The annual Food Festival is held by the Caernarfon Food Festival Group, made up of local volunteers who meet regularly throughout the year to put arrangements in place for the upcoming festival. The group was formed in February 2015 following a series of public meetings in the town. Nici Beech was elected Chairperson, Eleri Lovgreen as secretary and Trystan Iorwerth and Yasmin Khan as treasurers.
The first thing the group did was organise a competition to design a logo. The logo was designed by Iestyn Lloyd of Cwmni Da, inspired by the efforts of pupils from Ysgol Syr Hugh Owen. The official logo was unveiled at the launch event in May 2015, exactly one year before the first festival held on 14 May 2016.
We have attended the food festival on numerous occasions as Mr Cariad Confectionery used to work in Caernarfon for many years. With first hand experience as visitors, we knew the foot fall would be unlike any other food festival we had traded at, and we knew our products would go down a treat too!
So this year as a new company, we took the plunge and booked to trade at our 1st ever Gwyl Fwyd Caernarfon. And North Wales didn’t disappoint! I don’t know how the committee of the food festival do it, but they always seem to book the weather!
We travelled up as a family and even brought Carlo the dog with us, and doing our early morning stomp around the castle at 6 am on the morning of the food festival, the ground crew were already hard at work with final event preparation, so we got cracking and started to set up our stall.
We were lucky enough to be on the Maes, which is a special place for us, having spent many weekends enjoying a soup and a sandwich in café Maes, a sneaky pint in Bar Bach and of course the youngest sweet testers favourite haunt Castell Caernarfon.
It’s a strange one being from South Wales speaking Welsh in North Wales, especially when discussing important decisions like choosing sweets….we call them losin down south, but in North Wales they can be anything from tothach, dada’s to sweets! I’m sure they are called other things, and It may be a good idea to make note of them for future North Wales events! Everyday is a learning day as they say!
Our wide selection of traditional and retro sweets was a big hit with all of our traditional beer bottles and honeycomb fudge selling out by 2pm! Our super sour range provided much entertainment as they always do, especially with those youngsters brave enough to give them a go, and our Japanese mystery bags all sold out, with extra having to be made up on the day!
We as a family would like to thank you all who came to see us, and make our first visit to the Gwyl fwyd as trades such a fun and enjoyable experience!
We topped off our fab day with a visit to our old watering holes the Anglesey and the Black Boy with a sneaky pint in the Bar Bach and a nice family curry at the Bengal Spice! Topped off with the fantastic display of the Aurora Borealis around Dock Victoria!
Carlo and my walk the day after the food festival saw Caernarfon returned to its usual well kept state, with all the local authority workers hard at work cleaning the last remaining remnants of the food festival of the day before in readiness for all the incoming tourists that would be whisked in via bus that day!
In short, we have a fondness for the food festival as visitors and after such a positive experience at our first event with them this year, The Cariad Crew are big fans of the Gwyl Fwyd as traders too! It’s a fantastic event organised by a very dedicated group of volunteers. The process of applying for the event, the run up information, set up and tear down were all seamless.
We will definitely be back for 2025!
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