Last year, I attended the Isle of Man Food Festival. This event should – and can – be a better celebration of Manx produce.

These are the things that I think can be improved substantially:

I would entirely re-orient the event so that everything was focused on customers experiencing the food and drink that the Isle of Man has to offer. This is how:

  1. Massively reduce the focus on stalls which sell takeaway items, and redirect the focus to foods and experiences that people can enjoy at the event. People shouldn’t be attending the food festival to substitute for their supermarket shop – people should be attending to try exciting experiences and enjoy new foods.
  2. Not only will this allow people to focus on tasting things at the event (instead of just making transactions) it will also mean that things are happening throughout the venue. Static stalls of meat, fish, or cakes, are very stationary. They don’t move much. Cooking is action! Cooking is movement! Cooking is change, excitement, and transformation!
  3. The cooking should be happening at the venue. Some stalls cooked their food elsewhere and were merely keeping their food warm on site. That was underwhelming! A giant reheated food display is not a food festival!
  4. While the event was nominally in the Villa Marina Gardens, much of the venue was covered in a thin plastic marquee. This means that you had much of the downsides of being outside (if it rained, everyone got wet going to/from the marquee) without much of the upsides (sun). It rains a lot in the Isle of Man! Thus, if you’re going to have such an event, where you are unable to guarantee good weather, then run the event indoors, properly, in a space that is big and has proper walls. The Nunnery seems to me to be the ideal space, or inside the Villa Marina itself if you can deal with the food and drink reasonably.
  5. Last year, some of the food stalls charged up to £12 for whole meals. Not only is this a lot of money, but it limits people from trying different tastes. Who’s going to eat multiple meals at £10 or £12 each? Charging less not only allows customers to try different things, it will force suppliers to reduce the size of their servings, further allowing customers to enjoy a variety of foods, not just one lunch.
  6. When I attended on the weekend, I tried to buy things from four different stalls. Two of those stalls couldn’t process cards. One of the stalls had sold out their advertised product. This is a crap experience! This needs to be fixed!
  7. I would fix those two previous problems by changing the payment process: Have a proper commercial and reliable processing system set up centrally, where customers can buy tokens at around £5 each. Those tokens can then be redeemed for food at various (independent) retailers. By having a proper setup, you’re not relying on individual little operators to run their own payments infrastructure, and you force the stalls to serve smaller items. This means that customers can try several different items, instead of just one meal from one outlet. This upgrades the event from an outdoor food court to a genuine food festival.

Michael Josem is a long-term consumer advocate, most prominently as a global leader in combating fraud in the online gambling industry. He was in part the inspiration for the 20th Century Fox Movie, Runner Runner, starring Ben Affleck and Justin Timberlake.

Josem has over a decade of experience as a senior business leader working across various high-tech and online industries, and takes action to build a better community. His primary volunteer roles include service for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, and Graih, the homelessness charity.