We found our mojo

The sun beat down on us as we set up.
And the people came.

Our street food markets were brilliant, and thats all thanks to YOU.

The Slow Season, the winter, affords me the opportunity to see how far Eats Boutique has travelled since we started in 2015. Come with me and take a moment to recognise our achievements…. and that collaboration has been the name of the game for 2022.

So lets have a look …..

We celebrated the Queen’s platinum Jubilee at Seaton Eats in June with a free cocktail! All those lovely folks on my email list received a voucher and we gave away more than 20 of her favourite cocktail – Gin and Dubonnet. Everyone of course was able to share in this interesting aperitif because they were for sale too. Did you know, an aperitif is a pre dinner drink intended to stimulate your appetite. Well, it certainly stimulated a few things on that June evening because we were super busy and the weekend of celebrations started with us.

In July we launched our our pop up pub The Salty Arms. I needed to revamp our resident mobile bar and to get there I found Chris from the Beer Mens’ Shed. These chaps designed a fascia board to an exacting brief – it had to be light, easy to load into the trailer and easy to put together, but sturdy so that it wasn’t going t be a health and safety risk. They did a brilliant job. With the structure in place it was up to me to paint the name and create mermaid figure head to steer our ship.

Check out this video of how I made a mermaid- again it had to be lightweight, rain proof and sturdy enough to withstand the bashing about a mobile bar takes in its life. Then we had to find a name for her and more collaboration followed with our friends over at the Isle of Wight Distillery. They donated a bottle of Mermaid gin as a prize to our competition, and Bonny Anne was born (and Alex was tickled with his gin – “I never win anything” he said). We set sail in style at our July event, with a visit from the Lyme Bay Moonrakers shanty choir.

At the end of July we launched another project: Axminster Eats Boutique. We were delighted to make new friends (thanks for the coffees Leigh) and with the turnout. I’m pleased to say that our collaboration with Axminster Guildhall will continue into 2023 with 4 dates for Axminster Eats Boutique, taking place on the last Friday of the month.

We had a powerful moment in Axminster – click on the pic for the video. We pledge to continue our efforts to reduce our environmental impact. This year the Salty Arms stocked more locally produced drinks, and where possible we replaced bottles with cans – less weight to transport and more easily recyclable. We continue to work to improve our bins to maximise recycling.

Sidmouth is lucky to have some visionary people who lead on sustainability, such as the Vision Group for Sidmouth. Another little feather in my hat for 2022 was to be asked by VGS to be a judge for their 2023 Sustainability Awards. I’ll definitely be talking more about this in 2023.

During September Taste East Devon took place. This 2 week festival is a collection of events across the region, doing exactly what its says on the tin. It’s a chance to get to know the flavours of our region, and Sidmouth Eats Boutique was delighted to be part of the festival by honing in on the many links our events have to East Devon producers.

However with the passing of Queen Elizabeth we felt – traders, Kennaway House and me, that it was right to pause, while the nation gathered its thoughts about how best to mark this moment.

Instead we held our event in November, our first Festive Sidmouth Eats, and our 50th Eats Boutique. As a way to mark this milestone we wanted to give away more booze! This time it was Pick the Golden Paddle to win your round at the pub. This was so much fun I reckon we might run this one again…

You know, when I look back on this, phew, what a lot happened!

We got back into the swing of things after a complete stop in 2020 and tentative steps in 2021.

We celebrated Queen Elizabeth’s 70 years on the throne shortly followed by the end of her reign.

We were inspired by the sea and launched our pop up pub, The Salty Arms.

We made new friends by collaborating with organisations creating their own social impact, and producers who make amazing food and drink from the land around us.

We took our amazing event series to a new community

and

we celebrated a grand total of 50 Eats Boutique events.

Not too shabby.