Boyne Valley Flavour's Summer Symposium

We recently hosted our Summer Symposium and Meet the Makers Showcase in the stunning surroundings of Slane Castle, and it was a great day getting to see so many of our members together.

We began the day with our inaugural Summer Symposium which featured a superb line up of industry experts sharing their wisdom.

Boyne Valley Flavour’s board members Chairperson Bronagh Conlon and Olivia Duff updated us on the incredible Centre of Food Culture project which is currently in the process of recruiting a Development Manager to spearhead the project.

We then welcomed Jason McGee of Jascom who has been working closely with us on our website over the past few months and he shared some fascinating digital marketing insights and tips. (We will be hosting a Digital Marketing Workshop with Jason on the 16th June in The Mill Enterprise Centre in Drogheda, if you wish to attend please contact emmag@boynevalleyflavours.ie)

Julie O’Brien from Runda Hospitality presented us with some fantastic insights into how Italy promotes tourism through food as well as an introduction to our neighbouring food network Visit Mourne and Ring of Gullion.

Chef Brian McDermott and Rory Flaherty of Whats for Pudding joined Boyne Valley Flavours Board Member Kevin Sheridan to talk about Rory’s experience of bringing his product from farm to supermarket shelves and in particular his work with the Dunnes Stores Simply Better team of which Brian is a member of.  

To finish of a great morning we welcomed Chefs Conor Halpenny (Head Chef and Head of Eurotoques Food Council Ireland) and Conor Morrisey (Sous Chef, Glovers Alley) joined Maria Flynn (Ballymakenny Farm) and Olivia Duff in a discussion on how to connect Chefs and Producers.

Our Summer Symposium was followed by a delicious lunch featuring free range and organic pork and turkey from Rock Farm and cheese from Sheridan’s Cheesemongers and our Meet the Makers Showcase of which you can read all about over here.

Thank you to all our wonderful members and friends who joined us on the day, it was really great to get our wonderful Boyne Valley Flavours community back together and we look forward to seeing you all again very soon.

If you are interested in becoming a member of Boyne Valley Flavours you can get all the information here or say hi at hello@boynevalleyflavours.ie