Food group which championed best of the west collapses into administration

MYSTERY surrounds the collapse into administration of the UK’s largest independent regional food group, Taste of the West.

- by WILLIAM TELFORD [e-mail] @businesslive

The company - which had King Charles III as a patron - had more than 1,000 members who paid to join in Devon, Cornwall, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Wiltshire and ran a popular annual awards scheme.

Members included food and drink producers, distributors, restaurants, cafés, pubs, hotels, farm shops and specialty retailers and included some of the region’s best-known names.

Set up in 1991, Exeter-based Taste of the West's aim was to “champion food and drink producers in the Westcountry, as well as all the places that serve and sell them”.

But administrators at Bristol-based SWBR have been appointed at the High Court in Bristol for the company Taste of the West Country CIC. The Taste of the West website has been suspended and can’t be accessed. Its Facebook page has not been updated since March 18, when it put out a post urging award winners to display their labels and plaques.