In an open letter to the Isle of Man Government’s Minister for the Environment, Food and Agriculture Clare Barber, the owner of Peel’s Sugar and Spice Bakery Helen Furner laments the loss of the Isle of Man Food and Drink Festival and explains the impact it will have on Manx producers...

I wish to write to you regarding the extremely disappointing decision to cancel this year’s Food and Drink Festival.

I first attended as a Manx food producer in 2019, and what a wonderful first event it was.

As I was in the early stages of my business, it was a huge, yet delightful, shock for me to receive third place in the Best Stand award.

I loved the atmosphere, the opportunity to collaborate with other small businesses, meeting with customers and discussing their love of local produce, and the opportunities that arose for me as a new local business.

Fast forward to now, my business has changed in several ways, but the core values still remain – producing bakes full of local produce (I only ever use Laxey Flour, Creamery butter and cream, and Gellings Eggs), which makes me stand out from competitors who bake similar products.

I believe that my choice of using local produce, along with the other high-quality ingredients I put in my bakes, makes my produce stand out above the rest.

In my nearly six years of trading, the Food and Drink Festival has always remained my favourite market/festival, so you can imagine my utter distaste at receiving the email a few days ago from Chris Kneale, outlining the cancellation of this year’s event and how the department plans to move forward.

Quite honestly, I was stunned.

I’d like to go through each point raised in the email [sent to traders informing them of the festival will not be going ahead this year] to explain how this does NOT support my business moving forward:

Firstly, there will be an increased presence from the Department of Environment, Food, and Agriculture (DEFA) at our two major events: the Southern Agricultural Show on July 27 and 28 and the Royal Manx Agricultural Show on August 9 and 10. We hope that you will partake in exhibiting at the DEFA Manx Produce Marquee at these upcoming shows.

In what way will there be an increased presence from DEFA, and how is this going to replace the Food and Drink Festival?

I attended the Southern Show last year, which was enjoyable but not as prolific for my business in terms of monetary value or further opportunities.

I am attending this year again, but due to having a young family and shuffling work commitments around their needs, I am unable to attend the Royal Show as I cannot prepare for such large events during school holidays.

Therefore, I cannot replace the losses from the Food and Drink Festival by attending the Royal.

We are also organizing a "Meet the Buyer" event provisionally scheduled for September 23. This event will provide food businesses with the opportunity to showcase their products to both local and off-Island food buyers. We anticipate a diverse blend of representatives from the retail, wholesale, and hospitality businesses to participate.

This tells me that you are pushing to promote the exportation of Manx produce, which in itself is a good thing but doesn’t help me.

I am a baker, and by their nature, baked products do not last long, nor should they have a long shelf life unless they are packed full of preservatives.

Exporting is just not viable for my business.

For a business like mine, the more produce I can sell directly to the customer, the better – baking is a tough job with low-profit margins, so really, I need more opportunities to be able to sell directly to the customer.

I will be losing around £2.5k of revenue from there being no Food and Drink Festival this year, and that is just sales from the show alone – nevermind lost opportunities from potential discussions with local buyers and businesses looking for baked goods for their workplace.

I am now going to have to find other opportunities to try and replace this loss.

At this point, I’m panicking about what to do.

Let’s also add how anxiety-inducing this email has been; lack of sleep and feeling nauseous have been well-present since the receipt of your plans.

Furthermore, we have secured the Comis Hotel for a sector update on the evening of November 20, where we will offer an update one year on from our last gathering. This event serves not only to inform you of progress but to listen to your feedback as well.

This will not help me replace £2.5k of lost revenue.

Our Food and Drink team is diligently working on an enhanced guide to Isle of Man food and drink, aligning it with our website to serve as a prime showcase for Manx produce. DEFA is collaborating closely with the Department for Enterprise (DfE) to explore promotional opportunities for Manx food.

Again, I feel like this is to promote the exportation of Manx food.

What will this ‘enhanced guide’ do on-island that the Food and Drink Festival isn’t already doing?

Furthermore, I expect that the Food and Drink Festival has been canceled as a cost-cutting exercise, but has the department not considered how the lost revenue from all the producers attending the event will be missed due to the multiplier effect? This seems terribly short-sighted.

I understand that for some producers, exporting their product is a possibility, but the overwhelming majority of locally produced foodstuffs come from small suppliers such as myself.

We don’t have the funding or the manpower to facilitate the requirements from off-island food buyers to get a product on shelves across.

This is just a pipe dream.

People like myself, who have very few workers in the background (namely family members!) supporting the production of my bakes, need events such as the Food and Drink Festival to ensure we can continue to shine a light on promoting locally made food using local produce, because where else can we really highlight the best that Manx has to offer in one setting?

I suspect you will say the agricultural shows, but these aren’t for everyone.

Not everyone wants to traipse around a field with tractors and cows milling around, nor is it terribly accessible for those with mobility issues.

There are many other cities and towns around the UK that have their own Food and Drink Festivals (Shrewsbury, Leicester, Edinburgh, Bolton, Harrogate, and St. Ives, to name but a few) and to cancel a nationwide festival here just seems a totally backwards step.

FOODIE’S MARKET

I should also like to point out, on a separate matter, how disappointed the Foodies Market was as a collective when your planning department decided not to allow us to proceed with our market on the St. Ninian’s site over TT.

This would have been a fabulous opportunity to celebrate local food and would have been a fantastic bolster to our market season, while significantly putting money in the government coffers through sales.

Our plan to showcase Manx produce to the TT goers with local music artists and a relaxed vibe was clearly misunderstood by the residents in the surrounding area.

Our aim was to be an alternative to the Grandstand for those who wished to have a real taste of local produce – serving to those already there, not adding to the traffic and creating further car parking issues.

I understand there were also some concerns from planning surrounding the potential upset which could be caused to those who were paying to sell at the Grandstand.

May I ask how many of these businesses were local?

Because I know a significant proportion came from the UK.

I’d love to know how many of those businesses were buying produce from local suppliers.

I think you know as well as I do that they will have been bringing product over with them where possible, to keep their costs as low as possible.

So although you might have made a chunk of money from them hiring their spot, there’s no multiplier helping us on-island.

By the by, the Foodies Market collaborative were kindly offered some space by Castletown and Port Erin Commissioners, but the whole market fell flat.

Despite our best efforts to advertise given the ridiculously short timeframe in which we had to sort this out, the sites were too out of the way for passers-by and some of our collective did not find the sites suitable for their needs/food trucks.

Added with the low morale, some just chose not to attend.

Our sales were very poor, along with everyone else’s.

It was a hugely disappointing TT – had it been good, perhaps we could have accepted the Food and Drink Festival being canceled, but it is soul-destroying to have the same department seemingly not supporting the very small businesses who are already finding it hard enough to stay afloat with huge fuel and ingredient cost increases.

Have you seen how much chocolate has increased this past year?

I understand you have other ideas in the pipeline, but we need to organize our diaries well in advance to ensure we have appropriate stock and supplies for events, and ensure we aren’t clashing with other private events.

How long will we be waiting to hear of these future plans?

I feel for the farmers and others who are growing and preparing for events such as this, who will now end up with a load of products they can't shift!

I urge you to reconsider this very poor decision, not only for the good of our customers who look forward to attending the event and ourselves being able to enjoy success at the festival but mainly for the good of the island, which deserves to enjoy a plethora of local producers and delicious food and drink for years to come.

I fear that if things continue the way they are, many of us shall fall by the wayside and it will become too difficult to compete against the likes of Tesco.

Allow us to ‘flourish’ once more.