Shrewsbury Food Festival will not return

Organisers of Shrewsbury Food Festival have announced their longest-running festival won’t go ahead in 2027.

Shropshire Festivals has delivered thirteen food festivals in the Quarry since 2013, but behind the foodie fun, the economics of putting on a large-scale independent festival have become increasingly difficult.

Beth Heath, co-owner of Shropshire Festivals, said: “We are immensely proud of the successful festival we’ve grown. It’s multi-award-winning, has brought hundreds of thousands of people into the town centre, supported thousands of small businesses, and brought joy to all.

"The festival is perfect in every way, but it can’t continue in the current economic climate. It is simply not viable to keep running it unless the ticket prices significantly increase, and we don’t believe the public currently has that disposable income to spend.”

Shropshire Festivals has run Shrewsbury Food Festival since 2013, growing it into one of the town’s largest annual events and winning Festival of the Year at the West Midlands Tourism Awards for the last three years consecutively.

Beth said: “We are very grateful for the years of support from visitors, exhibitors, and sponsors, but that support can’t keep up with the growing costs in every department.

“People may not realise that this is a festival run by a small, independent team. Unlike free entry food festivals that are funded by local councils, this event isn’t financed by the council, and we pay our local council to rent the Quarry.

“This is not the news we wanted to share, and we have explored all options, but we cannot responsibly continue delivering an event of this scale without financial sustainability. We are removing our biggest business risk so we can focus on the rest of our event portfolio.

“The cost of staging festivals has risen significantly since the pandemic. Not only have our infrastructure, staff, and fuel costs gone up, but we have the knock-on effect of our suppliers' costs going up too, and customers with less disposable income. Compliance costs have increased as well, such as the impact of Martyn’s Law, which increases security costs.”

Beth says one of the biggest misconceptions is that reducing ticket prices would automatically solve the problem by attracting a much larger audience.

“We often hear, ‘halve the ticket price and you’ll get twice as many people’. But twice as many people means many of our infrastructure costs double too. More people would mean more security, more toilets, more admissions staff, more waste provision, more infrastructure and more of everything else.

“We have watched the festival landscape in Shrewsbury change enormously over the last decade, and have been sad to see many events cease trading. The way forward for us would never be to join forces with one of those loss-making events – we need to focus on making our own events more viable.

“We can’t keep breaking our backs for months every year and then roll the dice on whether Shrewsbury Food Festival will wipe its own face. For a small, independent, family-run business, it is simply too big a gamble.

“I love Shrewsbury Food Festival, I’ve built it from scratch, and my children have grown from babies to teenagers during the years we’ve run it. We are incredibly proud of what we have created, so we are deeply sorry to announce this news, especially as we know it will have a knock-on effect for our exhibitors, sponsors, chefs, suppliers, performers and bands, as well as the loss of additional trade to local hotels, restaurants, shops, cafés, pubs and other businesses during the festival weekend. We are making this tough decision to remain sustainable for the future.”

Shropshire Festivals will continue to deliver major public festivals, run events for councils around the county that celebrate the local community, deliver private and hospitality events for businesses, and offer consultancy.

Beth said: “Thank you to everyone who made Shrewsbury Food Festival possible over the last 14 years – the traders, sponsors, volunteers, performers, chefs, contractors, partners, staff and the thousands of people who have supported it.

"We’re a small team capable of making a big impact, and we will keep doing that, just without Shrewsbury Food Festival.”

Shropshire Festivals’ next event will be Shropshire Business Festival on Thursday, March 11, 2027. Shropshire Oktoberfest will also return in 2027.