Melksham Food and Drink Fair and Town Crier Competition
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2010-07-04 20:36:20 - Graham Ellis
Sunday, 4th July. American Independence day. Melksham Food and Drink Festival Fair. Town Crier's competition in Melksham. T4 on the beach in Weston-super-mare. Heddington Steam Festival. Bristol Wine and Food Fair ... so much happens on summer weekends, in so few days. And that follows on from Atworth and Semington Village Fetes the day before too.
Can you guess which two celebrations we attended this lunch time and afternoon? The Town Crier competition is an easy guess - the criers (pictured here) and their escorts making a coloruful show in the Market Place, and even away fromthe Market Place as we walked towards Well House Manor, we could here them long past "The Limes" and almost to "The Regency". See further pictures and information [here], and read and see last year's event [here].
The other event we attended will be slightly harder to work out - but only slightly harder. It was the fair that was the last event in the Melksham Food and Drink Festival. I was "off duty" today in that I had no booth to man, no official function - but very much on duty wearing various hats. It was good to see various Community Area Partnership Steering Group members mingling amongst the crowds, excellent to catch up with a clutch of town concillors, and marevellous to see everyone mixing and having a good time.
But in reallity "off duty" isn't the full story at the Fair. One of the things that we are particularly on th elookout for is local suppliers of products for us to use at the hotel for our guests. We want - we REALLY want - to supply fresh local produce where we can, but to do so in line with the taste of our customers, at a price that doesn't make our operations expensive and drive people away, and at a supply level where we're not going to suffer major wastage. We would also prefer not to have too many suppliers, and to have suppliers who can consistently provide a product or range so that we can reliably tell our customers what to expect, and be sure that we can indeed do so. We also have to watch out for that "local" supplier who turns out to be little more than "pass through" agent for some products ... "we grow all our own xxxx in yyyy in Wiltshire" say some, and indeed they do - but order "zzzz" from them and it's marked on the delivery as Republic of South Africa or Brazil. Not necessarily a problem, except if we've already sold customers on local produce ... or if we're using that supplier for their local produce then only buying "remote" products from them.
I digress. We did find a couple of good potential suppliers - make contact with one company who we've intended to talk with for a while, and found another who have a product made in the local Melksham area and sold from a Bowerhill address. And "a couple" is good, bearing in mind the stable and long term relationships that we want and have with our suppliers. More picture, and a little more commentary, on the food festival [here].
Can you guess which two celebrations we attended this lunch time and afternoon? The Town Crier competition is an easy guess - the criers (pictured here) and their escorts making a coloruful show in the Market Place, and even away fromthe Market Place as we walked towards Well House Manor, we could here them long past "The Limes" and almost to "The Regency". See further pictures and information [here], and read and see last year's event [here]. 
The other event we attended will be slightly harder to work out - but only slightly harder. It was the fair that was the last event in the Melksham Food and Drink Festival. I was "off duty" today in that I had no booth to man, no official function - but very much on duty wearing various hats. It was good to see various Community Area Partnership Steering Group members mingling amongst the crowds, excellent to catch up with a clutch of town concillors, and marevellous to see everyone mixing and having a good time.