Abstract
Research report written in the context of the Interreg Alpine Space European Project 'AlpFoodway' This Guidance Paper has the goal of supporting stakeholders at all levels to engage in collective initiatives aimed to turn the Alpine food cultural heritage into marketable offers. Specifically, it provides actional guidelines for food heritage actors, educational institutions and policy makers on how to valorise the Alpine food heritage. The proposed recommendations are based on the main findings from the AlpFoodway INTERREG Alpine Space project (2016-19). They represent the main output of the AlpFoodway work package (WP) T2, focused on marketing and promotional aspects, which investigated through desk research, field studies, and digital ethnography of social media the commercial valorisation of the Alpine food heritage. They also integrate key insights from the AlpFoodway WP T1 (inventorying and legal safeguarding through intellectual property rights) and T3 (pilot actions) and provide a more in-depth description of some of the principles and guidelines laid down in the AlpFoodway Charter of the Alpine Food Heritage and Vision Paper on the Alpine Food Heritage that the WP T4 (networking and awareness) has developed based on input from all other WPs. Thanks to data from numerous organisations and communities obtained from different disciplinary bases (marketing, consumer culture theory, anthropology, legal studies, etc.), it was possible to identify best practices, typical competence gaps, and develop guidelines for actors involved in the commercial valorisation of Alpine food heritage. To illustrate how to implement these guidelines in a concrete manner, the document briefly reports several best practices from Alpine regions in France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Germany and Slovenia.