With just a week to go until British Food Fortnight and Back British Farming Day, 90 Sussex restaurants, pubs, cafes and independent shops have so far joined the Sussex Six campaign, pledging to take on at least six more local Sussex food and drink products in the coming year.
Natural Partnerships, organisers of Sussex Six, announced the latest number at an event last night, hosted at Knepp Wilding Kitchen & Shop in Dial Post near Horsham, and urged the public to support Sussex Six businesses and buy local.
“We’re absolutely delighted to have ninety such fantastic businesses on board and that the Sussex Six Campaign is proving to be such a success in supporting local food and drink producers,” said Cllr Joanne Knowles, Cabinet Member for Economic Development and Property, Horsham District Council.
“We are lucky to have some of the best locally made, reared and grown produce here and we encourage local people and visitors to the region to choose Sussex Six businesses and buy local.”
Over fifty local food and drink businesses attended the event at Knepp Wilding to share their experiences of diversifying their businesses and building the local food and drink network in the region.
Nick Hempleman spoke on behalf of The Knepp Wilding Kitchen & Shop, outlining their history producing organic wild-range meat on a 3500-acre rewilding project, with free-roaming herds of Old English Longhorn cattle, Tamworth pigs, and Red and Fallow deer. They have since diversified to include camping, safaris and the stunning new Wilding Kitchen & Shop, where people can eat, drink and buy produce from the farm, before enjoying a range of walks with wildlife hides in the countryside around it.
Andy Hepworth, Founder of Hepworth Brewery, spoke about how his state-of-the-art brewery at Pulborough not only creates its own range of award-winning beer and lager, but also hosts micro-breweries on-site, bottles other drink producers’ products, brews and white labels ales, and runs a successful shop selling drinks made in Sussex.
Businesses attending shared experiences of expanding their businesses so that they were not just reliant on one crop, product or service, and Sam Smithson from Experience West Sussex talked about the new joined-up Experience Sussex tourism organisation, which promotes all the fantastic experiences that visitors can enjoy across all the districts that make up Sussex.
The Sussex Six campaign was launched in the Horsham District in June 2023 and in the Chichester District in July 2024, part-funded by the UK government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.
Local residents and tourists are encouraged to visit the Sussex Six pages at Sussexfoodanddrink.org and support the shops, restaurants, pubs and cafés which serve and sell local Sussex produce.
British Food Fortnight 2024 runs from 20th September to 6th October and Back British Farming Day 2024 is 11th September 2024.
