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Posts Tagged ‘Royal Welsh Show’

Smallholder Funding – Or Lack Of It

28 Oct

Regular followers of welshfoodbites might recall the furore when this year’s festival funding was allocated and the shock horror when we learnt that the Smallholder Show would no longer be funded as it didn’t fulfil Wag criteria that food must be the core activity.   

To quickly update you on the background Wag used to run the Food Hall and then asked Steve Shearman – Farmer’s Markets In Wales to run it on their behalf – which he did very successfully. But at this year’s food festival organisers meeting, which Mr Shearman was again invited to, that was the message he was given. Despite the fact that he’d already taken bookings, and after talking to some of the stand holders, he did the honourable thing and went ahead this year, although stand fees had a sizeable increased.

That you might think would be the end of another sad saga, but I decided to raise and Freedom Of Information Act, FOI question about how much money Wag put into Royal Welsh Show. These were the figures sent through:

Lease Costs for the Food Hall – all costs include vat      

2009 £70,645.64 Food Hall Hire for RWS & Winter Fair

2010 £65,403.32 RWS

2010 £19,975.00 Winter Fair

Event Build & Management Costs all costs  include vat

2009 RWS               £155,023.30

2009 Winter Fair £61,355.38

20101 RWS            £131,968.22

2010 Winter Fair £56,078.64

 

What I did find out and rather surprised me was that Smallholder was funded, not from the food festival budget but from ‘Promoting Welsh Food’ – Budget Expenditure Line. I have no idea what this budget is supposed to be for so I asked further questions:

  1. What was the total sum in this budget for 2008/9 2009/10 and 2010/11?
  2. Who received this funding in those three years and how much was given?
  3. How is this funding allocated?  

I thought these were reasonable questions and simple to answer, but dear readers, I was wrong. The answer I received from Wag is as follows:

‘I believe that your request is likely to be very time consuming to deal with. If I estimate that it will cost more than the appropriate established in the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 to consider your request, the regulations allow me to refuse to deal with it. The appropriate limit specified for central government is £600.00.  When calculating whether or not your requests exceeds the appropriate time limit, I am allowed to consider the time it is likely to take to establish if we hold the information, locate the information, retrieve the information and extract it. If these tasks are estimated to take more than 24 hours of working time, the limit will have been exceeded’.

As you might guess, I have no wish to pay £600.00 for information to what I believe are simple questions. But my fury is that money has been given out, but this Wag official would have to establish if Wag hold this information. Does anyone know why Wag shouldn’t have this financial information readily available? I’m hardly asking them to dig for records from the dim and distant past, am I?

 

My other query is why was Wag festival criteria applied to the Smallholder, when their funding was not coming out of the Food Festival Budget? Is that same criteria also applied somewhere in the ‘Promoting Welsh Food’ – Budget Expenditure Line rules? Is this how Wag can justify not funding the Smallholder this year?

 

I would sum this up as a can of worms which is proving very difficult and time-consuming to get the facts about…………….

 
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Royal Welsh Winter Fair

30 Sep

I’m getting quite a few complaints about the stand costs that the FFMDD are charging food producers this year for the Winter Fair. I’ve been told £505 + vat as against last year’s price of £405 + vat. If these figures are correct, what’s an extra £100 + vat? I’m sure if the FFMDD think at all about where the producers this extra money, it just seems they don’t care. – not their problem is it? Producers cannot reply on selling more to visitors who are more than well aware that they are struggling in the midst of a recession and have no choice but to watch their spending. Visitors will not have plenty of cash to spare and will certainly tempted to troll the Food Hall just to fill themselves and their children up with free samples, I can guarantee that! It’s not difficult to work out who’s living in a bubble, because it’s certainly not the food producers, is it?

Producers are now having to find an extra £50.00 for each day’s trading and still hope to make money, how they’ll do that is anyone’s guess. What’s the reason for this increase? It appears that FFMMD don’t feel they need to explain any decisions they make. This is getting more like a dictatorship than a dialogue with the producers.   

