Nantwich Food Festival 2025 is here!

The award-winning Nantwich Food Festival is just round the corner to delight us all, just weeks after winning a major Cheshire Life Award.

The Festival returns from Friday 29^th to Sunday 31^st August and is even more jam-packed than usual with high quality exhibitors and entertainment.

Festival Friday starts at 11am with a quiet hour for those who want or need to browse the stalls in both marquees without the crowds. Then Friday continues from 12MD to 8pm with food, drinks, live music and lots of entertainment. Town centre entertainment starts at 11am with the first of 2 days of family activities by the Circus Academy, and runs until 8pm, whilst the Reaseheath Food Theatre has chef demonstrations from 12md and these continue through the weekend.

Festival Saturday runs from 9am – 7pm, so expect more Festival fabulousness with great exhibitors, celebrity, TV and local chefs, and wonderful live music; Festival Sunday is 10am- 5pm, with the earlier closing time needed to enable the Festival team to start the massive clear up task.

Some town centre car parks need to close to allow space for marquees to be erected and all the exhibitors to set up their stalls. Signs have been up since early August, giving ample notice of these closures that will run from 6pm Tuesday 26^th August until 5pm Monday 1^st September – yes, within 24 hours of the Festival finishing, these car parks will again be available for use, and the town centre will be clean and tidy again.

Due to the reduced availability of town centre parking, Festival organisers are urging visitors to use public transport; with the bus and train stations dropping visitors mere minutes from the major Festival sites, this is a great option.

The well-established Festival Park & Ride scheme operates from Brine Leas Academy, Barony Park and Nantwich Football Club on all Festival days. However it does not operate from Nantwich Football Club on Festival Saturday due to a match fixture.

Providing the Park & Ride scheme makes travel into the town centre environmentally healthier and less fraught for everyone – with no searching for elusive parking spots. The scheme is free to users, but a recommended donation of just £3 per vehicle helps to support this important facility and local charities.

Disabled parking, with disabled access buses, will operate from the Barony Park & Ride location only plus there will be disabled parking at Dysart Buildings Car park too.

Turning now to the all important public loos! In addition to the Festival loos adjacent to the marquees, there are public loos next to the market. There is also the Nantwich Town Council ‘Comfort Scheme’ whereby 10 participating local cafes etc allow visitors to use their loo – just look out for the posters.

Volunteers – including the 15 new volunteers - will be easy to see in their high viz jackets; they’re the people to approach for Festival brochures, information and directions to anywhere and anything in Nantwich. They attended their training event just 2 weeks before the Festival kicks off, so are up to date on safety issues, and will be ready to deal with any queries. Right in the town centre there will also be an information stand.

All the Festival team members are volunteers; after all, Nantwich Food Festival is all about the local community. The team is grateful to local organisations Morrison’s supermarket and St Mary’s Church, Nantwich for allowing the use of their car park and grassed area respectively; we know that St Mary’s Church Rector is grateful for the generosity of donations from visitors.

Safety is always high on the agenda for Nantwich Food Festival, so to complement the Festival Volunteers, there are the Health and Safety team, the First Aiders and local police. Two First Aid areas within the town centre will enable them to respond quickly to any incidents.

Simon Walter of Rhino Safety ensures that all safety systems are in place and closely monitors events throughout the weekend eg ensuring that marquees don’t become overcrowded. He doesn't approve the Festival to open until all safety and hygiene inspections are satisfactory on Festival Friday morning.

Safety of children and vulnerable adults is very important to the festival organisers, who have a well-honed procedure for lost children and understand just how stressful it can be if children or vulnerable adults are lost even for just a moment.

This year organisers are encouraging parents to use the Festival Security Bands. These bands are available free of charge from all Park & Ride locations, the Kids’ Marquee and the Town Centre Info Point.

Parents/carers are asked to write their mobile number on the band, turn the band so the number isn’t shown – safety first - and attach the band to their child’s wrist; that way, if the child or vulnerable adult is lost, the organisers can phone without delay to reunite them.

The second top tip is to photograph the child – front and back – it’s all too easy to forget what your child is wearing, especially at anxious times.

The chef demonstrations are always popular, with all free to enter and all taking place in the Reaseheath Food Theatre, Love Lane, so whatever the weather, you can watch the demos under cover.

