The first Food Connect programme concluded this afternoon with an award ceremony held in the Clonmel Park Hotel. Ten schools in total took part in the Food Connect programme and each school that participated received a plaque for their recognition of their involvement. Two schools, St. Anne’s secondary school in Tipperary and the Presentation secondary school in Thurles received trophies for there outstanding achievements during the course of the programme. Both of these schools showed great initiative and managed to grow awareness of their respective producers’ brands significantly in their localities. St. Anne’s promoted M&S Brownes Soups facebook page in their school, introduced Brownes range of soups to their school canteen and worked on creating a new flavour of soup targeting the younger generation, called ‘Kids Cups’ . The Presentation setup a facebook fan page for the Tipperary Kitchen, got hands on experience working in the factory and managed to advertise the brand for free on local radio station Tipp Fm.
This programme was instigated by the Tipperary Food Producers Network and James Burke and Associates. It aimed to teach transition year students the importance of local artisan food production and did so by pairing schools from all over Tipperary with members of the Tipperary Food Producers Network for period of 4 weeks. Each student spent one week at a time with their respective producers and gave a day by day account of there learnings and activities on the Food Connect blog. The programme was mainly for the education of the students but also benefited the producers by educating them on the advantages of free marketing through social network sites like Facebook and Twitter.For more photos from today’s awards go to our facebook page.
We hope you enjoyed reading this post by Pat Whelan of James Whelan Butchers. Pat is a 5th generation butcher, cook book author and the director of James Whelan Butchers with shops in Clonmel, the Avoca Handweavers Rathcoole and Kilmacanogue, Dunnes Stores Cornelscourt, Rathmines and Swords in Dublin. Sign up to our newsletter for more updates from James Whelan Butchers
