tune of £10,400 which was an increase on last year when they were paid £9,995.
I do not agree with an entry charge unless there is plenty to see and do for free, as for example at Really Wild at St Davids. Paying to see a few cookery demos and have music blasting away all day, is not value-for-money in my opinion. I can understand why the locals are not happy havng to pay to go in as they will say as some did to me, we don’t pay to go in the supermarket.
I’m not sure what the exact charge of tradestands was, but one stallholder told me £110 for two days, which in my view is not cheap when these traders are selling food with low margins.I have no idea of how many full-time staff work on this event so cannot comment. All I’m looking at is a profitable and happy event for the traders – end of story!!!
Welsh food festivals could NOT run without volunteers and we do have some amazing volunteers who cheerfully give their time for free to make some of our festivals very successful.
I visited Cardigan on Sunday. Saw this huge marquee full of tables and chairs which impressed me and I thought perfect for people to sit and eat. However in fact it seemed to be the focus for live music, not for food at a food festival. Background music is perfect but loud music is not good for trading. So who is the River Festival for, food or music? It was very difficult for the traders to have to talk above that loud noise and actually very unfair on them.Wag is helping to fund a food festival not a music gig. The marquee must have been costly, but then it was used for a music event on Saturday night – again ticketed, so another way to make money. Some of the traders I spoke to were not told about the music night when some of them would have stayed on and earned some money. I was also asked where is the river connection – the river was not used as apparently the tide was too low!!!!
My view is this festival does not stand a hope of getting more funding the points I was hearing on Sunday was it should have stayed as a one day festival, clashing with the Pony and Cob event on Sunday was just not a smart move, traders also wanted much more promotion and marketing for it. I had complaints about too many people doing hot food, too many doing ice-cream and too many doing coffee and tea.
It should be obvious that the traders are there to make money and this event sadly for many it simply didn’t really work well for them.
trader chap
August 14, 2012 at 11:49 am
Before putting up your comments I’m surprised you didn’t talk to traders that were stupid enough to attend. Your PA was not the focus of this event it was supposed to be food. That’s what they got paid for supporting food. The live band music had no place at this festival, we couldn’t hear ourselves speak on the lower level and it was not that pleasant on the top level either. I’d no idea that this festival got so much money from wag, then they had tradestand money and then charged people for what, buying local food?
I’m behind Kath 100% with what she says, but would go further and say wag don’t fund music out of their food budget and using their money to then run a music event which was also charged for is wrong. Think that is the first time I’ve ever stuck up for wag
I thought this event was run totally by volunteers so no idea where paid for staff came from and hw much they cost.
Many traders didn’t do Sunday so there were lots of empty spaces and that does not look good. Some traders left on Sunday at lunchtime because trade was so poor. It was supposed to be a food festival not a music event.
I’ll not be going again and the organisers should read the post on 1st Aug – guide to festival organisers written by a producer, becasue they could learn a great deal and they need to. This is our livelihood for goodness sake
It’s kind of you to give such a good deal on your PA system, but wish you’d had a volume control on it. It’s not good for us to shout at potential customers that’s not right – so thanks for that.