I think a stand at the Royal Welsh this year was £405 + vat for 4 days trading, so unless  the latest figures I have been given for the Winter Fair are wrong, I’m horrified that RWAS/FFMDD can justify such an increase to their Winter Fair stand prices.

I’ve just been on RWAS’s website and checked out prices in South Glamorgan Hall – which is for Agri Products and machinery. To take a stand there is £240.17 + vat per module, which is quite a difference from Food Hall stand prices. It appears that RWAS bows to the farmers and farming companies, but allows FFMDD to lumber the producers with an over-the-top increase in fees.

But fret not producers,Welsh Country, Best Of Welsh & Borders and welshfoodbites are here to help you and FFMDD are there to help you too!

 
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Cardigan ‘Local’ Food Festival

15 Aug

I’ve had a couple of calls in about Cardigan which ran on 6th August both muttering about having stands there from England. Apparently there were at least three of them, which brought one producer to ask me: “when is local food local?” 

Having English producers at Welsh food festivals has long been an issue, not just with me but with lots of producers too. When I’ve queried this, I’m told that as Wag funding is European, festivals cannot be restricted to Welsh producers only. You’ll see this very clearly if you attend the larger events such as Abergavenny and Cardiff. If this is the case my concerns are also with visitors. If they are foodies and are on holiday in Wales and they go to what they perceive as a Welsh Food Festival, I think they would expect to see just Welsh producers there, wouldn’t you? Actually I wonder if this was a question asked in last year’s food survey – have you travelled here looking for Welsh food or doesn’t it matter to you?

I’m not sure how many of our Welsh producers can afford the time and money to attend English food festivals, or for that matter if Westminster funds the English festivals as Wales does. Maybe that is a matter that needs looking at further. I do understand though that at a fairly small festival like Cardigan, producers keen to try and earn a living, that travelling from England appears to make this festival worthwhile.

At the Royal Welsh Show in July a Wag official told me that many food producers were doing well……………………….and although I suggested that a trip around the food hall might give a different view, I’m sure that my idea wasn’t taken up! From my chats with producers that are running various sizes of businesses, life on the circuit, whether it is festivals or farmers’ markets they are attending, trade is the toughest it has been for many, many years with many producers finding these avenues to market are no longer profitable. I’m not sure how you get festival, market organisers and Wag to take on board the difficult trading climate and re-look at how these markets are actually working. We need to find ways to improve these markets, ways to get some organisers to up their game and to give the producers the boost they desperately need. Improved promotion and marketing must be near the top of this ‘action list’.   

Having said that, I’m fed-up of attending both festivals and markets and talking to some ‘new’ producers that haven’t business cards or literature, no banners on their stand and seem to spend hours sat down, arms folded and looking totally bored!!!! I know it isn’t just me that wants to know more about new producers on the scene, but if I’d been from a major food chain or just a potential customer wanting mail order, I would not have been impressed by some of them.           

Sorry not to have visited Cardigan, but I was booked elsewhere. But it was very much a non-Welsh food weekend for me for a change and Katherine Jenkins was brilliant!!!  

 

 
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Food Hall At Royal Welsh

12 Jul

I have just received a press release from the Welsh Government showing which food producers are going to be in Food Hall this year. Fifty producers are listed, but of these only 26 appear to be True Taste winners. True Taste winners is he Welsh Government’s top selection criteria, followed by products must be made in Wales and raw materials are primary agricultural produce.

The press release doesn’t say that the Welsh Government is disappointed that they’ve only attracted 26 True Taste winners, but I think if I was them I would be. True Taste (TT) is being pushed and promoted by Wag as their ‘brand’. They have invested or wasted, depending on your view of course, oodles and oodles of cash on their ‘brand’. But it’s puzzling as to why Wag can’t fill the Food Hall with TT winners, for what many view as the highlight of the Welsh year – The Royal Welsh Show.

Is the high cost of the RWAS that’s the main reason? Or is something else going on that I don’t know about? If you can shed any light on this please let me know.

