At Shrewsbury Food Festival, we have always offered bursary places to up and coming businesses.

We know new businesses would often find the cost of a full price exhibitor stand a big investment, so we wanted to help. After all, championing local businesses and producers is the core value of our food festival. 

Last year, we partnered with local IT and cybersecurity experts, Start Tech, who sponsored our bursary places.

The three successful bursary applicants were ChocTilly, who handmake chocolate locally in Jackfield and have a second shop in Much Wenlock, The Little Green Pantry in Wellington, which provides sustainable, plastic-free shopping, and Tired Mums Coffee from Wrexham, who make quality coffee with a mission to create better support for mums. 

The story so far

Keli from The Little Green Pantry said: “Since exhibiting at Shrewsbury Food Festival, we have been able to launch our 100% Nut Butters online to be shipped anywhere in the UK, allowing us to reach wider markets. We have also attracted new customers to visit the shop and refill their own peanut butters using the machine in store. We are very grateful to have been granted a bursary place at the festival as it has given up exposure to a wider audience and it has definitely helped footfall to our shop in Wellington and online.

“Me and my team really enjoyed the festival, it was very well organised and advertised and there was a great atmosphere across both days. I would highly recommend for new start-ups to take the opportunity of a bursary placement at this event, it has definitely helped our business grow.” 

Gemma from Tired Mums Coffee said: “Since last year we have grown as a business in many ways. We now have retail stockists outside of Oswestry/Wrexham as well as having a couple more within, we upgraded our look to ensure that we were retail ready, we have more repeat orders, a bigger audience wanting to hear from us, we've changed our website to make it more customer focussed and friendly and we are continuing to donate 1% of coffee sales to worthwhile charities/CIC's. We are currently looking to work with one parent-focused charity so that we can see more of a longer-term tangible difference and get involved more as opposed to the current 6m model. 

“It was GREAT to be one of the bursary stands at the Shrewsbury Food Festival, we felt truly involved and the efforts to drive traffic to our stall as well as the promo for us was truly appreciated. We felt supported and valued and we thoroughly enjoyed our few days there. Any small businesses considering this festival should definitely do it!”

Bursary Places in 2025 

At our 2025 festival, Start Tech are supporting a new cohort of businesses to have bursary places. We are really grateful for their ongoing support! 

These businesses will receive a discounted stand, where they can showcase their business to our 20,000+ attendees to drive sales and grow their following.

They are also welcome to these fabulous free offers:

• Start Tech: Free cyber security audit
• Good2Great: Full strategy review and business planning session plus a free place on a business foundation training course
• Shropshire ThinkTank: Marketing Power Hour

This year’s successful bursary applicants are:

Shrooma - brewers, growers, and believers in the power of functional mushrooms. From their Oswestry café and upstairs grow room, they cultivate mushrooms like Lion’s Mane, Reishi, and Cordyceps — and turn them into high-strength tinctures using traditional slow-extraction methods.

Ledders Sauce Company – a small, local business from Wellington that specialises in fresh, full flavour products, like their signature ‘Ledders Extreme Hot Sauce’. Their ethos is to keep their products as ‘clean’ as possible, concentrating on flavour and quality.

Truly Tea – premium tea specialists of loose-leaf teas and herbal teas from controlled cultivation (organic, biodynamic, and fair trade) and advocates of healthy drinking habits. They care about quality and sustainability. Their packaging is reusable, recyclable, and made of recycled material.

Make sure you pay a visit to their stands!