Tag Archives: event management

Sweet plans for town’s annual food festival

Plans are well underway for this year’s Accrington Food Festival – and this year’s event looks set to be sweeter than ever.

Formerly known as Lancashire Food Festival, this year the newly rebranded Accrington Food and Drink Festival will be a one-day event designed to showcase the area’s best food and drink.

Supporting farmers and independent traders, the festival – now in its 18th year – will entice hungry crowds in with a host of culinary surprises, from freshly made pies and black puddings to healthy juices and colourful cakes.

This year, Hyndburn Leisure has appointed marketing company Scott Dawson Advertising to organise the annual food festival on a three-year contract to turn it into a sustainable event. Work already completed by SDA has included the design of a brand new logo to launch this year’s event.

Managing director Murray Dawson said: “We’re proud to be the driving force behind this year’s Accrington Food Festival – it’s going to be bigger and better than ever. We’ve worked hard for many years to win this contract and we’re giving it our all to make it a wonderful event for everyone.”

SDA hopes to unite all of the town’s independent retailers, bars, restaurants, cafes, pubs and street food specialists to make it a celebration of Accrington.

Kirsty Lauder, who works for Accrington Market Online through SDA and is helping to organise the festival said: “Here in Hyndburn we have a population of 87,000 and we’ve set out with big goals to attract more than 4,000 people to this year’s food festival.

“We know everything that’s great about Accrington and the wider area – there is just so much fantastic produce available so it’s our job to handpick the very best and show it off. We have an enormous passion for shopping local and hopefully it will be infectious!

Organisers say the decision to pack all of the activity into a single day, Saturday 6 June, rather than running the festival across an entire weekend was designed to make sure visitors, exhibitors and sponsors all get the most from the event.

Last year celebrated TV cook and Sunday Times magazine columnist Gizzi Erskine was the special guest at the food festival – watch her talking about Accrington here:

It’s not too late to get involved – limited spaces are still available for exhibitors and sponsors. Contact sue@scottdawson.co.uk, call 01282 426 846 or visit www.accringtonfoodfestival.co.uk for more information and follow @AccringtonFood on Twitter for the latest news.