'It can't continue': Shrewsbury Food Festival confirms end of major county event

The organisers of Shrewsbury Food Festival have announced the event will no longer continue.

The festival, which has attracted thousands of people to the Quarry in the town since 2013, has been a major fixture in the county’s calendar.

But, as the events business continues to come under increasing cost pressure, the festival is the latest to announce it will not return.

Confirming the shock announcement Beth Heath, co-owner of the event organisers, Shropshire Festivals, said: “We are immensely proud of the successful festival we’ve grown. It’s multi-award-winning, has brought hundreds of thousands of people into the town centre, supported thousands of small businesses, and brought joy to all.

“The festival is perfect in every way, but it can’t continue in the current economic climate. It is simply not viable to keep running it unless the ticket prices significantly increase, and we don’t believe the public currently has that disposable income to spend.”

The festival has grown into one of Shrewsbury’s largest annual events, winning Festival of the Year at the West Midlands Tourism Awards for the last three years in a row.

Beth said they had “explored all options” but the financial risk with hosting the large-scale event is just too great.

She said the business, which organises a host of other events such as Shropshire Oktoberfest and Shropshire Petal Fields, would be focusing on the rest of its portfolio.

She said: “We are very grateful for the years of support from visitors, exhibitors, and sponsors, but that support can’t keep up with the growing costs in every department.

“People may not realise that this is a festival run by a small, independent team. Unlike free entry food festivals that are funded by local councils, this event isn’t financed by the council, and we pay our local council to rent the Quarry.

“This is not the news we wanted to share, and we have explored all options, but we cannot responsibly continue delivering an event of this scale without financial sustainability. We are removing our biggest business risk so we can focus on the rest of our event portfolio.”

Beth also addressed the rising costs experienced by the industry, and the impact on events, saying: “The cost of staging festivals has risen significantly since the pandemic. Not only have our infrastructure, staff, and fuel costs gone up, but we have the knock-on effect of our suppliers' costs going up too, and customers with less disposable income. Compliance costs have increased as well, such as the impact of Martyn’s Law, which increases security costs.”

Beth also said suggestions that reducing ticket prices would solve the problem do not take into account the knock-on impact.

She said: “We often hear, ‘halve the ticket price and you’ll get twice as many people’. But twice as many people means many of our infrastructure costs double too. More people would mean more security, more toilets, more admissions staff, more waste provision, more infrastructure and more of everything else.

“We have watched the festival landscape in Shrewsbury change enormously over the last decade, and have been sad to see many events cease trading. The way forward for us would never be to join forces with one of those loss-making events – we need to focus on making our own events more viable.

“We can’t keep breaking our backs for months every year and then roll the dice on whether Shrewsbury Food Festival will wipe its own face. For a small, independent, family-run business, it is simply too big a gamble.”

Beth spoke of her sadness at the decision to cancel an event that means so much to her, and the Shropshire Festivals team - and over its impact on traders and the tourism boost to the town.

She said: “I love Shrewsbury Food Festival, I’ve built it from scratch, and my children have grown from babies to teenagers during the years we’ve run it. We are incredibly proud of what we have created, so we are deeply sorry to announce this news, especially as we know it will have a knock-on effect for our exhibitors, sponsors, chefs, suppliers, performers and bands, as well as the loss of additional trade to local hotels, restaurants, shops, cafés, pubs and other businesses during the festival weekend. We are making this tough decision to remain sustainable for the future.”

Shropshire Festivals says it will continue to deliver major public festivals, run events for councils around the county, deliver private and hospitality events for businesses, and offer consultancy.

Beth added: “Thank you to everyone who made Shrewsbury Food Festival possible over the last 14 years – the traders, sponsors, volunteers, performers, chefs, contractors, partners, staff and the thousands of people who have supported it. We’re a small team capable of making a big impact, and we will keep doing that, just without Shrewsbury Food Festival.”

She said Shropshire Festivals’ next event will be Shropshire Business Festival on Thursday, March 11, 2027, and that Shropshire Oktoberfest will also return in 2027.