Originally called the Food Innovation Cluster, Tastebuds Collective was initially a collaboration between Broadland District Council, the University of East Anglia, Hethel Innovation and the New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership.
Working closely to this day with the Broadland Food Innovation Centre, a key infrastructure project aimed at fostering food sector innovation through the provision of state-of-the-art facilities and business support for food and drink businesses.
The Broadland Food Innovation Centre played a pivotal role in laying the foundation for the cluster's activities, allowing food and drink innovators to collaborate, experiment, and access much-needed technical and business support.
This initiative emerged as a response to the region's growing demand for resources, networking opportunities, and commercial collaboration, aiming to unite food and drink businesses, academia and research along with the public sector under a common platform.
We have since registered the collective as a limited by guarantee, non-profit company, to fully evolve into a trade organisation for the food and drink community, with strong roots in Norfolk and Suffolk, but able to support further afield and bring in network connections from across the country and Europe. Tastebuds Collective, beyond its' membership, is a central hub of contacts with over 1,000 organisations in the wider network.
Tastebuds is proud to be supported by a group of founding sponsors who have provided funding to enable us to maximise the support we can provide our members and to keep the cost of membership as low as possible.
Our founding sponsors include the original partners, supplemented by wider support from the Norwich Research Park and its' world-leading research. Tastebuds is also proud to be supported by leading companies from different sectors as well as leading local food manufacturers. Our sponsors all work together to strengthen Tastebuds, support its' goals and help shape the food industry of tomorrow.
Meet your Advisory Board
Our founding sponsors (scroll down for details) form an advisory board and will be joined by an elected member - all members can put themselves forward to be a representative. We will be drawing at random a food and drink member to be invited to join the board for a year, to ensure you're being listened to and to gain a different voice and perspective.
Further to our advisory board we work closely with a range of local, national and international partners who help our members on their growth and innovation journey, these are our 'community partners'.
View all membership options Meet your community partners
