Good practice:

Tasteful East-Flanders: promoting local gastronomy

Tasteful East-Flanders is based on 4 pillars:
-Professionalisation and new management techniques
There’s a focus on knowledge sharing through training, conferences and inspiration sessions. Products can also be acknowledged as Flemish or European regional products. Research into new trends is being conducted with academic partners.
-Promotion of regional products
The Butcher’s Hall is the promotion centre for regional products in Ghent. It is an initiative of ECEF with the support of the Province of East Flanders. The Butcher’s Hall has a restaurant and a (online) shop.
Furthermore, regional products are promoted on markets and fairs and there’s a Tasteful East-Flanders food truck. Recipes are being developed to provide inspiration to get started with the products. There are featured programs for the sectors of jenever, wine and beer.
-Sales & Distribution
The sale of the products is supported by communication and promotion towards institutional kitchens, hotel schools and regional stores. Furthermore, Tasteful East-Flanders ambassadors are appointed. These are people who actively promote regional products in their business.
3 cooperatives provide a system for the sale and distribution of regional products. The different cooperatives unite numerous farm and regional producers.
-Experience & Tourism
There’s a focus on tourist valorisation e.g. Tasteful East-Flanders tours. Furthermore, there’s a program to raise awareness for regional products in primary schools.

Human resources: staff in the promotion centre (Butcher’s Hall) and marketing & administration team.
Financial resources: 138.860,00 EUR in 2020

-Each year more than 80.000 people consume in the Butcher’s Hall. The annual turnover is more than 1.000.000 euro (pre-Covid19). Surveys show that visitors are really enthusiastic about local products
-In 2019, 25 producers opened their doors for the ‘Tasteful East-Flanders tour’ (13 in 2020 due to covid)
-In 2020, 95.000 people visited the the Tasteful East-Flanders website
-250 producers are part of the Tasteful East-Flanders network
-28 Tasteful East-Flanders ambassadors and counting

-Personal contact with the producers. Many remain ‘passive’, the active ones are usually a smaller group.
-For producers, sales take precedence. They are grateful that they are promoted (cheaply or for free). A financial contribution to participate in activities or events is often a barrier.

As a public government institution, the main asset is ‘neutrality’. With a non-profit attitude, you can bring together different producers. In that way, there is promotion made for all the local food products in a region, with a big impact on the positive image of the local food sector and gastronomy.
As the Tasteful East-Flanders platform consists of many different parts, there’s potential for the other project partners to ‘cherry-pick’: select those policies which fit best for their specific region and/ or producers.