Abergavenny Food Festival 2012

This year's Abergavenny Food Festival was a big success.  With an amazing selection of chef demos, speakers and food based companies from around Britain and beyond, it was a weekend to remember.

Take a look at all our photos on The Abergavenny Food Festival Album 

Here are TSO's standouts for the weekend:

Best Demo

The Fabulous Baker Brothers

Brothers Tom and Henry are now filming their 2nd season of their successful show, and it is clear why.  Their personalities and humor just radiate off the stage throughout the demonstration.  The crowd participation with kneading the bread, singing of Unchained Melodies and a special way of measuring out flour made the demo beyond entertaining and these two a certain household name in the culinary world for many years to come.

Best Stand
hada del cafe
Martina truly is the Coffee Fairy, and her enthusiasm for all things wonderful shows in everything she does.  Her company was founded in 2007 from delicious coffee beans harvested in northern Nicaragua, but it is the inspiration behind the coffee that makes her story special. She raises money for better education and improving the community in the towns she works with.

The coffe doesn't fail on any level, winning Great Taste Awards in 2009 and now being carried in Harvey Nichols.  We wish her much success now and in the years to come!

Best Talk

The Food of Spain
Claudia Roden with Michael Jacobs

Claudia Roden talks to the Andalucian-based travel writer Michael Jacobs about her five year immersion in the regional cuisines of Spain which has produced yet another extraordinary volume in her chronicle of the food and peoples of the Mediterranean basin. Claudia Roden fascinating story fuses together food traditions with cultural heritage and history.  

Creating enticing food packaging copy

Effective packaging is the key to making your product stand out on the shelf. If your packaging competitive and the message is not presented in an effective way, sales are likely to go nowhere.

Package copy should be used to light up the product and let customers know what they will be missing out on if they don't buy it then and there. Customers want to know what the product is, how it works, and how they will either benefit from it or how the purchase will be beneficial. The package copy should create a sense of excitement for impulsive purchases and then justify the purchase through key facts.

Images, colours, graphics are all very important in terms of initially attracting customers to your product but it is vital for the copy to engage with them to keep them interested. In this way packaging can be seen as a great creative platform for writing, giving a chance to engage and entertain the audience. Copy should be relevant to your product as well as on target to the right audience with the right message; it should include a short and concise description of the product as well as its functional benefits.

However, it has also been argued that including a poem or short story, something that does not directly relate to your product, can cause an emotional connection between the shopper and your product. Research suggests that a positive emotional reaction to a package is more likely to result in a desire to engage with it. 

'Clean' designs are now key as the customers do not want to be oversold.  They want their information clear and simple without all the fluff.  

In summary there are four main points for effective packaging;

1. the packaging must be seen,
2. it must engage shoppers,
3. communicate key messages/point of difference,
4. and most importantly close the sale