Food Fête is a series of sponsored media events that brings together specialty food, beverage and kitchenware products with the media who write about them. My Food Fête blog is a forum for sharing some of my ideas and experiences with food marketing/PR, as well as spotlight cool new products that I find.
Having worked in traditional PR for 20+ years, I began developing Food Fête in 2004 with an idea and some inspiration to create a non-traditional way for gourmet food and beverage products to get noticed by the food press. The first Food Fête event debuted Jan. 2005 in San Francisco.
Since many artisanal food companies have limited marketing and PR budgets (mainly because they put everything into making great food!) I wanted to make food PR more personal with a cost-effective event that puts the media spotlight on new gourmet food, beverage and kitchenware products.
The newest addition to Food Fête is “Food Fête Delivered,” a service that gets new product samples into the hands of top food writers and bloggers for potential review. We send a select number of new products in a single shipment to food writers and bloggers who have some to trust the Food Fête brand through our events. See our Dec. 2009 press release for more details.
Because I’m passionate about great food — and genuinely like to help entrepreneurs succeed — I looked for a way to help companies build relationships with food and lifestyle journalists, which can be extremely important when launching new products or just trying to make some noise among tons of competition.
If you’ve ever attended one of the major food trade shows, you’ll understand how companies can get lost in the shuffle.
In addition to working for decades in the PR business, my background includes several months at the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco. No, I didn’t complete the program (great training, but not the right path for me) which got me even more excited about combining what I knew with what I loved.
I’m also a member of the Portland Culinary Alliance and the International Association of Culinary Professionals.
If you’re interested in participating in one of our upcoming events, call me personally at (503) 719-4961 or via e-mail at info (at) foodfete (dot) com.
– Jeff Davis, Producer