 
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Food At The Royal Welsh

06 Jul

Wales’ agricultural show is nearly upon us and hopefully the weather will be kinder than it has been over the last few years. Welsh Country’s focus of course will be mainly on food with two areas for us to cover, the Food Hall, which is run through the Welsh Government and the Farmers Market In Wales area, under the direction of Steve Shearman.

The producers that are in the Food Hall will be counting on lots of people through obviously, but also that the layout that will allow visitors the chance to browse and purchase at their leisure. Last year’s layout simply didn’t work and the crowds were so huge that is was verging on dangerous as people in wheelchairs and those with buggies were literally carried along with the flow, but struggled to even see the stands properly,let alone purchase. I hope lessons have been learnt by the organisers and that they realise how important this event is to our producers. Stand prices are very expensive in the Food Hall and a producer told me at the weekend that after paying in full, they’d be pestered for additional payments for electric, so unsure what had gone wrong there. But what I did find disappointing is that traders are charged £48.00 per night to park their caravans. It’s some time since I was in a caravan doing a tradestand, but usually we got it free or at the most a minimal charge. I haven’t a clue what today’s standard rate is for a caravan pitch but around £6.00 – £10.00 per night was the norm. In some ways I can understand private accommodation providers trying to make the most money possible during the RAWS week, but what I find upsetting is that this is caravan charge is being made by the RWAS. If RWAS are able to charge visitors £48.00 a night, fair enough, I understand that they have to make money. But what I don’t like is it feels like RWAS attitude is if you want to be here that’s what you must pay, take it our leave it. But I do think it would be a great gesture if RWAS would look again at traders’ caravan charges and make them more reasonable. The trader I was speaking to is paying out over £1,000 for a stand in the Food Hall, excluding samples, so I can only hope that this year the Food Hall does work well and the producers have a busy and profitable show – they certainly need it.

Head for Stand A42 to find the Farmers’ Markets in Wales Catering Concession, I’m really looking forward to seeing how this area looks and works. The market always has a great vibe about it. There’s nothing better than seeing families declining the vast array of fast-food that’s always on offer and enjoying good local food and drink with lots of taste and flavour – coming literally from Welsh forks in the ground to the fork on your plate at the Royal Welsh Show. It will be the ultimate fork to fork experience.

 
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Has Newport Found A Loophole To Get Festival Funding?

21 Jun

This year Newport are running a food festival for what I understand is the first time and are receiving financial support of £15,171k  from Wag. As Newport have asked for more than £10k, that means they’ve had to supply Wag with a business plan for the event, but with the Council’s financial department to hand, this is not proved a deterrent to Newport as it has to other festivals. Newport takes place on 28/29th October, partly clashing with Cowbridge, with Newport having the advantage of free entry on both days apart from having some ticketed activity.     

I’ve been onto Newport Food Festival website today, which is actually Newport City Council website.  Then I got rather confused as to whether this festival is a stand alone event or not. It appears to be running through the tail end of Newport Festival which is launched on 24th July. Our office has rung Newport Council and been told it’s part of the Newport Festival, but under Wag’s 2011 criteria, ‘food activity must be the core’. Well as we;ve been  told it’s part of the Newport Festival, how can food be the core activity?  Another interesting fact to throw into this mix is that the Newport Food Festival website url is owned by Miller Research. Regular readers will be aware that Miller Research from Abergavenny were asked by Wag to do an analysis of all the food festivals they funded last year……………..   

Regular readers will also know how angry I am that Smallholder was thrust into turmoil when Wag refused to fund them this year. Bearing in mind that the Smallholder was originally run by Wag themselves. No funding caused huge problems for everyone, plus gave no alternative but to have increased tradestand prices, just because Wag stuck to their criteria – well in this instance they did. The Royal Welsh and the Winter Fair will not have this problem as both these events are conveniently funded by Wag out of a different Wag budget!!

I have never had so many calls and emails about matters festival related as I have this year. Plus I have no idea at all why Wag needs to make life in the food sector more complicated that it is. When Wag have their usual Food Festival Organisers meeting in February, why couldn’t all these issues have been sorted out there and then? Why am I now in a situation where I’m being asked questions that I have no answers for? If I give people what should be the ‘easy’ solution of ringing Wag and talking to Jon Parker, who I think is still responsible for food festivals, for some reason that never appears to be a favourable option, I wonder why…………………………….

