Abstract

During the past 25 years across Europe there has been a marked renaissance in the consumption and production of quality, regionally denominated foods (Chambers et al., 2007). The production of regional foods has been backed by EU initiatives that have included origin-labelled product designations and the increase in market for local authentic products (Ilbery et al., 2010). However, within the food sector, large corporate organisations comprising agri-businesses, restaurant chains and retailers are dominant and represent an industry that is well-organised, politically powerful and driven by an array of lobbyists, lawyers and trade organisations. Over the past 150 years these companies have been responsible for an explosion in processed and mass-produced foods. In spite of this industrialisation of food production and supply, recent market trends suggest that local and traditional products, defined by specific geographic territories, occupy a food production and hence destination marketing niche that provide strong growth opportunities for local producers, retailers and the tourist destination as a whole (Brownell and Warner, 2009; Oddy and Atkins, 2009).