Taste Our Best to replace EatScotland

A new initiative between VisitScotland and the Scottish Government, ‘Taste Our Best’ is to replace the current EatScotland scheme. This new quality assurance scheme, which will recognise hotels, restaurants, cafes, takeaways, attractions and B&Bs promoting Scottish produce, will cost licensees who wish to sign up, £205 per annum if they have 16-covers
or more.
Riddell Graham, Director of Partnerships at VisitScotland said, “We know visitors love authentic, quality Scottish food and drink and Taste Our Best is all about taking this knowledge to the next level and really encouraging the tourism industry to recognise the benefits of sourcing, using and promoting local produce. We have such a rich natural larder here in Scotland and some of the best products in the world right on our doorstep.”
Taste Our Best is designed to recognise businesses including hotels, restaurants, cafes, takeaways, visitor attractions and B&Bs that not only offer a quality food and drink experience, but include and promote Scottish produce on their menus to give consumers choice. It will provide businesses with an assessment of their food provision and their menu by qualified assessors, with those meeting the necessary criteria gaining the award. For accommodation providers and visitor attractions, the assessment will take place at the same time as the main VisitScotland Quality Assurance grading, meaning many tourism businesses that already participate in the QA Scheme will no longer have to apply and pay for a separate food and drink assessment.
VisitScotland and the Scottish government are investing £920K behind the joint initiative and are hoping it will help boost sales for food and drink businesses by up to 20%. The EatScotland food and drink QA scheme which will be phased out.
Beppo Buchanan-Smith, Chair of the Taste Our Best Steering Group and owner of the Isle of Eriska Hotel said,“We hope the Taste our Best initiative encourages more businesses throughout Scotland to link up with Scottish producers to give the customers a truly authentic experience.”