If you have any more news or insights into this situation, then please help me out and let me know. I just don’t understand how this can have happened.

 
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Food Festivals Get Into Full Swing

15 Jun

We’re now in the midst of the busiest time in the WAG food festival supported calendar. But sadly the discord behind the scenes continues. I’ve already posted on the demise of Llanwrtyd Wells, Smallholder and Aberystwyth. Llanwrtyd couldn’t have it’s funding confirmed and as it’s an April festival, they decided not to run this year. Smallholder lost it’s funding because being at the Royal Welsh Showground, food was not the core activity.  Aberystwyth has lost funding for its Xmas Fair, although they are appealing Wag’s decision. News has also come through to me that Frenni in Crymch has fallen foul of the Wag’s ‘no craft stall rule’ so they are not running this year, whilst other festivals have been told, no craft or no funding.

Wag state that all food events they support ‘must have food as the core.’ Festivals with less than 20 producers exhibiting are not eligible for support. If the festival fails to attract 20 producers, funding may be reduced or withdrawn. Even if there are twenty food producers the number of other exhibitors e.g. craft, community will be taken into account when assessing an application’.

A review team considers each application but I have no idea who the review team consists of. Then a panel drawn from the Food Drink Advisory Partnership will make the final decision. 

Apparently the ‘no craft – no funding’ has come from the review of all the festivals Wag funded last year that was undertaken by Miller Research from Abergavenny. I have noted the comments made by some on welshfoodbites relating to the fact that Abergavenny’s funding remains the same as last year, so no cuts or reduction there, despite the fact that Wag’s objective was that food festivals should aim to be self-funding. Wag will consider ‘size of financial contribution from other (non-WAG) partners and direct contributions from festival resources’. Your guess will be as good as mine as to what this means in the world of Wag! I asked for a copy of Miller Research report in March, but have yet to receive it, I’m told it will arrive soon.  Which is rather strange as I’ve spoken to quite a few organisers who had their individual reports months ago. I’m sure it will make interesting reading, whether I’ll agree with the content remains to be seen………………………………..  

It’s very disappointing that this year Wag are only able to support 31 festivals instead of 56 festivals, as last year. Of course we are all aware that budgets have been slashed, but the question is now, has Wag made best use of the funding they have received? Is it better to keep supporting to the same level our 3 biggest festivals, namely, Abergavenny, Cardiff and Conwy, to the tune of £130,900, at the expense of many of our smaller events?    

Taken from a Wag Press Release:

The 31 festivals – large and small – feature a wide range of products and are an important showcase for producers and Welsh produce among who are many Wales the True Taste Food and Drink Awards winners. Said Carwyn Jones, First Minister of Wales, “I am delighted the Welsh Assembly Government has been able to continue to support food and drink festivals across Wales. During 2011/12 the festivals will collectively receive £368,521.36 in assistance, signifying their importance to the economy and Wales’ reputation as a producer of high quality and diverse food and drink.

Another concern is that I don’t know which Wag person/s are visiting all their supported festivals this year - does anyone know? But I’m not impressed seeing Wag officials scurrying around an event 30 mins after it’s opened and hardly talking to anyone. I just can’t see the point. How can you get a true impression of an event with that time-scale and attitude? Visits must be made later in the day, or on the 2nd day of a two-day festival, they must talk to stall holders, organisers, vistors and volunteers too. That’s how to get feedback, but maybe producers wouldn’t be honest with Wag. That could be a problem. But it’s so important that each festival is still visited by someone and feedback given, if not how are these events going to improve and grow? The most important and relevant point is how do we know that value for money is being achieved?

 
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Success For Welsh Food At Smallholder

23 May

Congratualtions to Steve Shearman from Farmer’s Markets in Wales, who put on a great show in the old Food Hall at the Smallholder show this weekend. As already posted, I had expected to find the producers in the new Food Hall, but was relieved to find that sector busy and some relatively producers on Sunday when I visited.

