I have watched with interest the voting on Local Food Hero. How was the 'wild card' actually selected? There are contestants with huge amounts of reviews who did not get through and others with very few that are finalists. Is this like the BBC phone in competitions where the winners were already picked prior to the competition being judged? Also why do messages that are asking questions dissappear from the boards very quickly?

I asked this same question a few days ago, but to no avail, our local butchers got numerous votes but only got through on a wild card while another butcher got through as a finalist with just a few votes - can anybody enlighten us what the criteria is?

Dear Inge1 and Porridge

Thanks very much for your query regarding our Local Food Hero. Just to explain how the competition worked. On 29 June the first round of free-entry public voting ended. Our judging panel (selected for their expertise) assessed the top 20 outlets (as voted by the public) against our published criteria in each region to determine the first five businesses to go through to the finals. Their assessment took into consideration both the public votes and their judgement of the outlets suitability based against our criteria.

For the first time we also decided that there would be a chance for the public to directly influence a finalist. With the introduction of the second-round wild card vote which continued until midnight 20 August to find the sixth finalist for each region purely on voting. So the outlet with the most votes in each region in the second-round wild card vote has earned the sixth finalist place. Both our terms and conditions and criteria are posted on our website and but I will post the links at the bottom of this message if you are intrested.

Thanks again for your query and I hope this provides a full explanation.

Kind regards


Terms and Conditions - [link]

Criteria - [link]