Canberra businesses are worried they are being forgotten after a local street food festival was not renewed for this year's Enlighten Festival, and instead replaced by interstate food vendors.
Canberra-based street food festival The Forage, part of Enlighten Festival last year for the first time, was unsuccessful in its application to be part of the event again this year.
The Noodle Night Market will also not be part of the Enlighten Festival this year.
The successful proposal was from Street Food Live, a Sydney-based food festival featuring 14 food trucks from interstate, that were previously part of Vivid Sydney.
Civic Vietnamese restaurant Miss Van's was one of the vendors in last year's Forage at Enlighten. It applied both with The Forage and separately to be part of Enlighten this year but was unsuccessful.
Owner Andrew Duong said it was sad to see the ACT government supporting interstate vendors over local Canberra businesses.
"It's quite disappointing, unfortunately. Especially after 2022 and the success of the event. That 2022 event was absolutely massive," Mr Duong said.
"The majority of the vendors there were local vendors. These are people that do regular pop-up stores and food events and all of these operators are local Canberra restaurant owners as well.
"It was a disappointment this year that the ACT government didn't include us again, and decided to go with an interstate operator."
Mr Duong also said there was a lack of communication from the ACT government and he was not notified of the rejection until two weeks ago.
"A lot of vendors did bank on being in attendance this year and it was a bit disappointing and a bit of a letdown to be advised two weeks out that we weren't going to be accepted. A lot of us pencilled out that date in our schedules to attend the event," Mr Duong said.
He said Canberra businesses like his had lost out on a "significant" amount of revenue from not being a part of Enlighten.
"I understand that the government has to go to tender and has to look at the options around the event efficiently. But it's just disappointing and disheartening that there's a lack of the ACT's own business involvement this year," he said.
"Especially after the past few years, it would have been nice to see a bit of revenue stay in Canberra."
An ACT government spokesperson said Events ACT ran two competitive tender processes for food vendors for Enlighten Festival 2023.
"The first was for a curated food festival experience, focused on the Enlighten Illuminations. Street Food Live was successful in this process and features 14 interstate food providers," the spokesperson said.
"A second process was run for individual food vendors for Enlighten Illuminations (Festival Hub), Lights! Canberra! Action!, Canberra Balloon Spectacular, Symphony in the Park and Canberra Day.
"The process for individual food vendors was highly competitive with 95 applications received - 44 of these were successful and of those 41 are local, with the remaining three interstate.
"Symphony in the Park and Canberra Day will feature 100 per cent local food vendors."
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