eat:Chipping Sodbury Food Festival
Broad Street, Chipping Sodbury
10am-4pm
A new food and drink market is launching in Chipping Sodbury this Summer. eat:Chipping Sodbury on Saturday 28 August (the bank holiday weekend) and is a one day celebration of local and regional food and drink, organised by multi-award winning eat:Festivals.
eat:Festivals are led by Bev and Sarah Milner Simonds – two women on a mission to reconnect residents with the productive landscape that surrounds them. The social enterprise started in 2012 in their hometown of Burnham-on-Sea and has grown steadily. They now host over 25 events in Somerset, Devon, South Gloucestershire and Dorset each year.
“We know that weekend shindigs, days out and socialising have all been turned on their heads over the past year with plans disrupted and many regular events cancelled. In 2021 we are hoping for the best, but ensuring our plans include a worst-case scenario. We managed to deliver 6 socially distanced and covid-secure events between lockdowns in 2020 and delivered 6 this spring. We have been thrilled with the support from local council officers and support services in planning a fresh series of adapted markets in 2021 – including this new one in Chipping Sodbury.
The High Street and Broad Street in Chipping Sodbury is magnificent and is the perfect backdrop to showcase the micro and small producers from across the region, as it has been for centuries as a market place. Covid restrictions meant many event organisers weren’t able to adapt their model to enable them to continue trading and this cut off a vital revenue stream for these family businesses. We have changed how we work and are thrilled to be creating a new event for Chipping Sodbury on 28 August.
This is a free one-day event with approximately 60 regional food and drink producers well-spaced out along the High Street and Broad Street, on the Pitchings, with some socially distanced entertainment. The whole market is in the open air and it will have measures in place to minimise the risk of COVID-19 transmission. We are asking visitors to keep local, plan their visit and abide by the latest government advice.
New towns, like Chipping Sodbury, are really important to our aims. We focus on producers who are based within 30 miles of our host towns, so when we see applications coming in from small businesses based outside our area, we want to create routes to market for them close to where they are.
Traders who had only just started out when the pandemic restrictions hit were some of the hardest hit by the lack of events, so we are launching a new support initiative, Start Out Strong [SOS], to help them.”
Local producers who are interested in trading at the event or businesses who want to be involved can get in touch with the event organisers via their website.