Abergavenny Food Festival: An insight into UK maple syrup consumption

Last month, Maple from Canada UK travelled to Wales for the Abergavenny Food Festival to promote the use of pure Canadian maple syrup and collect consumer feedback on a potential new maple product, maple cones.

The maple cones proved a great success, with our market research survey evidencing that 92% of our ‘tasters’ enjoyed eating the product.

Over the course of the weekend, the team working on the stand educated consumers on why pure Canadian maple syrup is the best in the market, and, considering their sampling feedback, we collated three key takeaway points from the festival.

Educating a new audience

Many people seemed to associate maple syrup with UK store-bought products, which are often a maple-sugar blend, compared to pure Canadian maple syrup. Our team ensured to educate customers on the process of how maple syrup is made and the positive impact that buying pure Canadian maple syrup has on cooking and baking.

From sample tasting at the stand and learning about the formation of maple syrup, many consumers provided feedback to the team that the sample tasted much better than they had expected, with a large proportion expecting it to be much sweeter and full of refined sugar, rather than having its more rounded flavour profile.

Visitors to the stand were also pleased from learning something new and were keen to understand where they’d be able to purchase pure Canadian maple syrup.

The versatility of maple syrup

As maple syrup is a natural sweetening ingredient, many people don’t consider that it can be used to enhance savoury dishes too. The Maple from Canada stand presented a wide range of materials, including pancake recipe booklets, Autumn recipe booklets and, of course, the ‘Cooking with maple, naturally’ cookbook.

These all proved very popular with members of the public and many expressed their excitement about using maple syrup in new ways and experimenting with new recipes.

Implementing maple into cooking at home

Our insightful market research survey allowed us to discover that 90% of the respondents already use pure Canadian maple syrup in their cooking and baking at home!

Educating visitors on the four maple grades and what recipes each grade can be paired with allowed for more intrigue around the ingredient and many visitors claimed that they were looking forward to trialling Maple from Canada’s recipes when they returned home from the festival.

After many discovered their first taste of maple syrup, over 62% of people that completed our survey claimed that they would incorporate the ingredient into their cooking at home.

Overall, Abergavenny Food Festival allowed our team to gain deeper insight into the UK consumption market regarding pure Canadian maple syrup and the possible introduction of maple cones.