Birmingham Food Fest - a new culinary concept for the city - has been a tasty triumph, leaving foodie fans and visitors to the festival hungry for seconds.

The 10-day gastronomic celebration run by the city's leisure tourism programme Visit Birmingham, in association with train operator London Midland, was enjoyed by an estimated 70,000 food lovers who tucked into over 100 special restaurant offers from the 14th - 23rd October 2011.

A foodie campaign promoting the breadth and depth of Birmingham's culinary offering in the run up to the festival included marketing, PR, online, social media and advertising activity including reader competitions, promotional videos and food sampling events at key transport hubs.

Top line results reveal the Birmingham Food Fest campaign attracted over 31,000 unique visitors to birminghamfoodfest.com, the festival's central resource for visitor information. The campaign generated nearly 7,000 restaurant vouchers from the site over a two month period, which could then be redeemed by visitors at participating restaurants. The campaign's creative PR campaign also generated over £850,000 of media coverage with more than 250 articles appearing in international, national and regional press.

Local business participation throughout the festival was a culinary first with 80 restaurants taking part in the region-wide festival and an eclectic programme of over 100 food and drink themed fringe events, hosted by many of Birmingham's best visitor attractions. Several participating restaurants, including the award-winning, fine dining venue Edmunds were fully booked within the first few weeks of the live campaign.

Emma Gray, Director of Marketing Services for Birmingham Food Fest, said: 

"The Birmingham Food Fest campaign was designed to showcase the city's fantastic culinary scene and the huge amount of local talent we have here. All activity was geared towards driving people to Birminghamfoodfest.com, where they could get an online insight into a truly foodie city, downloading discount vouchers to experience it in person.

"The campaign worked closely with local restaurants and visitor attractions to highlight the calibre of restaurants taking part in Food Fest from the Michelin starred Turners, Simpsons and Purnell's to quirky, independent eateries , like The Kitchen Garden Café and Sabai Sabai, who truly are the city's 'hidden gems'."

Highlights of the festival included the Birmingham Chefs Alliance Dinner, an exclusive seven course tasting menu designed by the city's best chefs - including Glyn Purnell, Luke Tipping and Richard Turner - at the spectacular St. Martin's Church in the city centre.

As a celebration of Birmingham Food Fest's inaugural year 29 of Birmingham's hottest culinary talents revealed their signature dishes in The Big Brum Cook Book, a mouth-watering selection of recipes to inspire visitors' inner chef, which was launched as part of the festival.

David Whitley, Head of Marketing for London Midland, said:

"Birmingham was transformed into a culinary paradise over the 10-day festival, drawing thousands of visitors into the city centre. Our partnership with Visit Birmingham meant that getting to the festival was a piece of cake - with £90 million of new trains and a network of routes spreading across the region, London Midland really was the perfect way to travel to Birmingham Food Fest."

Birmingham Food Fest has helped to build on the city's growing reputation as an outstanding culinary capital - recently named the UK's most foodie city and with more Michelin stars than any English city outside of London, Birmingham is a real food lovers' haven.

Emma Gray continues:

"Birmingham's culinary credentials are now widely recognised - with a successful first year for Birmingham Food Fest, the city's reputation as a growing culinary hotspot has only been cemented further."