What really made me very angry was the fact that this event received no funding from the WAG, the Welsh Assembly Government.  I’ve no idea who told me, but I knew that Steve attended the festival organisers meeting in February, but I couldn’t work out why. The funding for this event has not, to my knowledge, ever come from Wag’s festival funded budget.  If I’m wrong, then it’s been left of the list I have received from Wag for the last four years. So as this funding has always come from another budget, which budget was it from? My next question is why has this funding been withdrawn and who made that decision?

I’m not sure whether you would label this event as a Food Festival or a Farmer’s Market, but the label is irrelevant. What is relevant and is very important, is that thisevent was actually a celebration of Welsh food at its best and surely this is what Wag (Food) should be promoting.  This year Wag’s criteria for festivals they are supporting is that they ‘will have food activity as the core. Therefore events such as Agricultural Shows with a food hall or events that use a food hall as an additional attraction will not normally be eligible’. What normally be eligible means must qualify as ‘Wag speak’ which makes us none the wiser…………….so can anyone clarify that statement please. I feel that maybe it means that Wag will continue to do as is pleases, regradless of the consequences.

As an example of my confusion, can I remind you that I attended Saundersfoot in March this year and counted 18 food stands, plus a cookery demo area and 9 craft stands. This festival got funding again this year, around £8k, but according to Wag they should have had 20 food producers. Did anyone attned from Wag and if so does that mean this funding is now reduced? Saundersfoot have also been awarded funding for 2012 but with a lesser amount of £5,006.35.

But back to the Smallholder event which had over 40 of our best producers on show, got no financial support at all, due to Wag’s change of criteria. Wag’s other big push as far as food festivals are concerned, is that huge prominence is made of True Taste Food and Drink Awards winners. I won’t bore you again with my views on True Taste, but check out my post on 22nd November and let me know what you think. The financial headache that no funding caused this event meant that stand prices had to be doubled, bad news for the producers in this economic climate, but there was absolutely no choice if this was to go ahead. I cannot imagine the Smallholder without Steve Shearman’s market and our offering to our visitors is bog-standard fast food vans with little if any local  food.

This event was a success despite Wag’s childish behavouir, they even had a covered area on one side where Steve had put seating so people could enjoy some great coffee, food, ice-cream and a chance to rest and chat with family and friends.

Carwyn Jones, our First Minister says, “I am delighted the Welsh Assembly Government has been able to continue to support food and drink festivals across Wales.”

Well Mr Jones and Wag, I’m not happy that I don’t understand what has happened to the Smallholder funding and why Wag (Food) don’t put their onus on Welsh food first and True Taste second – if you can improve the standard and variety of local producers you’ll of course improve the entries for the True Taste. Please explain to me why this event had to run without financial support from Wag bearing in mind RWAS say 26,026 attended over the two days. This is yet another instance where Wag need to wake-up and understand what is actually happening in Wales with our food producers.

 
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Royal Welsh Show – Official Opening of New Food Hall

21 Jul

 Royal Welsh Show – Monday

I had a reasonably early start to my day, signing in to the Press Office just after 7.30. Once there I was greeted with a large sign ‘MacDonalds Press Room, yes I was in the Royal Welsh Showground, but I failed to understand the Welsh connection with MacDonalds, apart from I guess that they paid handsomely for being in the Press Office. Anyway their vending machine, which is what I took their sponsorship as, allowed me to have PG Tips tea, despite the fact that Welsh Brew Tea – which has a far superior flavour and they were right here as always on the showground. I’m on my soapbox already, wondering is anyone responsible for trying to get companies working together. Whoever negotiated the deal with MacDonalds for the Press Room, which has been running for a year or so, can surely suggest, if not state that Welsh Brew tea should be used – and that’s without pushing the case for coffee!  

I have been intrigued to see the much heralded food hall. First sights were good with Welsh slate on the roof, although I had been told that Spanish slate was originally put up and had to be taken down! Rural Affairs Minister Elin Jones performed the opening ceremony and announced a new deal between the Welsh Assembly Government and the Royal Welsh Agricultural Society to manage the £1.6m food hall. The financial support for the food hall will amount to nearly £300,000 over the three years. I’ve just double-checked with WAG press office and this means RWAS will be paid 100k per year for two events, the RWAS and the Winter Fair. I could be wrong, but I thought the payment WAG made for the old food hall £50,000 – so lucky RWAS to be able to win at the budget cut game.

