Taste buds to tingle as GTCO Food & Drink Festival starts today

Food lovers across Africa and the world are in for a feast and taste buds will get busy this weekend as the annual GTCO Food & Drink Festival is back again for its 6th Edition, which is slated to hold from today Saturday April 29th till Monday May 1st 2023.

The event which will hold at GTCentre, Plot 1 Water Corporation Drive, Oniru, Victoria Island, Lagos, provides a 3-day weekend of food and endless celebration.

The GTCO Food & Drink Festival brings together the greatest minds on the global culinary stage, industrious Nigerian small food business owners, a world class, state-of-the-art children’s play area, merging them all to give attendees the most memorable food and drink event.

Themed ‘The celebration of Everything Food’, the festival will attract millions of people, and will featured instructive and engaging seminars by world-renowned chefs and food industry professionals.

“We understand the value of bringing together businesses and consumers who are passionate about food and have continued to inspire new ways to experience life through food and drink,” the Charles Eremi, Corporate Communications, GTCO said.

This year’s free three-day festival will feature cooking masterclass from across food experts across the world, as well as over 200 free retail stalls showing everything from Nigeria’s greatest street food to bite-sized gourmet treats and fresh farm produce from the farmers’ market.

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For the selection process, Eremi said “we send out a notification for registration so we have as many people you know as possible to apply and quite frankly every year we have upwards of 5000 vendors applying for these spaces and so it goes through a rigorous screening process to ensure the people the platform is meant for are on-board and as a rule, we try to alternate the experience so more people will participate. We also have a control mechanism to ensure that vendors adhere to the codes of conduct and have a competitive price.

“Africa’s rich cultural legacy and history are magnificently reflected in its food, the marketing manager continued. “The GTCO Food and Drink Festival’s main goal is to show off our variety and industry as a people while also providing a delectable culinary experience to foodies from all across the continent. We want to see our retail customers who also own small businesses prosper as part of our support to the development of local SMEs by providing them with more chances to interact with consumers from all over the world.”

Commenting on expanding the festival beyond Lagos, he said: “For us as a brand, our vision is to be a leading financial services company for Africa, we are thinking beyond the Western or the Southern Nigeria to cover all of Africa.

“Last year, we took some aspects of the event outside the shores of Nigeria to somewhere in West Africa and it was indeed very well received. As a matter of fact, the application was opened to vendors outside Lagos, to have people coming in from Abuja, from ogun state Ibadan, etc.

“We’re just happy that our consumers, hopefully our customers in the long run continue to have the best of this experience, he said. “From the onset, corporate social responsinbility is as importance to us as doing business; while thriving as a business, we want the community to grow as well.”