The Rhubarb Festival is one of Wakefield’s flagship events, attracting thousands of visitors into the city centre. For Wakefield BID, it provides a key opportunity to support businesses by helping them benefit from increased footfall and creating a vibrant, welcoming city-centre environment.
In the lead-up to and during the festival, Wakefield BID is delivering a range of activity focused on business promotion, placemaking and encouraging visitors to explore more of Wakefield.
Supporting businesses through the Rhubarb Food & Drink Trail
Wakefield BID has delivered the Rhubarb Food & Drink Trail, encouraging visitors to explore cafés, bars and restaurants across the city centre. The trail showcases Wakefield’s diverse food and drink offer while helping to spread footfall across different streets and areas.
Showcasing businesses in the Food Demo Tent
Wakefield BID has supported businesses taking part in the Food Demo Tent, giving local food and drink businesses the opportunity to showcase their products, skills and stories to large festival audiences. These live demonstrations help raise business profiles, encourage engagement with visitors and drive interest back into city-centre venues.
Business and Window Display Competition
To help create a strong festival atmosphere across the city centre, Wakefield BID is running a Business and Window Display Competition, encouraging businesses to dress their shops for the Rhubarb Festival. The competition helps create a cohesive, festive look throughout the city, improves visual appeal and encourages visitors to explore beyond the main event spaces.
Placemaking and city-centre presentation
As part of its placemaking work, Wakefield BID has installed city-centre banners promoting Ey Up Wakefield. These banners help enhance the look and feel of the city, reinforce Wakefield’s identity and create a sense of occasion during the festival period.
Family-friendly activity that supports businesses
Wakefield BID is also running a Rhubarb Scavenger Hunt, designed to encourage families to move around the city centre. By placing trail points in business windows, the activity increases dwell time and introduces new audiences to a wide range of shops, cafés and venues.
Promoting businesses through Wakefield BID channels
Alongside on-the-ground activity, Wakefield BID is promoting participating businesses through its Ey Up Wakefield and Wakefield BID marketing channels, helping to extend the reach of the festival and highlight the strength of Wakefield’s city-centre offer.
Thomas Wales, Chief Executive of Wakefield BID, said:
“The Rhubarb Festival brings a huge number of people into the city, and our focus is on making sure businesses are well placed to benefit from that. Through trails, competitions, placemaking and targeted promotion, we’re helping to increase visibility, encourage people to explore more of Wakefield and support our city-centre businesses.”
Get involved in future Wakefield BID events
Wakefield BID delivers a wide programme of activity throughout the year, designed to support businesses, drive footfall and enhance the city centre.
If you would like to get involved in future events email us at info@wakefieldbid.co.uk and the team will be happy to help.
