Yorkshire Dales Food and Drink Festival: Traders and ticketholders owed £700,000 - but event may return

But it was cancelled last month after the company behind it, Events by B3 Ltd which is run by Rachael and Andrew Higgins, went into liquidation.

A letter sent to creditors has now been shared with The Yorkshire Post and reveals more details about the company’s financial problems and those currently owed money after buying tickets or signing up for trading spaces.

The letter states 2,892 consumer creditors are owed £574,767.25, while 216 exhibitors are owed £128,286. A further £477,000 is owed by the company in respect of a directors’ loan.

A summary of liabilities stated that it is estimated there is a £1.1m deficit between existing assets and money owed by the company.

Administrator Azets is looking for interested parties to resurrect the event and a spokesperson told this newspaper there has been “lots of interest in saving the festival”.

Those who have purchased tickets to the 2024 event have previously been advised to contact credit and debit card providers to see if they can get a refund.

In the letter to creditors, Azets said the business had been suffering from “unsustainable financial problems” in recent times.

It said the first event in 2016 attracted 10,000 visitors with James Martin and the Hairy Bikers among the celebrity chefs in attendance. It said the business had traded at a loss between 2016 and 2019 in common with many other start-up festivals despite the event increasing in size and winning awards. Covid resulted in the cancellation of the 2020 event and it returned in 2021 but with the company making a small loss.

In 2022, the company recorded a profit of £133,000 and it was forecast that a similar return would be generated in 2023.

But the Azets report said extreme rain and flooding in the week prior to last year’s festival hit ticket sales, while the company faced significantly increased costs and overheads for putting on the event.

The report said directors rebranded the 2024 festival with a greater focus on music to help address the “challenging position”.

It initially resulted in a “best ever ticket launch performance” but sales slowed through autumn and winter last year – a situation blamed in part on an apparent change in Facebook’s algorithm affecting the numbers of people seeing the festival’s posts.

The Azets report said an unnamed marketing partner was hired at the turn of the year which recommended the festival moved away from its previous strategy of focusing on advertising through paying for ‘boosted posts’ through Facebook.

In February, the death of Dave Myers who had been due to appear at the festival as part of the Hairy Bikers saw Facebook suspend all adverts and boosted posts containing his name or image. The report said: “It took three weeks for the company’s website and graphics for online content to be updated, during which ticket sales dropped significantly.”

The new marketing partner advised broader changes to online pages and the start of a TikTok campaign. Azets said while these moves did help online reach, by March marketing spend was costing £2 for every £1 of ticket sales.

“It was costing the business money for each ticket sale achieved,” the report said.

The company suffered a further blow in April when its Google Ads account was shut down as a result of new Government legislation.

The report said: “Due to certain administrative errors, there was a delay in the company’s profile with Google Ads being approved upon re-registeration.

"The company was also struggling from lost revenue from various partnerships who had not committed to the festival in 2024 mainly due to budget cuts.”

Azets said that while multiple steps were taken to turn the situation around, including asking celebrities to promote the event for free on social media, “the directors recognised that unless they were able to control the marketing spend and sell tickets at profit, then the festival was no longer viable”.

It said the situation was further affected by forecasts predicting a wet summer – resulting in the decision to cancel the festival and put the company into liquidation.

The Gourmet Scotch Egg company is among the affected exhibitors.

Kate Dawson from the firm said they had paid £384 for a pitch in the artisan area at the 2024 event.

She said traders should have been told much earlier about the company’s financial problems.

"It was 2018 when we first started and we have done them ever since. There have been no issues up until now,” she said. "We were quite surprised about it folding because obviously it is a really big event.

"There’s a lot of people smaller than us that do farmers’ markets where they pay £30 for a pitch so for them to pay nearly £400 and lose it is really detrimental to them. There are a lot of people who have lost more than that.

"It has upset people so much.”