Two new food schemes to be served up in county

* Fern Evans and her mum Gaynor who are looking for premises in

Llangollen for their two businesses.

Two major schemes aimed at getting local food and drink businesses to step up to the plate have been launched across three counties of North Wales.

Denbighshire, Flintshire and Wrexham have teamed up with the organisations Llangollen & Dee Valley Good Grub Club, Clwydian Range Food & Drink, Cadwyn Clwyd and the Clwydian Range and Dee Valley Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty to launch the initiatives Light Up Local Food and Open Kitchen.

Light Up Local Food is a series of pop-up markets promoting local food and drink which will appear at Christmas-themed markets across the region this November and December.

Open Kitchens is a month-long programme of events promoting local food and drink across North East Wales set to be kick off in October next year.

Both schemes were outlined to a large audience of food and drink producers from the target area held at Loggerheads Country Park on Monday evening.

* Marina Midolo of Marina's Italian Cookery.

Robyn Lovelock, secretary of Llangollen & Dee Valley Good Grub Club, told them that Open Kitchens was aimed at exciting interest in food businesses in their own towns and as a celebration of good food.
She said it was being launched in October 2019 to tie in with food festivals staged around the region at that time of the year.

“The aim is for the events to be fun, engaging and interactive,” she explained, adding that organisers were looking for “fun and engaging” ideas.

The other initiative, Light Up Local Food, will see pop-up markets across North East Wales prior to Christmas, each featuring local food and drink producers and stalls run by businesses from the local areas. There would also be support from organisers with marketing and public relations.

The first Light Up events were held last year and some lessons had been learnt from these, said Ms Lovelock.

These included the need for more hot food options to be available at the markets, more engagement with local food businesses and more creativity from food businesses.

An example of this, she said, was a wood fired pizza kitchen being made available for hire.

Next steps would be confirm the five towns in the region which would be hosting the events and the confirmation of which producers would be involved in each event.

* Janet Monshin Dallolio of Afonwen Craft & Antique Centre.

Support for both schemes came from Fern Evans who runs Up on the Roof, a business based on freshly prepared vegan street food.

Operating from Set the Bar in Lord Street, Wrexham, she is currently on the look-out for a new café base in Llangollen.

She said: “I started the business about four years ago and while I’ve been doing well in Wrexham I’d like to move to Llangollen where I think there would be good demand for what I do, which is eat in or takeaway vegan food.

“I haven’t yet managed to locate the right premises but I’m still hopeful of finding it.

“Just as I do in Wrexham at the moment, I aim to share the premises with my mum, Gaynor Evans, who has a craft emporium in the same building.”

She added: “I certainly support the two food and drink initiatives launched today.”


Backing for the schemes also came from Marina Midolo, originally from Sicily, who specialises in traditional Italian food and has recently pop-up dining evenings at the Pontcysyllte Chapel Tearoom.

Another supporter was Janet Monshin Dallolio who runs the Craft & Antique Centre at Afonwen near Caerwys.