Crail Food Festival

How Facebook and Twitter helped launch a community event

Crail: Village Life

• Scottish Coastal Village• Population c. 1,700 (2001 Census)• Situated 10 miles from St Andrews• Edinburgh approx. 50 miles• Dundee approx. 23 miles• East Neuk Village• Famous Harbour

Crail Business Environment• Crail Pottery attracts 22,000 visitors per annum (Fife Facts 2008)• Crail Museum attracts 10,500 visitors per annum (Fife Facts 2008)• Crail Golfing Society – Balcomie Links & Craighead• Tourism a large part of the Crail economy but large number of small

providers• In March 2010 a group of local business owners got together to form

Crail Business Forum – social event held April 2010• By May 2010 a business directory had been collated, printed,

distributed in village• Copies also available in local shops & listed on AboutCrail.co.uk• Large number of tourism related businesses, hotels – guest houses –

B&Bs – cafés – self-catering homes – caravan parks• Other businesses – tradesmen (17), retailers (19), others (16)

Food Festival Ideas

• Strong message about eating locally, healthy eating, supporting local shops, reducing food miles

• Graham Anderson & Finlay Kerr – both guest house owners in Crail - started to plan a food festival

• Crail Harbour known for seafood but don’t want to restrict festival to seafood

• Crail already has two festival events:– Crail Community Festival (last 2 weeks in July)– East Neuk Festival (first 5 days of July)

Festival ideas presented

• Social evening for business group in September 2010

• Graham Anderson and Finlay Kerr presented their ideas for a Crail Food Festival

• Susan McNaughton did a quick presentation on using Social Media to boost business

• The idea of launching a Crail Food Festival began to take shape

• Susan wrote a blog post with a summary of ‘where we are’ (Coconuts don’t grow in Crail)

Crail Food Festival publicity

• This is a new festival event for 2011• There is no funding (yet)• We need to create a buzz• We reserve a domain name www.crailfoodfest.co.uk• We set up a Facebook Page –

facebook.com/Crail.Food.Festival in Sept 2010• We set up a Twitter Account in Sept 2010

twitter.com/CrailFoodFest• Local artists at Crail Gallery design a leaflet and

copies are printed in late October 2010 – funded by a donor

Crail Food Festival – Facebook wins• We started posting updates about the Crail Food Festival and

building a ‘following’• An early consequence was that a local producer posted this on our

Facebook Wall

Producer asks to participate

Crail Food Festival – More Facebook Wins

• Before long others were joining in

Crail Food Festival – Twitter Wins• Accommodation provider gets booking as a direct result of Twitter activity

Crail Food Festival

• Social media in action• Supporting a community event• When were you last in Crail?• Plan your next visit for 17-19 June 2011