The new food hall has space for 56 food and drink companies showcasing their products, compared to 44 in the old hall. On entering the hall I was certain I’d see a host of happy smiling, busy producers, but sadly not. The first aisle I walked down the stands looked out onto -a white breeze block wall, no food photography adorning the walls, or a map to help visitors find the stands, just a clinical white breeze block wall – hardly beautiful. The narrow aisles caused difficulties for those with buggies, wheelchairs and hopeless to cope with large numbers of people either. I asked a producer down this aisle run if they had a choice where they were sited, but was told absolutely not, and no point complaining to the ‘powers-that-be’ as their company would be blackballed. WAG tells me balckballing never happnes, but if it did there is an official procedure to follow…………………..

However in the entrance hall, there were three stands sited there, which were the Food Centres, True Taste and a Partners Stand, which included Fork2Fork and Pembrokeshire Direct. Were these stands the same price as the others, more expensive or ‘no payment required?’ Who knows, but I guess they were all pleased with their siting!

In the three hours it took me to get around the food hall, the complaints never stopped. Here’s just a selection:        

The ‘stowage’ areas for traders to store their chilled/ambient goods are brilliant if an active flow of cold air was provided, but these rooms are ambient; with traders expected to provide their own chilled storage, as required. 

Some traders turned up on Sunday only to discover they had to provide their own chillers/freezers for stowed produce, this proved an unanticipated & worrying problem for them – I have no idea what went wrong there or who was at fault, but it was not a good start for some.   

 For producers of ambient foods such as cakes, chocolate etc, their ‘challenge’ was to prevent product degradation. However instead of the ambient storage they were originally assured would be there, they found themselves stockpiling produce in an enclosed space; competing with the additional heat produced by a myriad of unwelcomed fridges & freezers.

The air-conditioning packed up on Monday and I heard many visitors entering the food hall, found it too hot and said “let’s just leave!” Is this what food producers had paid their hard-earned cash for? Goodness me, we weren’t even in the middle of a heat wave.

There are three stands in prime spots in the entrance hall and according to the site map WAG have given me, one of these stands is for Partners. I’m not sure what ‘partner’ means in WAG speak, but Pembrokeshire Direct and Fork2Fork are both such partners. Now maybe as a producer I’m not uptodate but I thought that WAG had funding both these projects, am I wrong on that? But if I’m right, why should both these paid for ‘partners’ get these good sites? Have they paid the same price as me for their stands?       

There was no provision of a Demo Kitchen which is always a popular attraction. I know this is part of the stipulation from WAG for any supported Food Festival, but maybe the RWAS is not classed as a festival, just a showcase to be heavily supported by WAG.

Any visitor wanting to visit the food hall for lunch, then had to tackle the problem of where to eat their purchases. There was no seating at all provided, even on the small patio area down one long side. The people had to resort to sitting on the stone walls, floors or grass and with children & buggies or the elderly, this is really not on. 

 Now if I was charged building  an igloo and was not an igloo expert, what would I do? Yes, you’ve got it, ask an Eskimo. Now the next tough question, if my brief was to build a food hall, what I’d be sure to do is ask producers for their input!!! They are the people that pay their hard earned money for a stand, with a view to making a profit. They are the front line of promotion for Welsh artisan produce and have a vested interest in the food hall being a tremendous success. They could provide invaluable advice on key areas such as the layout of stands and the buying and browsing behaviour of consumers, they know just how few seconds they have to try and ‘catch’ potential customers as they walk by. Why can’t anyone get the simple message that this is their livelihood? 

Why is access so difficult with few doors at the end of the hall that producers have to use to set-up and break-down? I can only guess how long it will take them to get out of there on Thursday night when they are not allowed to use the front and side doors to ease what is bound to be a congested area.

