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About the Festival

The Festival is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to supporting and promoting the local community and businesses within it. We work year-round to give Suffolk producers and businesses a platform to showcase what they do, and get recognition and awareness from chefs, restaurants and business people all over the country.

Each year we have to fundraise to cover the costs of the Festival and to keep it alive for the future. We are very grateful to our sponsors, supporters, friends and visitors who all play a part in making it possible.

Your entry fees, for example, enable us to fund next year’s festival and get more exposure for our local food ecosystem.

Any donations help to make the next year bigger and better. If you would like to donate to the festival, big or small, please get in touch.

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Festival Aims

The Aldeburgh Food and Drink Festival first took place at Snape Maltings in 2006 to celebrate and publicise the abundance, variety and quality of food and drink in Suffolk. The organisers of the not-for-profit event also sought to reconnect people with the food provided by the landscape as a whole: the villages and market towns, the fields, woodlands and marshes, the rivers and the sea. The festival has grown in size, success and importance but its philosophy remains the same.

  • To celebrate and champion Suffolk’s food and drink community and ecosystem
  • To promote Suffolk as a great food and drink destination
  • To provide fun and engaging activities for people of all ages that educate how to grow, cook and eat healthy food
  • To introduce emerging and established producers to new customers and markets
  • To encourage discussion and debate on issues relating to food and nutrition
  • To support Suffolk charities in their food and educational objectives

How it all began

The first Festival was held in September 2006. The gestation period was exactly a year and began with a lunch at The Brudenell Hotel in Aldeburgh. The three attendants each had their different reasons for getting involved.

William Kendall, a food entrepreneur and organic farmer, had followed the success of festivals at Ludlow and Abergavenny; Lady Caroline Cranbrook, a huge supporter of Suffolk food producers, had also been to Ludlow and seen the opportunity for a similar event in East Suffolk to provide local suppliers with a showcase for their produce; and myself.

I ran a group of hotels in East Suffolk and wanted to provide more reasons for visitors to come to the area outside normal tourist season, and to establish Suffolk as a destination for food lovers.

 

Alesha Gooderham, with her husband Johnny, owned the Snape Maltings complex and were keen to utilize their wonderful location for high quality events and to help to promote tourism in the area.

William, Lady Cranbrook and I formed a not for profit Company to run the festival and employed an experienced event organiser in Jenny Lloyd to manage it. Alesha’s marketing expertise, William’s knowledge of the food industry and my local business connections combined to get the Festival off to a flying start.

The invitation to Lady Cranbrook to become President was happily accepted and her continuing involvement has given the Festival additional significance in the worlds of both Suffolk and the wider food industry. William remains on the board and I have recently stepped down as Chair.

Now the festival boasts eight industry professionals on its Board, and has had just two other festival managers in its 21 years since Jenny handed over the baton – Jess Brown for 10 years and now Bella Scarr.

by Tim Rowan-Robinson

Future of Food

Five short films

The Festival has always been a showcase for the positive initiatives going on in Suffolk, and the wider world. Due to the uncertainties created by a global pandemic, meaning conferences and full festivals were fraught with difficulty, the Festival commissioned five short films which both explain the problem and reveal some of the emerging solutions and new opportunities within the food industry.

Whilst the films show material drawn from other continents, the festival directors hope that they inform and inspire our farmers, food producers and the wider public to see a bright but changing future for our industry and Suffolk.


The organisers of the not-for-profit event also sought to reconnect people with the food provided by the landscape as a whole: the villages and market towns, the fields, woodlands and marshes, the rivers and the sea.

The festival has grown in size, success and importance but its philosophy remains the same.

Farming for the Soil

Farming for the Soil

Robot Farming

Insects. The New Livestock

Protein of the future

The biggest problem of all is how we manage the need to feed millions more humans every year in a way that doesn’t draw excessively on our planet’s reserves. Farming and food production are the largest source of climate-changing emissions. Our insatiable demand for more and more food is now the most significant cause of the Earth’s biodiversity loss.
William Kendall, Festival Director