Speciality & Fine Food Fair 2010 – How Was It For You?

Speciality Bites with

Paul Hargreaves

Chief executive of Cotswold Fayre

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Well, it’s over for another year. Event organiser Fresh RM is claiming it was the best ever, with nearly 600 exhibitors.

Certainly the exhibitors’ drinks on the first evening was more crowded and noisy than I can remember! I have exhibited at this show from the beginning and so have eleven years of experience. As the show has become larger it has changed in character; I would say there isn’t quite the buzz that there used to be in the early years, but there has most definitely been an increase in professionalism.

When we first did the show in 2000 it was so small that Olympia allowed exhibitors to drive their vehicles into the hall and park next to their stand to unload. There are some disadvantages of the show getting larger – it certainly felt so after 90 minutes of wheeling trolleys from our stand to the van on Tuesday evening, and ruining one of my better shirts in the process!

One exhibitor had clearly read my blog last week and, despite the fact I was wandering around the hall just chatting and catching up with a colleague, sprinted across the hall and collared me because I had walked past his stand. I like that kind of commitment and dedication! We are now looking seriously at his products.

The pinnacle of the show, in many ways, is the Great Taste Awards on Monday night, to which we took a number of customers as guests last year. It’s a good night out, with great products from Fortnum & Masons, a superb venue and lots of people attending that I would count as friends, not just colleagues.

The only thing lacking for the second year running was actually being able to make out what was happening on the stage. I saw some TV screens with a voting system that looked like there had been another General Election that I hadn’t been aware of – with the red part in the lead, I thought for a minute there had been a labour landslide! Apparently the system had been explained whilst I was still downstairs tasting some of the winners.

Still, I, and many others around me, couldn’t hear much of what was being announced on the stage. The venue is great for the tasting part of the event, but isn’t acoustically suitable for the business end of the evening. Perhaps investing in some better sound equipment might be done for the third year if they continue in the same venue.

And the winner, I found out the next day, was a cob nut oil. I have been in the food industry for 11 years and have never heard of the product, and would not have a clue how to use it. It may be the most fantastic product in the UK – I hope to taste it soon – but the danger of having a product like that as a winner is that the awards may distance themselves from the general public. I don’t think the vast majority of people would, at present, buy the winning product.

Have a great week!