WA Signature Dish... should've been more

The WA Signature Dish is a statewide event aimed at promoting local produce and local cooking talent by Buy West Eat Best.  Essentially it is a cooking competition.  Once I found out I’d be working on this event, I had to do a lot of research because I’d never heard of it before.  For such a great little concept, feel as though this event had big potential.  Sadly it did not get the media coverage it deserved and so the interest number wasn't anywhere near what it should have been.  

The WA Signature Dish is broken up into the different regions of the state, Perth metro, the great south, the Gascoyne, and the southern forests.  Each with a number of contestants, none of whom have any professional cooking experience, competing to win the title of the WA Signature Dish.  As I said, it's really a big publicity boost for local produce, as the aim is to cook using only local WA produce and cook your typical local meal. SWEvents were taking care of the Perth and surrounding finals.

From a public relations perspective, this event was a fantastic way of giving local producers a solid form of media and public attention.  The Buy West Eat Best website provided links for all kinds of local growers and producers for people with an interest in the event to browse through and turn to.  It even made me more aware of where the goods I buy come from.

What was lacking was the interest.  

Again, from a public relations perspective, this event, which had so, much potential seriously lacked in media publicity.  My SWE colleague and I agreed that there could have been much more done to promote the competition, which was proved when we discovered that there were only 14 contestants entered in the metropolitan region.... considerably low seeing as how there is a growing number of people who are into these kinds of cooking competition shows.  Although the event turned to be somewhat of a success, it's hard to measure it as that considering the low level of interest.  

However, working on the event was the easiest couple of days I've had interning yet! My main responsibilities were to the four contestants.  I received their recipes, drew up a spreadsheet document to put their ingredients lists into, budgeted our spending on the food and shopped.

That was it! Done and dusted.

The day of the event was to show up, help set up, brief, and then let the MC take over for the rest of the day.

Very relaxed and enjoyable.

For any info on the WA Signature Dish visit;

http://www.buywesteatbest.org.au

Thanks for reading :)

Grace Carpenter

15660677

SWEvents