Five Minutes With Bisola Dejonwo-Tokan

Everyone loves a good food festival: eating too much, trying new things, talking to people who make a living producing things you’ve never heard of, and generally just having a good time. If you know anything about food festivals (or even if you don’t) yo

What is the inspiration behind the Taste Off Lagos Food festival?

My love for food was a major influence and also the fact that it was a new concept in Lagos and Nigeria as a whole, this made it more exciting to explore the possibilities.

Food was never the highlight of events four years ago when we started. Nigeria is blessed as a whole with a rich cultural heritage and food plays a major role in our society, defining who we are as a people and why not a food festival to export and educate people about our rich foods’ cultural heritage. Also, exploring the international food scene here in Nigeria to sensitize people of the variety of foods available in the country.

What were and some of the challenges you faced bringing to life and organizing such an event?

Sponsorship! At the time I started, everyone said food was not a thing that an organization would consider sponsoring, in fact no one saw the potentials. For them it was either Fashion, Music or Sports. Also in the area of participation, established restaurants would not even give us a listening ear. But I was determined and decided to bare the cost for the initial start up and thus carved a niche for ourselves in SME development as small businesses patronized us.

Over the years the Taste Off Food Festival keeps getting bigger and last year was a huge success what do you think was the biggest contributing factor to this?

People can now see the vision and the potential of a Food Festival. It has become a cliché where people can hang out with family and friends at a reasonable cost and have a good time.

What should we expect from this year’s festival?

A bigger and better organized food festival. A wider selection of food vendors showcasing both local and international cuisine which would be on display for tasting and sales. Also this year we anticipate a bigger audience and an unavoidable involvement of the international community.

What are the benefits for food vendors who sign up to be a part of this year’s festival?

Better visibility, 100% sales with maximum profit because our booths are affordable. They will have a wider audience to cater to which will give them accessibility to a larger clientele to grow their businesses. Its also a great launch pad for new products or existing products. Whichever way you look at it, this year is a win- win situation for anyone who gets involved. We are also working on a partnership for this year’s event to make it a mega food festival.

With so many food festivals popping up in Lagos and Nigeria what makes your food festival different from others?

My food festival was the first ever before anyone else even thought that food events could be a success in Nigeria. So the originality sets us miles apart from others. We have a larger audience and it’s one event per year so people don’t get bored. All vendors in the past can testify to sales and patronage even after the event. Generally it has been positive response since we kicked off in 2012.

So far what has been the biggest success with your festival? What are you most proud of?

Faith in the growth of the event and a good Support system. Miss. Safiat, Mr. Taofick, TheSocialyte PR, BDX and I have worked tirelessly to ensure the success of each and every event, without all their support I would not have been able to get were I am today with the food festival.

How do you measure success? By profit earned? Cultural impact? Sheer popularity?

Cultural Impact and sheer popularity, the fact that people recognize the brand and want to associate with it is a huge success to me.

How can people be a part of the festival this year?

You can contact us on via email info@tasteoffng. com Or you can register via our website at ww.tasteoffng.com or call us on 070082783633.

Do you attend any other food festivals in a professional or personal capacity?

Personal capacity, I have been to different food festivals around the world and I see the huge growth potentials. So we will continue to be consistent in what we do and be original.

What do you see in the festival’s future? Can you see it expanding even further?

Currently we have a database of over 200 food vendors in Lagos state and most of whom we have a relationship with and we plan to expand this database across nigeria.

We plan to have a Taste Off Food Festival in Major cities around Nigeria.

The festival is also evolving to be a Food Festival Brand where we partner with state governments or other events i.e food, cultural, sports etc.

These events do not necessarily want to handle the food festival aspect of their event. Currently we have a database of over 200 food vendors in Lagos state and most of whom we have a relationship with and we plan to expand this database across Nigeria.