The grocery industry’s must-attend festival for networking, brand visibility and team recognition returned with world-class headline acts.
Scissor Sisters headlined Barcode Festival 2026, as the grocery industry’s biggest one-day live music and fundraising event was held in the iconic grounds of Kenwood House in London.
Organised by GroceryAid, to raise awareness and vital funds for the financial, emotional and practical support it provides to grocery workers, the event brought together thousands of professionals from across grocery, FMCG and the wider supply chain for an unforgettable day of world-class entertainment, brand experiences and industry networking.
Kieran Hemsworth GroceryAid CEO, tells Grocery Trader the biggest challenges that GroceryAid faces and the favourite thing about his job.
How long have you been at GroceryAid?
I’ve been there for two and a half years.
Where did you work previously?
I’ve worked in the grocery industry for about 32 years. I started my career at Unilever and then did 16 years at Coca Cola. I ran Ginsters Cornish pasty company before running PZ Cussons’ UK and European business. I was then lucky enough to get a job at GroceryAid.
What is the purpose of Barcode?
The purpose of Barcode is a number of different things. It is primarily for people in the industry to have the most amazing time and day out, and we’ve got 4600 people coming today. We’ve got 100 brands activating each one of these little activations. We’ve got 1000 retailers here today. It’s a great opportunity for brands to activate in front of retailers.
But then, of course, the other side of it is that we want to raise as much money as possible, and out of those 4600 people, we’ll raise just over a million pounds, and that million pounds will go directly into our welfare budget, so that we can help more people. The last objective here is about awareness, and of course, if you’ve got 4600 people coming in, we can talk to them about GroceryAid.
You can see all the new brand activation going on around here, and that’s really important that we do that, because awareness is probably our biggest barrier in terms of helping more people.
What music acts and entertainers will be featured at Barcode this year?
Right, I’m testing you in terms of whether you’ve heard of many of them. First off, we have Wet Leg from the Isle of Wight, a very good, up to the minute and relevant act. Then, I think this is going to be my favourite, we’ve got the amazing Faithless, if you were clubbing in the late 1990s you would know Faithless very well. And then, finally, as our headliner, we have the most amazing Scissor Sisters, and the show that they do is just brilliant. So, we have three absolutely fantastic top line acts today,
How popular was the demand for tickets?
It was really popular. I think this is the third incarnation of Barcode. We started out back in 2016 in a site that held about 1500 people. We filled that very quickly. Then we moved to Magazine, where we held about 4000 people. We filled that as well, so we’ve always been looking for a bigger site, and we picked this one, Kenwood House. Demand continues to grow, and we’ve got 4600 people here. We’d like more to come.
How does that demand compare to last year?
It’s pretty much level with the demand of last year.
How many sponsors does Barcode have?
We’ve got 100 brands activating, so those brands are bringing sponsorship. Then we’ve got Mondelez doing the Glass and a Half stage, and then we’ve got Edgewell Personal Care, whose brand is Bulldog Skincare, doing the main stage, and they are the two big sponsors.
What are the biggest challenges that GroceryAid faces?
Our main objective is to try and help more people, so last year we helped 20,000 people. But we know the need in the industry is much higher than that, and the one barrier that we’ve got to overcome in terms of helping more people is awareness. That’s why we’ve done the rebrand, we’ve run our first campaign, where we spent some money on social media, outdoor advertising and radio advertising to raise that level of awareness. We did our first campaign from December through to March, and we saw a 32% increase in financial applications over that time period. So we know it works, but we’ve just got to get the message out there that GroceryAid is available to anybody who works in the industry who’s going through a tough time.
What are your plans for Barcode for next year?
We don’t know yet. It will be the same site again, it will be equally world class acts and we want to get more and more people coming along and enjoying themselves.
What is your favourite thing about your job?
Well, that’s easy. My favourite thing about my job is our ability to help the number of people that we help, which is 20,000 people. We want to help an awful lot more. We spend somewhere between £6.5m to £7m each year on our welfare offer, helping those people. There’s no better thing that you can do as a job.
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