Whitehaven’s Eat Street market is set to return even bigger and better than before, organisers have said.
The pop-up food festival – which aims to champion Cumbrian food vendors – will return to the town for its second year running over the May bank holiday weekend on Saturday May 3 and Sunday May 4.
Over 15 local businesses and shop owners serving food from across the world will attend this year’s event, which will also feature live music from eight local musicians and spaces for people to socialise throughout the day.
Vendors already confirmed for the event will be serving everything from bubble tea to Thai and authentic Indian food, to wood fired pizzas, burgers, cakes and more.
They include:
- Angry Boba
- Pappy’s Texas Barbeque
- Art’s Thai Cuisine
- Candy Cabs – Cumbria
- DosaChaska
- Dirty Dogs
- Fodder
- Jammies Deli
- Portobello Wood Fired
- Donna’s Cakes
- The Big Apple Crepes
- FaveKravez
- Hollybank Farm
- Three Hills Gelato
- Waffling0n
It comes after its inaugural event in November saw major success last year, with over 4,000 people attending and over 80 per cent of its 15 vendors selling out of food in less than six hours.
Founder Aaron Groggins, 22, of Whitehaven, said in the wake of the market’s initial success, he is planning to go all out with this year’s event.
He said: “Seeing all the smiles on the vendors faces on the day was a great feeling, but that’s the joy of markets in Cumbria, no matter what market goes on, everyone is just lovely and brings something different.
“Our vendors who came last time were all Cumbrian businesses but they were offering foods from all around the world, and you can’t get any better than that.
“This year we’re looking at bringing around 15 vendors to the event and we’re wanting to do it over two days, which will increase the footfall a lot and we’re looking to host it in the former bus garage site opposite the Wetherspoon pub.”
Eat Street Cumbria is the flagship project of Aaron’s social enterprise Lakeland Life CIC, which he set up in response to his own experiences trading on markets across Cumbria.
He said: “Eat Street is a project of Lakeland Life CIC, which I set up last June when I was a market trader myself selling vintage clothing at the time.
“I was going to all these different events in Cumbria, and I got speaking to people and realised there wasn’t a lot of events that just 100 per cent supported local businesses.
“Quite a lot of people were travelling in from Brighton and places like that, which is still fantastic, but there’s a lot of local businesses we have got that are exactly the same and in a position where they need that extra support and step up.
“So I know how hard it is as a trader and it gets to the point where you go to these events and they’re costing a fortune, so I thought I can do this and I can do this better with more support for us.
“I decided to set up Eat Street Cumbria, which is a food event, simply put, so you go, get your food from the vendors available, you sit down and socialise and stay there for the full day.”
Aaron said that Eat Street is fully focused on celebrating Cumbrian vendors in the hopes that it may give them the boost their business needs to grow.
He added: “The difference between us and other markets is we’re supporting 100 per cent local businesses. So for our first event in November, we supported 15 local businesses and shops and they were all from within a 15 mile radius of Whitehaven.
“Within that six hours, 80 per cent of our vendors had sold out, which is unheard of.
“When we calculated it, there was £74,000 in social economic benefit generated for Whitehaven within six hours and that includes 28 direct suppliers rather than suppliers of suppliers.
“When you look at the impact it’s had, it’s massive, I didn’t realise that until we sat down and calculated it all. But we’re not just providing a platform for the mobile eateries, it’s the bricks and mortar shops too.
“Obviously there’s a lot of shops in Cumbria but a lot of people can’t afford the overhead costs, so it puts people off looking into getting a shop.
“But with the markets, they can trial the business concept and build their audience and once they get that confidence they can start moving to the shops and that’s what we’re trying to help people do.
“We’ve set Eat Street up as a pop-up event so we can move around Cumbria to areas that need that kind of support instead of setting up a facility in Whitehaven.”
Aaron also scooped a Mitie Business Boost award earlier this year, which saw him bag £10,000 in prize money to go straight into Eat Street Cumbria and his wider social enterprise.
He said: “I was gobsmacked when we won. It’s essentially a dragons den style event where you create a business plan, pitch it to five dragons, explain what you’re trying to do and trying to achieve and they invest £10,000 in your business.
“For us it’s been fantastic, £10,000 can help us buy tables and get a proper website built. To some people that might sound boring, but tables are everything we need.
“The whole point of what we’re trying to do is encourage people to stay in the town, so they come, sit down, have food and a crack with people and think oh I’m already in town, I may as well go to the shops.
“What we’ve found with other food markets is people come down for the food, stay there for half an hour max and they disappear off.
“So there’s quite a lot of intent in what we’re buying, it’s not just for the sake of it.”
Aaron, who also works as a full-time apprentice in the nuclear industry, said he is also aiming to branch out into supporting and delivering other events to the community.
He said: “What we’re trying to do is create market-style festivals and events across the whole region in different areas like hospitality and sustainable fashion and Eat Street Cumbria is our first project under that.
“This year we’re also events manager for Proud and Diverse’s Whitehaven Pride and we helped co-deliver a sustainable fashion show in November, so we are branching out into different areas, but our focus is around markets and events.
“Our main future goal is to set up bespoke events, so we’re wanting to become Cumbria’s known events manager for everything.
“So we’re looking at helping other festivals plan their events and manage them while running our own events like Eat Street and also providing corporate or bespoke events.
“The plan is to get a set up where we’ve got a platform for all the traders, so people can approach us wanting to put an event on and we can deliver that event.
“But being a social enterprise aligns with everything we’re trying to do, as it’s all for the local community.”
Aaron said accessing business mentoring had proven a crucial step in his journey to creating Eat Street and Lakeland Life CIC.
He added: “I didn’t even know what a CIC was until I got a business mentor. It was Jenny Brumby from Social Enterprise Cumbria that helped me get set up with a social enterprise, it wasn’t until then that I even considered it, but it’s the best thing that I’ve done.
“We are in quite a lucky time period really as there’s quite a bit of support out there right now, we wouldn’t have got to where we’ve got to without the support of multiple organisations.
“We’re not just doing it to make money, we are genuinely helping people out doing it and providing access to these events.
“That’s what keeps me going through ridiculous hours or when you’re setting the event up and there for eight hours, it’s that thought that people and their businesses are really benefiting from it.”
