The Shoalhaven Food Network (SFN) want more local hospitality businesses to join its new network of industry representatives.
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The SFN held their inaugural industry meeting at Destiny's Restaurant in Nowra TAFE on Monday, June 8.
An evolution of The Huskisson and Jervis Bay Food Network (HJBFN), the meeting was joined by over 20 Shoalhaven hospitality industry representatives with another 30 unable to attend due to COVID restrictions.
"The sky's the limit with what we can do," said the meeting's leader Di Laver - a former Senior Head Teacher of Tourism and Hospitality at Nowra TAFE.
The community based organisation was formed to promote the food and hospitality culture in the Shoalhaven and met to discuss their almost complete website, elect coordinators for townships around the South Coast and begin works on a Shoalhaven food month event to be held in August.
Six years ago, around the time of Mrs Laver's retirement, she and other passionate industry people started the HJBFN which ran major hospitality events in Huskisson during the off-peak months of May and June.
"Lots of chefs and business owners from around the Shoalhaven were looking at what we did at Huskisson as a success story and they wanted that to happen to them but they were time poor," said Mrs Laver.
She said this network expanded the original idea she and others came up with to Berry, Kangaroo Valley, Nowra, Milton and Ulladulla.
"It's just the first step in bringing together hospitality operators - so that means producers, breweries, wineries, pastry chefs, chefs, bakeries and hospitality owners," she said.
"We've got the opportunity of getting some money from Shoalhaven City Council to start an all-inclusive go-to hospitality website directory where anybody that wanted anything to do with hospitality can go there and find the answer to whatever they need.
"Whether that be an event coordinator, a caterer, a brewer, a pastry chef or just a beautiful celebration cake."
She said this was the first time that she had seen so many diverse hospitality operators come together.
"Everyone's completely enthused by the sound of it and they're not going home," she said.
"We're trying to have a forum where people can come together that are in the gambit of the hospitality industry in a cohesive and collaborative way - and that's what community is about.
"We've got so much talent, like Chef Nick Gardner from Hampden Deli, Dining & School who was the sous chef at Tetsuya's - one of the most famous restaurants in Australia, or the chef from James Kitchen at Huskisson who did an apprenticeship at the Intercontinental in Sydney and another at a Michelin star restaurant in China.
"We just want to showcase the Shoalhaven as a good ethical food destination and what better place to have our inaugural meeting than Nowra TAFE because TAFE does wonderful things ... and of course I'm always going to be a TAFEY."
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Sponsored by local gourmet food business Flavours Shoalhaven and supported by Bomaderry TAFE and Destination NSW, part of the network's function is to give members the opportunity to seek out training support from Peter O'Kelly who is the head teacher of Hospitality at TAFE.
"This is another opportunity with trying to encourage the small producers to belong so that they get to meet the chefs and the chefs get to meet the producers because producers are notoriously small operators," she said.
She said one of the challenges at the moment was the difficulty in finding chefs with record numbers of job vacancies. The growth of the forum in members would support the network in dealing with this challenge, according to Mrs Laver.
"It's a whole lot easier to do something worthwhile together than trying to do it yourself," she said.
Until the website goes live, local businesses who wish to join the network can get in touch via secretarysfni@gmail.com.
