Purple Love Week 2009 - Seven days of loving great food!

Wow! What a response there was to our first ever Deli Of The Year competition – more than 11,000 votes with over 400 delis participating and over 100 full entries which were judged by an independent panel of judges on Wednesday this week. The judging process really was extremely tough and rigorous and we are indebted to the panel of highly esteemed and professional folk who gave up their time to judge all the entries received… There was a massive amount of reading and concentration, much discussion, loads of deliberation and just a little bit of heated debate – not an easy task at all and the team here at Olives Et Al need to say a huge thank you to and acknowledge the dedication, professionalism and seriousness with which the task was taken on by all the judges

Now: We thought we should let you all know as soon as possible what the outcome was so, without further ado, here are the results!

The finalists are (in alphabetical order):

• Lawson’s Deli
• Maldon Deli
• Picnic Fayre
• Provender Brown
• Thyme Out Deli

These 5 finalists will be getting visited during July for the final stage of judging. Of these five, one will be the overall winner which will be announced at the Speciality and Fine Food Fair on 5th September.

A huge congratulations to all who participated and entered the competition, it’s been incredibly successful and simply wouldn’t have been possible without the eight judges who selected these delis and deliberated over all the delis for the better part of a day.

So as you know the pedigree, calibre and nature of the judges who worked so hard on this here they are:

• Sam Rosen-Nash - Grocery Buyer, Fortnum & Mason
• Susan Low - Deputy Editor, delicious.magazine
• Nicola Whiteford - Group Editor, Speciality Food and Great British Food
• Louise Miles - Editor of Speciality Food
• Lydia Slater - Food Writer, Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and Evening Standard
• Lucas Hollweg - Food writer, Sunday Times Style Magazine
• Mick Whitworth - Editor, Fine Food Digest, Guild of Fine Food
• Joanne Myram - Positive PR

Hope you agree we put together a truly outstanding team!

We’ll update with more information soon, but meanwhile, congratulations to our finalists and all the delis and their customers who took part and made this competition such a success!