THE CO-OP AND LOVE BRITISH FOOD JOIN FORCES TO BOOST SALES OF BRITISH FOOD

Co-op Food is announced as Official Sponsor of Love British Food and the 2016 national food promotion, British Food Fortnight.  The two organisations will join forces to spearhead the celebration of British produce during the patriotic year ahead.

Led by Raymond Blanc OBE, his son Olivier and farming ambassador Milly Fyfe, the Love British Food team are working to bring the ‘buy British food’ message to consumers.

A National Committee including Campaign to Protect Rural England, National Trust, Sustainable Restaurants Association and the National Association of British Market Authorities is planning a raft of grassroots activity to increase sales and give British food a boost across the UK.

2016 sees The Queens 90th Birthday and a huge sporting summer including the Euros and Team GB taking on the world at the Olympic Games and then, in the autumn, British Food Fortnight will take place at its traditional time, from the 17th September to 2nd October, with lots of British food promotions and consumer-involvement activity.

Celebrations of regional specialities and long lost recipes are planned; and the annual competition to find the most imaginative celebration of British food enters its 4th year, having been won by the City of Peterborough in 2015.

Alexia Robinson, Founder of Love British Food says: “We are looking forward to working with Co-op Food during this summer of patriotic celebrations and then British Food Fortnight in the autumn when we want people to fly the Union Jack on their plates as well as on their bunting.   With Her Majesty the Queen’s 90th Birthday and Team GB’s efforts in Rio, 2016 looks set to become another milestone for the celebration of British produce. There is a significant opportunity to build upon the commercial success seen by food businesses during the celebrations of 2012.”

Cathryn Higgs, Food Policy Manager at Co-op Food says: “We are really very pleased to be supporting Love British Food this year and sponsoring British Food Fortnight. We know food provenance really matters to our customers, which drives our enthusiasm to invest in the UK economy to provide an opportunity for British food to have pride of place in our stores. It’s why we continue to be a major supporter of British farming and home produced foods, trading with almost 2,000 UK farms and over 500 suppliers from across the UK.

British products are the ‘staples’ of our stores, and we go above and beyond many other retailers to make it easy for our customers to choose British – from fresh beef, chicken, pork and sausages to the meat in our sandwiches and chilled pies and ready meals.

We are looking forward to working together with Love British Food and seeing the exciting activities we’ve got planned for 2016 coming to fruition.”

For further information about all the activities planned this year visit www.lovebritishfood.co.uk