Foodpreneur Festival 2015: The competition
Pssst: looking for Foodpreneur Festival 2017? Entries are now open - find out more!
We’re celebrating Britain’s awesome food and drink businesses again with Foodpreneur Festival 2015 – and this time it’s bigger, better, and tastier.
The startup scene is booming, from London to Bristol through Manchester and Newcastle – and at the heart of this explosion of brilliant British food start-ups are great food and drink businesses. From street-food stalls to pop-up coffee shops, boutique restaurants and young brands lining the shelves of forward-thinking supermarkets, British culinary entrepreneurs are the leading the way for new businesses.
We’re bringing them all together in London on the 2nd October 2015 in a one-day extravaganza that will see the UK’s leading food and drink entrepreneurs and experts share advice on how others can grow their brands and get started. If you want to launch or grow a food business – this day is for you. Grab a ticket now.
As part of this, we’re also launching our annual search for Britain’s best food and drink businesses. This is your chance to get your business in front of a panel of top entrepreneurs, including Paul Lindley, founder of Ella’s Kitchen, and Sir Richard Branson himself. You have one week only to throw your hat into the ring - enter now.
This competition is an amazing opportunity for business owners to showcase their products to some of the most important foodies in the country. There are two categories for you to enter, and they are:
Retail
Four winners will receive the chance to pitch for an incredible six-month trial distribution and promotion in U.S chain store Target: a company with reach across the U.S and Canada that generated $72.5 billion worth of sales during 2014. This trial will take place across 300 stores, with successful products then being rolled out to all 2000 stores. The project is supported by Exporting is GREAT: the UK government’s ambitious new campaign, which aims to inspire 100,000 new businesses to export by 2020.
Street Food (and drink)
Street food and drink pop-ups are the poster kids for the foodie revolution. They’ve spearheaded the movement, and this is our category to celebrate them. Do you pitch up in street food markets? Trundle around in a van selling unique and delicious food or keep people refreshed with awesome cocktails or smoothies? This category is for you.
One startup will receive a week's worth of rent-free pop-up space at Old Street Station, courtesy of Appear Here. This is a unique opportunity to get your business in front of a LOT of Zone One commuters every day for a week. Old Street Station sees a footfall of about 70,000 commuters a day, and with its location within buzzing Shoreditch and Silicon Roundabout it's perfectly poised to help drum up attention for your startup and get you onto peoples' radars.
One startup will also win a rent-free pitch at Urban Food Fest in Shoreditch for three months (Saturdays only). Rapidly establishing itself as one of the most exciting street food festivals around, Urban Food Fest takes place every Saturday in the heart of Shoreditch. With Boxpark and Brick Lane nearby, it's perfectly placed to catch hungry weekend wanderers, bringing together good drinks, excellent food, and live music.
You have until 5pm on September 16th – quick, it’s only open for one week! Enter here.
If you don’t have your own food business there will be plenty of opportunity to get involved. Just tweet us your thoughts and photos on the hashtag #VirginFoodFest – to start off we want people to tell us the best food or drink startup they’ve ever tasted using #VirginFoodFest. Don’t be shy!
