Thousands of visitors pass through the Crickhowell Resource and Information Centre’s door in a month, and one of the first things they see is a display of local produce.

“We want to showcase the local community and the abundance of excellent produce made all around Crickhowell to visitors,” says Centre Manager, Jan Morgan.  “There are plenty of great food shops in town already, and we don’t want to compete with them, so we concentrate on things that visitors might want to take away as gifts.  Visitors here are looking for an authentic experience of Crickhowell and want to take a bit of it back home with them.”

“We have limited display space and presentation is very important to us,” Jan says, “local producers need to get their packaging and their logos right so that people want to pick it up off the shelf.  We are always looking for new suppliers and are always ready to talk to them about packaging and what we think works to promote its origins in the Brecon Beacons/Black Mountains and Crickhowell so that they are attractive to the different markets in Crickhowell.”

Local producers featured on display in CRiC include the Black Mountains Smokery down the road, Talgarth Mill, Black Mountain Preserves, local honey and Marshmallows from Llanfrynach.  They sell Welsh Farmhouse Apple Juice from Crickhowell, and a delivery of fresh bread from Talgarth is available once a month.

Local suppliers are important to CRiC for other reasons: “Because we have a limited amount of space, having local suppliers means we can get another delivery fairly quickly if we run out.  Supporting local producers in this way means we are supporting local people and local jobs as well,” Jan said.

Article and photographs by Tim Jones, As You See It Media

CRiC Visitor Centre