By Alex Nicholson-Evans, City Curator

The work I want to share with you here is another project I’m hugely passionate about – the development and delivery of a new Food & Drink Tourism Strategy for Birmingham.

Birmingham’s food and drink scene is extraordinary; a tapestry of independent restaurants, buzzing cocktail bars, well-loved chain eateries, neighbourhood pubs and, very excitingly, the chance to sample delights from an extraordinary breadth of global cuisines. 

I travel all over the world eating and drinking, it’s a real passion of mine (indeed, I’m writing this from Barcelona having just devoured an artichoke dish I’ll be thinking about throughout the rest of the evening) and I’m not alone. These days around 80% of travellers research food and drink options when choosing their next destination. Culinary experiences are a major part of travel planning, and we have those here in Birmingham, in abundance.

Birmingham was one of the founding members of the Délice Network, alongside, sister city, Lyon. We have a rich food heritage – think Birds Custard, Cadbury and, of course, the Balti. We’ve won awards and titles on occasion too, but never consistently. We’ve never quite found our collective momentum despite having all the raw ingredients for success, including a plethora of highly successful businesses. What we need is a strategy.

Over a year ago, I asked Birmingham City Council to fund exactly that. The team at BCC shared my ambition and could see the value and the need, but resources (perhaps unsurprisingly given where the city was a year ago) couldn’t be allocated, and so nothing moved.

Then came the birth of a new movement, the Birmingham Hospitality Collective. This is a group I’m thrilled to be a member of. In our first meetings I felt reignited by the passion of fellow business owners and advocates for the hospitality scene. They saw the need for a strategy too. I became 100% committed to making it a reality and began fundraising to commission a Food & Drink Tourism Strategy for Birmingham.

Birmingham Colmore, Central BID, The Jewellery Quarter BID, Southside District, Westside BID, Edgbaston Village, Selfridges and Legal & General all answered my call to arms.

Funding was successfully lined up, but we also needed critical stakeholders at the table. I have always believed it to be essential that this work was developed with and supported by Birmingham City Council, the West Midlands Combined Authority, the West Midlands Growth Company and the sector, in the form of the Birmingham Hospitality Collective. 

Each of those parties came to the table too and it is my utter pleasure to say that we have appointed an expert agency that will take us on the journey to develop a Food & Drink Tourism Strategy for the city.

Now, before I finish – allow me one reflection. I’m well aware that it’s unusual for a strategy like this not to be developed by a local authority or destination marketing organisation – and in the beginning I found our scenario frustrating. But the more I think about it, the less frustrated and more excited I feel. I genuinely believe Birmingham will end up with a more successful and innovative strategy because of this approach. That’s because it will be built on the collective ambition and knowledge of the sector and the city.

It will happen because passionate, committed people understood that it was needed – and believe in it enough to make it so.