New food and drink awards will recognise 'the best of the best'; Scottish Retail Food & Drink Awards being launched at Scotland’s Speciality Food Show
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
FOOD and drink producers, suppliers and retailers are being invited to stake a claim to an industry accolade in a newly launched awards scheme.
It aims to celebrate the outstanding quality of Scotland's natural larder and a food and drink industry that supports thousands of jobs and is worth millions to the economy.
Motivated by the huge growth in consumer interest in food provenance in recent year, two food and drink media specialists have teamed up to launch a brand new awards programme to recognise producers, suppliers and retailers helping reinforce Scotland’s reputation for producing some of the best food and drink on the planet.
The Scottish Retail Food & Drink Awards is being launched by Helen Lyons, who has extensive experience bringing awards programmes to fruition, and Antony Begley of 55 North, the Glasgow-based publishing house specialising in food and drink retailing. They have enlisted the support of Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU), a centre for excellence in food science, as one of their key partners.
The scheme will be officially launched at Scotland’s Speciality Food Show on Monday.
Ms Lyons said its aim is to seek out and recognise businesses and enterprises of all sizes from all corners of Scotland. She said: "Interest in provenance, locally and nationally sourced products has arguably never been higher than it is today. These new awards aim to provide a fantastic platform to bring more producers and retailers together. Our goal is simple; we want to bring producers and retailers together to get more of Scotland’s fantastic products onto the shelves of more stores throughout Scotland.”
Entries will be welcomed from all companies that produce and market products in Scotland for the Scottish retail marketplace, from discounters to supermarkets, from convenience stores to farm shops and everyone in between.
Antony Begley said: “We all know that Scotland has some of the best food and drink producers on earth and we know that more and more consumers are interested in buying home-grown products. The Scottish Retail Food & Drink Awards will respond to the increasing consumer demand and will be to the benefit of everyone involved from producers and suppliers to wholesalers, retailers and, ultimately, to consumers themselves.”
Award categories include Small Producer, Retailer of the Year, Independent Retailer of the Year, Future Hero, Outstanding Achievement, Scottish Producer and Sustainability Initiative and Innovation Award.
A panel of judges will be led by internationally-renowned food expert Jane Milton and a team of independent food and drink experts.
Official ambassador for the awards will be Bruce Langlands, former director of foods at Harrods and director of food & hospitality at Selfridges.
Lyons says that the "robust and entirely transparent nature" of the judging process "means that when consumers buy a product that carries a Scottish Retail Food & Drink Awards winners logo they can be 100 per cent certain that they’re getting the best of the best, as judged by some of the most experienced independent judges in the industry".
The awards will open for entries this month and will close in May. Judging will take place during June and July with the awards presentation taking place in October 2020.
To find out more see www.scottishretailfoodanddrinkawards.com