Following her successful demonstrations last year, the talented chef and teacher Bhupinder Virdee Lace, will return on Festival Friday to start the demonstrations and to show us how to get bags of flavour into our veggie and vegan dishes. She has a great ‘Love Food, Hate Waste’ pedigree and is renowned for creating fantastic meals from leftovers and store-cupboard ingredients.

Immediately after Bhupinder, we are sure of a treat with ‘Shropshire Lad’, Adam Purnell, who will demo his live-fire cooking skills; you may have seen him winning Heston Blumenthal’s ‘Crazy Delicious’ on Netflix and Channel 4 + he has more TV credits to his name, so if you want to know how to improve your BBQ skills, be sure to catch Adam.

Next, Stavros, the head chef from Nantwich’s multi award-winning St Martha Greek taverna will showcase his talent – we are delighted to see him return this year. Then to finish the Friday line-up, comes an air fryer cookery demo, so if you aren’t making much use of your air fryer, do catch Jill Weatherburn’s demo.

On Festival Saturday if you love cooking, you won’t want to leave the demonstration marquee due to the amazing talented chefs on offer with not one, but two celebrity chefs. First up is Celebrity Chef Nigel Brown, much loved by all Nantwich Food Festival regulars. After Nigel, there are 2 chances to see Celeb chef, Phil Vickery demonstrating – at 12MD and 3pm. Phil has 19 cookbooks to his name, and an easy-going cooking style that’s sure to appeal to all. Not only that, but Phil is also the National Food Ambassador for Coeliac UK.  

Nantwich’s own acclaimed Darren Snell will take time out of his Head Chef role at the Black Lion to demonstrate, then Sam Widnall, semi-finalist on Bake Off: the Professionals and talented bake house owner will delight us with his baked goods - hopefully including his renowned tasty cruffins – a cross between a croissant and a muffin.

Festival Saturday is not to be missed!

More Festival perfection follows on Sunday with a return by Nigel Brown, who will – somehow – make time to get to the Cookalong kitchen to lead a masterclass, plus there’s a demo by Reaseheath College chefs, an ice-cream based demo by Cleo, one of the talented Snugbury sisters, with Martin Taylor aka the Surfing Chef of Chester’s Sandbar Seafood Shack providing the final chef demonstration of Festival 2025.

There will again be sign language interpretation for some of the chef demonstrations in support of the Festival’s approach towards inclusivity.

Direct Access, a Nantwich business, will again provide a calm area throughout the weekend to help anyone in need of peace and quiet; this worked so well over the last few years that festival organisers are delighted to have their support again.

Still over at the Love Lane end of the town, the Festival cannot forget its younger visitors, so is pleased to report that again Whitegates Kids Marquee (Kids Corner) will host a whole variety of craft activities. The Dabber Bear town trail leaflets can be collected from the kids marquee or the information point in town. 

As usual the kids activities supervised by Festival Volunteers will include lots of crafty, fun stuff to keep the younger festival goers busy. Activities will be free, but the volunteers will be pleased to collect monetary donations to go to the Nantwich Foodbank.

A new venture this year, organised by businesses in Cocoa Yard will take place on Festival Saturday; this follows the success of their Cocoa Fest in late June, so you can expect to take in:

Sunnyview flowers selling and demonstrating British grown flowers

Doug’s Deli selling cup cakes 

The Little Blue Elephant Catering Company selling savoury pastries 

All the retail shops will be open plus there may be more taking place there – just visit Cocoa Yard to check it out.

We are pleased to see that the much-anticipated return of Cookalong still has some places available for master-classes where participants can produce meals under the tuition of professional chefs.

Just go to book your place: 

https://www.nantwichfoodfestival.co.uk/cookalong/

There are also still some places available on the breakfast and lunch Food History Walking Tours that were so popular last year.

Book your place on: 

https://www.nantwichfoodfestival.co.uk/eventslist/

Finally a non-glamorous, but key issue is that of Festival waste disposal; Nantwich Food Festival has teamed up with ASH Waste Management to encourage greater recycling and less waste going into landfill. As we all try to move towards a better environment, the organisers are asking for the help of festival goers when it comes to the disposal of waste.

Each area of the Festival will now have bin hubs for the collection of waste food, dry recyclables (glass, paper, card and plastic) and general waste. Please do your bit for the environment and help by disposing of any waste in the appropriate labelled bin.

For up to date information go to:

#nantwichfoodfestival

...or the Festival website: 

www.nantwichfoodfestival.co.uk

Yes, the Nantwich Food Festival is well and truly ready for action!