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Food festival gives a taste of Hayling
Often maligned as a sleepy suburb of Havant, Hayling Island is not known as a hub for enterprise.
But the island's business community clubbed together to raise its profile with a celebratory, local-themed event.
Thousands of visitors flocked to the island at the weekend for its first food festival, following in the footsteps of mini-festivals such as Love Albert Road Day and the Emsworth and Southsea food festivals.
The event saw big names such as Magners Cider set up alongside over 150 exhibitors, including Hampshire producers at the 38-acre Mill Rythe holiday camp.
The flavoursome fete was organised in a bid to help the island shed its dour reputation – showcasing the island to new visitors, and bringing a two-day injection of trade for businesses.
Before the event, organiser John Dyer, director of printing firm Harbour Graphics, told BusinessWeek he thought about 250,000 would change hands over the two-day festival, and had been given estimates of up to 40,000 visitors.
Billed as a 'food, drink and lifestyle' festival, it offered everything from gourmet-stuffed olives to doughnuts, and specialist cheeses to hotdogs by day, and featured a 20-per-head concert on the Saturday night, rounded off with a fireworks display.
The festival was a big personal investment, and carried a huge amount of risk for the businessman – 'It has to work, put it that way,' he said in the run-up.
In the event, actual crowd numbers were a modest 5,000, and trade was lower than anticipated.
On Saturday afternoon, publicans and local residents said they had no idea a festival was taking place.
Festival participants did manage to cover their costs, and said lessons had been learnt for next year – when Mr Dyer intends to run it again, turning it into an annual fixture.
He said: 'It went well; from an operations and logistical point of view it was smooth. We didn't have the crowds we expected, but you can't gauge that, we just went on advice given.
'We did have a lot of funding commitments, and didn't actually lose money. We covered our costs, and for an inaugural event, that's pretty good. You have to think of the event as a business, and if any businesses cover their costs in their first year, they practically deserve an award. If we had three people turn up, we'd be asking what went wrong.'
But with communities from Southsea to Emsworth hosting mini-festivals to encourage a sense of local business identity, how effective are these events in promoting commerce?
Samantha Fay, Southsea town centre manager, is a keen enthusiast of using them as a way to counter the 'stay-at-home' attitude of many consumers.
She was key organiser of the Southsea Food Festival, which drew around 25,000 people to 120 stalls at Palmerston Road in May.
She said: 'We host these events to increase general footfall, but also to increase overall interest in the area. Businesses have to keep reinventing themselves, and it's the same for a town centre.
'These days shoppers demand so much more – better customer service, and more choice, and city centres have to get ways to get people away from shopping at home online.'
Mr Dyer remains an optimist. 'What I'd do differently is let people know it's happening a lot earlier,' he said. 'And maybe move elsewhere on the island.
'As for raising the profile of the island, we did have a lot of people come down who'd never been here before, so if even only 200 see the place and like it, they may think, "well, I'll come down here next year".
'The only obstacle is people. There are a lot of people with negative attitudes and who don't like change, and I don't shy away from saying that. But I'm confident we'll break that by introducing new things and moving the island forward.'
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Weather for Portsmouth
Wednesday 23 May 2012
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