The past couple of weeks have been busy for the British Game Assurance and Eat Wild Team, with events taking us right across the country from The Game Fair at Ragley Hall, to the Cartmel Show in Cumbria, and the Garstang Show in Lancashire. At each and every event, we have introduced the public to game meat, and all that it has to offer, with huge success. Here, we share some key highlights…
The Game Fair
This was the first year that we went to The Game Fair solely under the Eat Wild banner, as we have had much more success introducing people to game for the first time than signing up shoots for Assurance at the annual event.
The weekend turned out to be a huge success:
- We sold gluten free wild meat pies for the first time and we vended over 300 with people already messaging us for more.
- Leon and Louisa gave a cooking demonstration on stage, serving up a Keeper’s Pie and Pheasant Chilli Nachos.
- We completely sold out of the Mexican Spice Mix.
- We hosted Women Who Work in Fieldsports with over 70 women coming to try our meaty creations
- We dished out pheasant goujons and pheasant scotch eggs for the GunsonPegs and Scribehound Industry Drinks Event
- We took the opportunity to showcase the versatility of wild meat by featuring some of BGA registered stockists; Girl Gone Wild and Forest Biltong.
- Interviewed by Gerwyn Jones, British Deer Society and The Shooting Show among others
Cartmel Show
The Cartmel Show is held in Cumbria on the first Wednesday in August and offers a profusion of family entertainment packed into the picturesque parkland setting at Cartmel Racecourse. The show has its roots firmly within the agricultural and rural community, so it was a brilliant opportunity for Eat Wild and BGA to showcase our work in another area of the country. It is such a pleasure to see people physically tasting game either for the first time, or in a way that they have never tried it before, first hand. As well as handing out samples, we met new game dealers who want to sign up to BGA.
We were proud to go head-to-head with a Michelin star chef at the show, and even more proud to be voted joint winners in our cook off against them! Louisa and the opposition chef were given a bag of ingredients and two pigeon breasts and had to create two innovative game dishes before the audience decided who the winner was. Louisa created a cream, mushroom and pigeon dish as well as seared pigeon breast with ratatouille and mashed potato.
Garstang Show
The Garstang Show hosted a markedly urban demographic. This was made particularly clear when several people from the 15,000 large crowd admitted that they thought the pigeon we were talking about were from the streets in cities. We were pleased to educate them on game meat, where it comes from, what it means to the countryside community, and just how delicious and sustainable it is to eat.
A huge part of the event is the sense of community it provides and we were honoured to be a part of that. We loved bringing people together and doing our bit to help them learn about, enjoy, and celebrate the role of food, farming, and the countryside on all of our lives.
The reaction and interest in game meat that we have seen throughout these past weeks has been incredible, and it just shows what a difference it makes being there, in person, at events like these. This is what Eat Wild and BGA are all about – introducing new people to game and securing a market for this delicious, healthy, sustainable wild meat – and this is what we intend to continue doing for the rest of this year and beyond.
