Taste of Orkney

What have you used this funding for and how has it helped strengthen the food and drink landscape in your region? Any standout success stories?

To develop a new online food and drink trail for visitors to Orkney, to enable them to identify businesses who have the facilities to host tourists in order to see and hear about the production of Orkney Food & Drink Products. 

If your project is ongoing, how can others support what you do, and ensure the local region continues to thrive?

Whilst the current project is complete, the intention is for the basic online structure created for the Food Trail to be augmented in due course to include the Creative sector as well as potentially tourism hotspots. This is possible due to the fact that all these sectoral groups have their online presence on orkney.com which is now the main Orkney portal.

What is your advice for anyone who is interested in creating a collaborative regional food and drink initiative?

In Orkney we have discovered, over the years and decades, that we have much more to gain by working collaboratively than trying to compete with each other. The UK (and indeed the world) is a big enough market for all of us!

What are your hopes for the future of local and regional food and drink in Scotland?

We hope to see the added value of the premium quality, provenance, authenticity and carbon footprint associated with buying locally or regionally become recognised by locals and visitors to our country and to our regions.