This year saw the return of the Bolton Food and Drink Festival for the 18th year! An 18th birthday celebration was the theme for this year’s festival, and it certainly felt like a celebration not to be missed.
The festival has grown year on year, with this year being a record breaker! Over 500,0000 visitors attended the festival and independently verified figures showed an increase of over 40,000 visitors compared to last year’s attendance.
Stateside Foods were one of the main sponsors for the festival for the 9th year, situated on Victoria Square, amidst all of the action. Colleagues from many departments came together to support on the busy stand with our recruitment opportunities, offering tasty samples of our pizza, handing out our free goody bags and balloons, entering the public into our free prize draw to win a Gozney pizza oven and of course sharing our story and our passion for pizza with the people of Bolton. As a huge local employer, the Bolton Food and Drink Festival is one of our favourite events to attend.
A round up of the weekend’s events, as shared in the Bolton News: ‘After a weekend of wet weather was forecast, the sun shone through, and thousands flocked to Bolton town centre to enjoy the jam-packed festival programme.
A fantastic menu of celebrity chefs were in attendance this year, including first-timers Gok Wan and Nisha Katona alongside festival regular, James Martin. Located in the prestigious Albert Halls complex, dubbed the festival HQ, hundreds of fans gathered to join the popular chef demos and get an insight into their culinary world.
Bolton town centre was filled with the hustle and bustle of thousands sampling the wares from over 180 artisan stalls.
Families enjoyed plenty of free children’s entertainment from Bolton’s own beach party to a Little Chefs Academy and Around the World activities at The Octagon Theatre.
Party goers danced late into the night at the first ever DJ event at The Afterparty with Gok Wan & Co while others enjoyed lots of laughs at the Faulty Towers and Live and Let Dine immersive comedy theatre dining events.
Glasses were kept topped up as many tucked into a sumptuous brunch at the twice-daily Bottomless Brunch in the popular Albert Bar.‘
It was great to see so many of our employees enjoying the festival and popping by our marquee to say hello or for a picture in our selfie frame. Colleagues supporting on the stand loved the street entertainment: from singing dinner ladies, dancing chefs and sunflowers to Elton on his piano- it all added to the wonderful atmosphere and buzz of the festival. Not forgetting a visit from James Martin who came by to speak to our colleagues on the stand and for a photograph. You can check out more of the photos and reels from the weekend on our Stateside Food’s Facebook page.
Thank you once again to everyone who helped to make this event another successful one, from set up, right through the weekend to the pack up- we look forward to Bolton Food and Drink Festival 2024!
