On Monday, 20th of April, Good Food Ireland celebrated its 20-year anniversary with a landmark Conference and Showcase Dinner at the InterContinental Dublin, bringing together leaders from Ireland’s food, drink, hospitality, tourism, farming, seafood, and wider industry.

The organisation, founded by Margaret Jeffares, has spent two decades connecting farmers, fishers, food producers, chefs, and hospitality providers under a trusted all-island standard, while helping to strengthen Ireland’s reputation as a premium destination for food and drink experiences. 

The conference theme: 20 Years of Taste. From Local Roots to Global Connections, focussed on how collaboration between Ireland’s Agri food, fisheries and tourism sectors can drive innovation, sustainability, and long-term growth, while examining the future of Ireland’s evolving global food identity.

Key Insights from the Conference

  • Good Food Ireland has played a pivotal role in aligning producers, chefs, fishermen, distributors, and tourism stakeholders around shared quality benchmarks, ensuring authenticity, reliability, and excellence are consistently delivered to visitors. This standard led approach continues to underpin Ireland’s reputation as a premium food destination, where value is driven by quality, trust, and experience.
  • Food is now a major driver of destination choice for tourists, with 3 in 10 visitors stating it is a key influence and over 70% indicating it has some impact on their decision to travel, particularly in key international markets such as the US, France, and Spain.
  • 72% of visitors expect Ireland’s food quality to be good or excellent, reinforcing the importance of maintaining strong, consistent standards across the sector.
  • Chefs were recognised as key drivers of change, playing an increasingly influential role in shaping consumer expectations through sourcing decisions, menu design, and storytelling. However, the conference also emphasised the importance of closer collaboration between chefs, producers, suppliers, and farmers to embed seasonality, reduce reliance on imports, and ensure Irish ingredients are consistently prioritised across hospitality.
  • A major focus of the conference was the strategic partnership between Good Food Ireland and BIM, aimed at strengthening the connection between Ireland’s seafood production and hospitality sectors. The collaboration supports a more joined up “sea to plate” approach, improving communication, supply consistency, and awareness, while increasing the use of sustainable Irish seafood on menus nationwide. It also highlights opportunities to diversify offerings through underutilised species and enhance storytelling around sustainability to build greater consumer confidence.
  • The conference also addressed wider structural challenges within Ireland’s food system, including a declining domestic production base with just 74 commercial vegetable growers remaining. Despite producing approximately €19 billion in food annually, Ireland exports around 90% of its output while importing approximately €12.5 billion of food, including 83% of fruit and vegetables and most grains. These imbalances highlight the need for stronger cross sector collaboration to better align production with domestic demand, improve resilience, and strengthen food security.

“Over the past two decades we have built strong foundations across all sectors of the Irish food scene. Importantly, the next phase of growth will depend on scaling Ireland’s food tourism offering into a more consistent, visible, and globally compelling proposition. This will require deeper collaboration across tourism, hospitality, and producers, supported by trusted standards, to strengthen international confidence and Ireland’s competitive positioning.” Margaret Jeffares, Founder and CEO of Good Food Ireland

The Good Food Ireland Conference reaffirmed the organisation’s position as a leading authority in Irish food tourism, marking more than 20 years of proven impact in building a trusted, premium, and internationally recognised food tourism brand for Ireland.

The event concluded with the Good Food Ireland Showcase Dinner, an authentic farm-to-fork experience. Guests enjoyed seasonal dishes crafted from premium Irish ingredients while meeting the producers and chefs behind them, highlighting provenance, sustainability and the Good Food Ireland ethos in action.

Website

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