Why were the public allowed in on Sunday when traders were trying to set up?

Traders tell me that they have been charged for 4m frontage and been allocated just  3m, bearing in mind that there has to be an opening for the traders to get in and out from their stands.  So what’s happening here? Three metres frontage is not much considering many producers have quite a few lines and it does reduce the time potential purchasers walking past have time to glance at your wares. Add to this that the layout is in long lines, running from one end to the other. This means if the main aisle is busy, which they invariably were, people couldn’t turn away to find some space, you were just carried along in a body of people, struggling to see any stands at all. I was asked why the layout wasn’t done in blocks, which was funny in a way, because if ‘they’ couldn’t ask the producers what they wanted, ‘they’d’ hardly ask for my input, would they?  But still on layout, why was there a mobile ice-cream van, not Welsh either, just outside the food hall? Plus why were all the ice cream, meat, drink, cheese stands all placed together? Why couldn’t the stands have been spread out to encourage visitors to wander about? Instead of encouraging consumers to sample and purchase the produce on offer and learn more about artisan produce, the scenes were  reminiscent of a supermarket on Christmas Eve, people desperate to get round and get out quickly. I’d have hoped to see a great ambience and producers able to talk about their wares instead of watching a sea of harassed visitors and unhappy producers. Apparently in the past the food hall was laid out in counties which meant visitors could take a food tour of Wales, but no, put producers together selling the same product, must make sense to someone, but not to me.      

They new layout had sinks placed between two stalls which apparently the Environmental Health Office, the EHO, have apparently so far ignored. I didn’t think sinks should be shared by different companies, because what aboyut handwashing? Now who allowed that to happen?   

Stubbins Marketing, where there selling tomoatoes. They are a multi-million pound company, with a Head Office in Waltham Cross and nurseries in Essex, Cambridgeshire and Cardiff. Another producer, who thought their tomatoes tasted delicious, wanted to purchase them for his products, but was told if he wanted them, he’d to go to ASDA. What a great way for Welsh traders to develop business relationships with each other. I’ve been told that Stubbins have had plenty of funding from WAG for their Cardiff operation, but it’s not the first time I have had complaints that getting Welsh tomatoes is impossible for our food suppliers and that we no longer have a thriving tomato market in Pembrokeshire.

Now back to basics, the loo facilities and in particular the ladies. One female trader was incensed that not only were there not many ladies loos, there were no lidded bins in the ladies or any machines available to purchase feminine hygiene requirements. With a new build, is this really up to standard? Or if in theory it is then RWAS and WAG standards are far too low.  

Many of the problems brought to my attention can obviously be classed as teething problems, such as the lights which kept failing and the aircon, but many are rather more serious and do need urgent attention. There’s the opportunity for the producers to move to Glamorgan Hall, an old building but is laid out much better. I can only suggest that WAG starts asking questions, listens to the answers and makes changes. Otherwise as one producer said to me it might just be renamed as the ‘Food Hall Millennium Dome.’

HCC

Still on food onto HCC stand where I saw a party of Chinese who had been invited, along with a Portuguese group both groups – all looking to take on our Welsh meat and lamb. Great news, but if only that didn’t appear to be at the loss of many outlets and endusers here in Wales that struggle to get easy access to our wonderful meat. I know export markets are vital and HCC I’m sure will enjoy sending delegations out to these places, but from what I am told you are not putting your home market first.  

Farmers Market

I’m failing with trying to make changes here, no-one wants to listen. I’m fobbed off with the no-money-available scenario, which is a good excuse, but we all know it doesn’t apply to every aspect of food. If WAG can find the money to support the Food Hall, why can’t they find the money to help provide the market with a decent tent, some tables and chairs? Allow them to also fly the Welsh flag professionally and give visitors not only the chance to buy decent Welsh food on the show ground, but to be able to take the time to sit down and enjoy it. It’s hardly that difficult to achieve. ……………………….

In business, as in life ,communication is the key, if only we could get the message through that it is good to talk and even more essential to listen………………………………………………….

For more foodie news visit :www.welshcountry.co.uk or see our latest issue.

 
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