Native2Norfolk is a company aiming to showcase Norfolk's own food and drink scene, predominantly via a series of farmer's/producers markets, food fairs and food festivals to support our producer's business's growth, outreach and sales to create a food and drink scene to be proud of, showcasing all of which Norfolk has to offer everywhere we go in spectacular fashion each time.

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I’m Fin, some people may know me from various ventures such as; from helping out Norfolk businesses at events or in other ways like through my main jobs for Crush Foods and Candi’s Chutney, either way whether you know me or not that doesn’t change the fact that for ten years (half of my life), I’ve been involved within Norfolk’s food and drink scene, watching our industry grow as I do myself. It’s this involvement that was part of me forming my new business Native2Norfolk.

 

Native2Norfolk in essence is an events management and planning company, except instead of hosting all manner of events we are specifically interested and specialized in local food and drink events from markets to food festivals we aim to cover it all, while always maintaining quality and putting our customers and businesses first.

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Throughout my education I was mostly interested in creative arts previously in the form of digital media and photography/filming, alongside studying a lot around food itself which I see as a form of art and expression anyway, although saying this my time focussed on media was fun but short lived, it was the ending of this pathway that lead me to my next, studying events management and production, which was quite honestly life changing as it was from this course that this business was born and my plans for the future were created.

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Although this part of my life was some of the best so far, it wasn’t without difficulty as this all happened through the dreaded “COVID years”, it’s no lie nor secret that COVID really shook the world and turned everything we knew upside down, and even now everything is seemingly the right way up it couldn’t be further from our life before, COVID had changed our Norfolk food and drink scene, for better or worse is for us to decide as although it changed everything, it’s given us all a unique chance to re-shape and restart however we please, especially when it comes to events.

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COVID brought the events scene as a whole to a complete standstill, finishing many businesses, putting stress on others to recoup lost funds and in my case starting my journey and business. I mentioned COVID changed our food and drink scene because it pushed businesses far into the wholesale world, so far that more and more businesses are trying to step out of events, it’s this that both scares me and motivates me to do a better job, so that the public doesn’t lose Norfolk’s food and drink events, especially as if we lost these then the wholesale world will begin to decline as well and before you know it Norfolk is a land of supermarket own brand and global companies dominating our kitchens and cupboards. Currently the quality of events is rumoured to be dropping with more and more food and drink events being flops and damaging our reputation as an industry, but this stops with me, my aim is to take Norfolk’s food and drinks scene to a level greater than it already is, hand-crafting new and memorable experiences at each event for our businesses and our customers, making a phoenix rise out of the ashes that COVID left behind, making a brighter future for Norfolk. Norfolk now, Norfolk Forever.

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Starting of small and dipping my toes into the waters of the event industry, I had two producer’s markets lined up in 2022, both of these events were held at The Forum in Norwich on Millennium Plain. Markets similar to this will continue so that I can raise enough money to start my food festivals. Alongside this we have a lot of exciting projects in the works.

 

Make sure to check out our socials; Instagram: native2norfolk and Facebook: Native2N0rf0lk or click the buttons below.

 

- Fin, Native2Norfolk