THIS year's Yum! Festival was the busiest ever as thousands of food-lovers flocked to Hull city centre, say organisers.
Food, drink, live music and cookery demonstrations proved to be the perfect ingredients to make HullBID's fourth event their most successful yet.
It was more than just pies and pickles at the three-day event, with more stalls than ever before.
Kathryn Shillito, HullBID city centre manager, said: "It was the busiest ever.
"The feedback from the businesses is that is was also the best ever from their point of view.
"Events like this really do raise the profile of the city and create a buzz that there is so much going on.
"People are visiting Hull city centre, seeing what is going on and taking it seriously.
"The Yum! Festival showed once again that events like these will attract people into the city centre, and we want to build on that."
The festival, which kicked off on Thursday and ran until Saturday, included a range of cookery demonstrations, live music and children's activities in an around Queen Victoria Square.
All the shows on the Main Dish stage were free, from cookery demonstrations by top chefs, who gave decorative tips for doughnuts, to live performances by local bands.
Rick Davis, a member of local band Soul Patrol, said: "We had people coming in from out of town and making a big event of it.
"The audience covered a wide range of ages because soul music has such wide appeal. The atmosphere was fantastic.
"It was a great idea to add more live music and it was just the right type of music to get people on their feet enjoying a night out."
Businesses reaped the rewards from the event.
Judy Newlove, who makes and decorates cakes at Sugar 'n' Spice in Paragon Arcade, said: "If anything, we were under-prepared because this was the first time we have done an event like this and we were working through the night to make sure we had enough stock.
"Our cupcakes were very popular and so were our cake-decorating demonstrations.
"A lot of people didn't know what we do, so it was nice to be able to show them.
"We also made some good contacts, which will help us to come up with some new business ideas."
Guy Falkingham, owner of the Yorkshire Brewing Company, was on hand to help visitors wash down the tasty offerings.
Mr Falkingham, who also organised music for the event, said: "We had to bring in extra stock because it was so busy.
"We were changing the beers every day and people were enjoying the opportunity to try something different.
"The idea of adding more music worked really well, with acoustic on Thursday, soul on Friday and folk on Saturday.
"We're looking forward to working at other festivals in the city centre in the coming weeks."
