Around 1,800 people attended Stornoway’s inaugural Hebridean Fine Food Festival at the weekend.
The town hall was constantly busy with islanders and visitors checking out the showcase
of local food, drink, and culture including master classes and demonstrations by
Gary MacLean Scotland's national chef (Winner of MasterChef), Chris Loye, Allan Macritchie
- The Niseach Chef, and Matteo Giovanazz of La Belana.
Organiser, Julie Sloan, project manager at Eat, Drink Hebrides, said: “Everyone had a fantastic day, great sales, lots of visitors through, and the demonstrations added a lot to the day.”
Nicola Loye of Harris based Flavor, said: “This was an amazing, successful day, with great footfall and sales. Its great to bring all the local businesses together and under the one roof.”
She added “there'll be chocolate making on Monday morning” as they sold out of most of their stock at the event.
Busy selling home made jams and baking was Calum Laing from the Blue Coop Honesty Shed in Point, who said: “Its been fantastic. We’ve sold around 80% of what we brought here. We didn’t expected it to be so busy. Its a great turnout and hasn’t been quiet at all during the day.”
Donald Steele of South Uist Distillers was exhibiting their four types of rums. Marketing to date has been strategically low key: “We're not pushing it anywhere else. There’ll come the point where we will but today was just about meeting other people and letting them know that we're about. It's definitely worth it, even just to say hello to people and we sold more bottles than I had expected.”
Exhibiting the Western Isles’ newest gin was Karen Ross who explained this was their first event since launching Stornoway Hebridean gin nine weeks ago. She set ambitions to sell five bottles on the day and was excited when customers snapped up over 40 bottles and many miniatures within a few hours.
Big crowds for Stornoway food festival
3 October 2024
