The inaugural HIC-Fest smashed all expectations
No crisp lover in the north of England could have failed to notice that something big has been going on that’s got the whole crisp community talking. Huddersfield International Crisp Festival has been running at The Sportsman from 11th – 20th October and the whole thing went pretty crazy.
The festival started selling around 50 varieties of crisps from all over the world. But that wasn’t enough, people needed more. Just a few days in and many flavours started running low so John Fletcher – Sportsman Landlord, Founder of HIC-Fest, and Chief Crisp Procurement Manager – did what he needed to do to give the people what they wanted and sourced more; not only of those running low but of new varieties too, meaning that over 70 different flavours were on offer over the course of the festival.
The winning crisp was…
It seems that festival goers were there primarily for the thrill of the new and the exotic, with the most popular flavour being the Salted Egg Yolk from China. Other big sellers included Caviar from Spain, Uncle Chipps Spicy Treat from India, and Squid from China.
In fact, we sold around 1500 bags of crisps over the course of the festival, which is roughly equivalent to what we’d sell in 3 months.
It’s not entirely surprising when you consider that people came from as far as Nottingham and Grimsby to sample them and many even went home with carrier bags full of crisps, maybe as gifts for their loved ones (after all, Christmas Crispmas is just around the corner).
Both the beer and wine crisp pairing events sold out and the crisp themed quiz was the most well attended quiz we’ve done in a long time.
An international festival in more ways than one – a viral sensation
It was a truly international festival as not only were crisps were sourced from all over the world, but the world embraced it too. Everyone was talking about it, it even made Portuguese and Russian news sites. Here are just some of the examples of the coverage the festival achieved:
A live broadcast on BBC Look North
John interviewed on BBC Radio Leeds, Radio 5 Live, and Jeremy Vine’s show on BBC Radio 2.
A mention on BBC 6 Music’s Radcliffe & Maconie show.
Articles in The Yorkshire Evening Post, Country Life Magazine, MSN News, Yahoo News, Huddersfield Examiner and many more. It was number 8 in the most read articles on the BBC website at its height and it even made it onto the BBC’s Quiz of the Week (question 6).
Founder, John Fletcher, said:
“It has truly surpassed all expectation. What started out as a silly idea to put on an event that was the equivalent of a beer festival but for crisps seems to have captured the imagination of not just Huddersfield but everywhere!
In fact, it’s gone down so well that we can confirm, we will definitely be running it again next year and I’m already on high alert for new flavours.”