BOLTON businesses have been celebrating after a hugely successful food festival weekend.

The official figure for visitors to the town during the event has now been announced as 263,424 and local firms have certainly reaped the benefits, reporting bumper results.

Bolton bakery Carr’s Pasties had a stall at the food festival to complement their permanent base in Bolton Market.

Company bosses have estimated that they sold about 6,500 pasties across the course of the weekend.

Business development manager Keith O’Hara said: “Previously we haven’t had the resources to be involved with the festival, but this year we had a team in place.

“We still had no idea what to expect because obviously there was a very wide-range of exotic food on offer.

“But we are really, really pleased with the results — we said we would be happy selling 4,000 so to go much higher than that is fantastic.”

Mr O’Hara also revealed that five pence from every sale will be going to the firm’s chosen charities, Bolton Hospice and Bolton Lads and Girls Club.

Another town centre business to experience the food festival for the first time was The Coffee Grind coffee shop, which opened in Newport Street two months ago.

The council allowed the shop to have outdoor seating over the weekend and Bolton FM carried out a live broadcast, featuring Masterchef star John Torode, directly from the shop.

Owner Nigel Lyons said: “We have had an exceptional weekend, on Saturday alone we did the equivalent of between four and five days of normal trading.”

He added: “The council and everyone involved in organising the event deserve a massive round of applause because it was fantastic.”

This year’s festival saw the newly refurbished vaults at Bolton Market Place play a key role and the Great Ale at the Vaults bar was packed from start to finish.

Owner Steve Simms said: “The queue was backing up out of the vaults for the whole four days, it was fantastic.

“Our takings were a lot higher than on a normal weekend, but its not just about that — the whole atmosphere inside the vaults and across the town was brilliant.”

Mr Simms also enjoyed a visit from fellow Australian, chef John Torode, who had a pint at the bar.

He said: “We had a nice chat. It is strange because we were actually involved in the same place in Sydney more than 25 years ago and here we were together in Bolton. It was great.”