#SmallCityRecipes Widget IS LIVE!

As you may well imagine, when the Small City Team gets together it becomes a bit of an ideas–fest. Too many creative minds sitting in one meeting do tend to get carried away a wee bit!  As the ringleader of many a whacky vision I make no apologies for this fact. In fact, I'm extremely proud of just how many of you love to read our fab online magazine and get involved in our big ideas. 

At the end of last summer Anna and I were busy ooo-ing and ahh-ing over Gill’s recipe photographs; as a life-long ‘Buy Local, Eat Local’ drum banger I was desperate to find a way to put these tasty recipes in front of visitors to the area.

For me, a huge part of the experience of another city or town is tucking into their food and drink.  Eating out, buying local treats and browsing Farmers Markets are all my idea of holiday heaven. I will be planning dinner while eating breakfast, loving every minute of it.

I also know that our local delis, butchers, farm shops and grocers love to see tourists and are always looking to find routes in to chat to our visitors. Surely there had to be a way to link everyone up using Gill’s gorgeous pics and the fast-growing readership that we’re enjoying here at Small City.

With everyone busy thinking of ways to reach out to accommodation providers, Anna The Genius came forward with the now famous #SmallCity line… “We could maybe make a recipe widget?”

The minute she’d said it I had a single track mind and quite frankly pestered the life out of her to make it happen.  While Anna got going wth the techy side of things, we got busy with Visit Scotland, Perthshire Tourism Partnership and the ASSC.

'Would self-catering accommodation providers like to use this on their websites?' we asked.

We'd be giving them a service for their guests and fresh beautiful content from #SmallCityRecipes every week. All they had to do to make this happen was paste in a bit of Anna-Code; once! Of course they said yes. Then the delis asked us if they could get involved and the Farm Shops asked us if they could get involved and we knew we'd hit the link-up jackpot!  

We trialled it on a few websites with great success; Eco Camp Glenshee in particular deserve huge thanks for allowing us to practice the various versions of our widget! After we had success there Gill’s own website, Cloag Farm Cottages and the wonderful Provender Brown all ran testing for us and became the first to install a #SmallCityRecipes widget.  

Here’s where it gets even better; our widget perfectly bridges Scotland’s year of Food and Drink in 2015 and the year of Innovation, Architecture and Design in 2016 meaning Visit Scotland have been very complimentary. 

Jim Clarkson, Regional Partnerships Director (East of Scotland) from VisitScotland was at the launch we held at Provender Brown in Perth’s George Street.    Here's what he had to say:

“This innovative approach to showcasing Perthshire’s amazing natural larder is very much in keeping with the spirit of the Year of Innovation, Architecture and Design. 

Digital tools such as these enable visitors to access and share more information and experiences than ever before.  We are therefore delighted to be supporting Small City and the rollout of the #SmallCityRecipe widget.”

As well as Visit Scotland, we invited Perthshire Tourism Partnership and the Association of Scottish Self Caterers to join for the launch and we were chuffed to bits to hear them all singing the praises of our widget!

The widget is now available for ANY of you to use on your website. It is free of charge and will give you beautiful, weekly #SmallCityRecipes updates for your website visitors to see.  The hope is that tourists and visitors to the area will find an easy route to ‘buy local, eat local’ while on holiday and that any local folks who don’t currently know about us will find a whole new world of local, seasonal food opening up before them.  

Finally, I would like to send a huge High Five to Anna Ford and Gill Murray who are two of the most talented women I know.   This is an amazing wee digital gift for all of us to use and enjoy and it’s all down to their hard work, creative juices and big ideas. What a team!

***

If you’d like to feature the Small City Recipe Widget on your website or blog then please click here and follow the Small City Recipe Widget intsructions.  Please do send us a shout out on your social media once it’s on and remember to tag us - #PerthLoveFest #SmallCityRecipes!