The Taste team from Longridge High School are celebrating their successes over the past nine months with a presentation and buffet today at Longridge High School. Their guests included parents of the pupils involved, the Ribble Valley MP Nigel Evans, the mayor and mayoress of Longridge, Coun. Rupert Swarbrick and Katherine Swarbrick, Derek Hicks from Longridge Civic Hall, the head teacher of Barnacre Road Primary School, Simon Wallis and the manager of Sainsbury’s in Longridge. The managing director of the company (which is now liquidated), Thomas Calderbank, and his team gave numerous presentations on their progress over the past nine months and took ten minutes of questions and answers from the audience.

The MP for the Ribble Valley congratulated the team on their efforts. In a short speech to the audience, he said that the team should go into the forthcoming competition confident and to enjoy it. He invited the team on a tour of the Houses of Parliament if they reach the national final in London in July. The mayor of Longridge, Rupert Swarbrick also said he was astounded at the team’s efforts and offered the company the chance to continue under the Longridge Social Enterprise Company umbrella. The company was a member of the Longridge Business Group, run by Alistair at the Longridge Gallery. The head teacher of Longridge High School, Jane Green, spoke to the audience about when she came to the company’s food festival in November, saying the experience was “surreal”. She went to congratulate the team for their progress and thanked the guests for coming.

From next Thursday, the team will compete against Preston schools to be the winner of the Preston Area. The team face stiff competition from 4 other Young Enterprise companies, including ‘Eclectic’ from St Cecilia’s High School and ‘For the Occasion’ from Our Lady’s High School in Preston. The team are confident of winning the first heat of the competition. The Managing Director, Thomas Calderbank said “Our company is judged on three aspects; a trade stand we have produced ourselves, a business report, which is already being judged, and a 5 minute presentation. We have already seen what our competition is doing and we have developed strategies to hopefully beat them!”. If the company win the first round, they go up against Lancashire schools and Preston North End and then against North West schools in Manchester.