We have  attended The Food and Drink Festival 2020 and you can too.

Normally by now, the kids and I  are regularly visiting local food and drink festivals in the region.  Not only do they enjoy an amble around a sunny outside space, they, in their own words

‘get a load of free food’

in addition to persuading me to buy loads of the tasty products on offer.

At the last one we attended,  not only did we come home with a huge haul of delicious goodies.  The middle lad watched in awe the recent Master Chef winner do a cooking demonstration live.

For obvious reasons this year is different.

Following a recent discussion about missing out on these events, a quick website revisit of some of our favourite small food producers websites pursued.

Some sauces, chunky chutney and other of our favourite homemade products were ordered and I was a few quid lighter. This was followed by several days of eager and apparently starved children waiting at the window for the delivery company to appear with our purchases. 

It appears that it isn’t only us missing our food and drink festival season this year and the team at Slice & Dice had not only spotted the issue. But had also acted on it. 

With so many artisan food and drink producers facing extraordinary challenges, they created an online food and drink festival. Now,  anyone  can visit and buy amazing  produce and get them delivered to their homes.

While we may be slightly annoyed because we were missing out on our days out and the chance to grab some freebies, It dawned on me that these small producers must be really struggling in the current climate and would ordinarily rely on the festival season for their livelihood. 

The Food & Drink Festival Online 2020

The Festival website is amazing. You can find a whole range of different and inspiring food and drink from a whole range of small producers. You can browse food types and search some amazing flavours. More importantly you can visit each of the producers own website and buy some of the most amazing foods and drinks around.

This may not be the same as physically going to a real food and drink fair. However, it is as close as you can get as a result of  the whole world adapting to a digital life. 

I have now bookmarked the site on both laptop and phone and  I spend many an hour perusing through countless independent food and drink pages. The flavours literally leap from the page, the vibrancy of the colours on many of the foods, literally send my taste buds into overdrive as I leap from flavour to flavour and culture to culture. 

Our highlights

The Little lady’s current favourite is Ugly Drinks. They  not only sell some amazing sounding fizzy drinks with no sugars, no sweeteners, no calories and nothing artificial. They also donate to the UN Foundation initiative tackling gender inequality.

The teen keeps leaving subtle hints that he wants to try Mr Lee’s instant noodle pot, which to be honest I would rather he did compared to the other type of instant noodle he normally requests. Mr Lee’s mission is to shake up the instant noodle reputation by providing premium noodles with no nasties. While also containing chunks of real chicken.

Anyone who follows me over on Instagram will know that the middle boy is a big fan of spicy food. So imagine his delight when he spotted the range of chilli flavours available at Kingfisher! He was literally drooling in front of the screen. 

Currently, I can’t pick a favourite. With so many amazing flavours and products to choose from. I’m just looking forward to working my way around the festival taste by taste. Starting with the lovely sounding chutneys and pickles from Manfood. 

Are you going to attend?

Something that struck me, as we wandered from producer to producer is that these small enterprises are probably facing the biggest business challenge to date. Yet the majority of them made donations on each sale to a variety of charities and foundations. Even during hardship themselves, they are willing to support worthy causes. 

This is precisely the reason I will support these wonderful small food and drink producers. Actually,  that and the delicious stuff they produce too. 

Make sure you head over to the festival website. Wander around, take it all in and go find yourself some amazing new products to treat your taste buds with. 

I have received no payment for this review and the views are purely my own.