This year’s Thame Food Festival on Saturday, September 27, was a great success and another great celebration of all that is good about local food and drink.

As patron of the event, I’d like to take this opportunity of saying a big thank you to our fantastic band of supporters – the sponsors, the celebrity chefs, the organising committee, the volunteers, the visitors and of course papers like the Bucks Free Press who do so much to promote and support the festival.

Thousands of people flocked to Thame on the day of the festival, hungry to get their hands on the wealth of amazing local and artisan food and drink on offer.

Thame Food Festival might have grown enormously since its humble beginnings, but it’s still a community event, run by the community for the community.

Behind it is a not-for-profit Community Interest Company that relies heavily on sponsorship to make the event happen.

None of the directors – nor the celebrity chefs – gets paid for their involvement; they’re involved because they want to preserve the essence and philosophy on which the food festival was founded, namely to support and promote local artisan food and drink producers.

They will never follow the path so many other festivals have taken as they have grown and become just another mass market event.

And there’s the rub.

This can only happen if sufficient sponsorship is secured to cover the increasing costs of the event.

Thame Food Festival is hungry for help. We are calling on local businesses of all shapes and sizes to step forward and offer their support for the event by becoming sponsors of next year’s festival.

In return, what we can offer you is the chance to be involved in putting on a great event for the local community; the chance to support other local enterprises for whom the festival is a life-line, to celebrate food and drink produced on our doorstep and the chance to bring your own customers, friends and family along for a truly wonderful day out.

 

Bucks Free Press:

Patron of Thame Food Festival, Lotte Duncan, says the event is ‘hungry for help’ to ensure its success is repeated year after year. Pictured is Tom Kerridge and Lotte Duncan at this year’s festival.

 

We are also making a plea to the Thame community to lend a hand at the 2015 event.

Local knowledge is invaluable to the visitors that come from far and wide so if you are willing to share it we would like to hear from you. We need a team of volunteers on the day to help things run smoothly. If you would like to be part of this great event then please let us know. The only thing we ask is that you are available on Saturday, September 26 2015 and for a few evening training sessions during September in the run up to the event.

If you’d like to be part of this great event in 2015 and beyond, please come and talk to us today. Please contact alison@thamefoodfestival.co.uk Thank you. – Lotte Duncan, Patron, Thame Food Festival www.thamefood festival.co.uk