Caper Byron Bay Food and Culture Festival is an idea that sparked a few years ago after a tour of other food and arts festivals around Australia but the real inspiration came from our growing culinary scene. Across the board the quality of our food is so good and of course we're so fortunate to have an abundance of quality produce grown right here and a passionate farming community. Further to that, in the past few years the region has seen the arrival of a number of highly acclaimed chefs so it felt like the right time to bring something like this to life.

Then the COVID pandemic hit and that influenced the concept even more. As we all know the hospitality industry was one of the hardest hit by the pandemic along with tourism, arts and music and these are all industries that Byron Shire support in a large way. It wasn't enough to just be a food festival. Byron Bay is an incredible hub of creative talent and entrepreneurs and we wanted to create something that would support all these industries as well as the wider community that has struggled to connect over the last couple of years. Of course, the community was hit another major blow with the flooding disaster in March which has spurred us on even more to create something really special to bring this beautiful community together.