It seems like every city in America is hosting some kind of food festival these days.
Some are quirky, like the Gilroy Garlic Festival, first launched in 1979, and the Waikiki Spam Jam, formerly held in Austin, Minn., home of Hormel Foods. Then there are Mac Daddies, like the country’s largest Taste of Chicago, which has attracted nearly 4 million visitors in recent years, as well as the posh Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, which costs $2,950 a ticket.
Perhaps it’s a sign that we’ve reached peak food festivals, one of the country’s most respected food and drink events Food Network New York City Wine & Food Festival (NYCWF)This week it’s making a historic move from the pier on Manhattan’s West Side to the Brooklyn Army Terminal in Sunset Park. How much this will fill the city treasury has not been estimated yet, but business leaders could not be more excited than this. “Sixty-two million people come to New York City every year, and only 15 million come to Brooklyn,” says Randy Pierce, president and CEO of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce. “How could the restaurant landscape and the community at large not benefit from the arrival of NYCWF”?
With more than 100 restaurants participating in the 80 demos, dinners and parties — not to mention dedicated ferries from Manhattan — Pierce, a self-described “eternal optimist,” is hopeful of a successful new location on closing day on October 20. Can celebrate.
Now officially part of American pop culture, food and wine festivals often make waves far beyond their core product of food and drink. Researcher Edwin N., a former professor at the University of South Florida. According to Torres, “As visitors, culinary experts and locals experience the food and wine festival’s offerings, they develop a stronger sense of community. , , [and] Attachment to hosting sites.”
And Brooklyn could be the next major beneficiary of this phenomenon.
Food and wine festivals are nothing new. Historians trace the trend of celebrating local produce and cuisine to the time around the Great Depression, when money was tight and neighbors relied on community food gatherings to feed themselves. There is no official clearinghouse of how many such events exist in the US today, but there is a website Bestfoodanddrynevents.com Lets visitors search among more than 1,600 festivals in 50 states, drawing more than 1,000 attendees annually. And that doesn’t include the weirdest ones, like West Virginia’s Roadkill Cook-Off, whose culinary offerings were recently described “The animal usually found dead on the side of the highway is shown. For example: snake, armadillo, groundhog, possum or squirrel.
The food festival trend actually began in 1984, when Tom Ryder, then-president of American Express Publishing, used his newly acquired Food & Wine magazine to create a small wine-focused, destination-driven concept event in Aspen. “Towns all over the country may have created smaller versions of something similar,” says Dana Cowin, editor-in-chief of Food & Wine for 21 years. “But his idea of using wine to transform a ski town into a summer travel destination was new. And remember, we didn’t have celebrity chefs yet.”
After that, the festival scene really started cooking with gas. The annual June Food & Wine Classic in Aspen fills its roster with Food & Wine magazine’s top chefs and restaurateurs. Cowin says she will plan the entire editorial calendar around the event, which she and her staff have dubbed “Camp for Chefs.”
She recalls, “There were just 4,000 ticket holders in a small, beautiful town for three days, mostly our readers, so you could easily meet recognizable chefs at lunchtime.”
The Aspen event was impacted by — but survived — COVID, which has hurt many festivals in states with strict social-distancing rules. Taxable Aspen festival sales in June 2019 were $66 million, of which $18 million was in accommodations and $11 million in restaurants and bars. In the same month of 2020, taxable sales figures fell to $51.9 million, including $6 million in lodging and $8 million in the restaurant and bar industry. This is still a lot of expense for a few thousand people. In contrast, Charleston Wine + Food has generated $170.5 million in economic impact for the Charleston region since its inception in 2005, or an average of about $9 million per year (and 35,000 attendees).
Despite its small size, Aspen has been extremely influential, especially due to the launch of the Food Network in 1993 and America’s addiction to cooking shows and celebrity chefs. And so naturally, the concept was replicated. In Charlotte. In Charleston. In Austin. Whatever you say. Many draw local or regional crowds, but larger crowds can attract national visitors while having a meaningful impact on the local economy.
“People are coming to the event, they’re populating the hotels, every meal is an opportunity to dine out,” says Steven Carvel, a professor of finance at the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration. “That’s what creates money.”
He says it draws media attention to the destination as well as the chefs and restaurants.
“The cost of customer acquisition has become very high, so these high-profile festivals can be an efficient way of building a [city and chef] The fan base,” notes Carvel.
The wine and food festival scene became truly national when Lee Schrager, chief commercial officer of Southern Glassers Wine & Spirits, one of the nation’s largest wine distributors, was invited by friends to attend the Aspen Classic 25 years ago . On the flight home, he sketched out an idea for a Miami version and pitched it to his own company – starting the South Beach Wine & Food Festival in 2002.
“There was nothing on South Beach at that time,” Schrager laments. “I knew that to be successful, we needed a superstar name, but I didn’t know how to approach Alain Ducasse or Bobby Flay.”
A friend connected her to the former, and she somehow convinced the multi-Michelin-starred French chef to step into the spotlight. He also found willing partners who believed in what he was trying to build. “Miami Beach gave us the beach for free, they waived the permit fee,” recalls Schrager. “It’s going well.” [local] The partner is the most important thing.” 6,000 people attended that first year. Last year, 65,000 did.
Everyone involved benefited. According to research conducted by the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau, this year’s SOBEWFF generated an economic impact of $31.2 million and supported 6,238 jobs in the community. Since its early days, the non-profit program has raised $40 million for the Chaplin School of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Florida International University.
Encouraged by the success of the Miami festival, Schrager started the New York City Wine & Food Festival in 2005. Nearly 20 years later, Schrager believes it will remain successful in Brooklyn, but he admits the landscape has changed.
“It’s not like 25 years ago, when there were only three significant festivals” and few celebrity chefs, he admits. “Nonetheless, we provide transportation, kitchen and materials.” But, says Schrager, “never the talent,” which is ultimately the chef himself.
Now they’ve partnered with the Food Network, which helps hotels, airlines, and local tourism boards with visibility. Last year the total number of visitors to NYWFF was 39,000.
Most of all, Schrager looks for emerging chefs who are promoting a book or opening a new restaurant or releasing a product, or who have something interesting to offer.
“I have discovered New talent through festivals? No,” Schrager says. “Have I promoted young talent? Yes.” About 18 years ago they had Giada De Laurentiis and Alton Brown on their roster — today they’re household names.
This year, Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre are hosting the NYWFF inaugural party, Rachael Ray, the much-hyped Blue Moon Burger Bash. But there are a lot of chefs participating that many people may have never heard of.
Camille Becerra, chef-partner of As You Are at the Ace Hotel Brooklyn, is hosting the dinner with fellow chef (and TV cooking-show judge) Amanda Freitag, and she also has a book, “Bright Cooking,” which Just hit the shelves. “In my entire career, this was the first time I was asked to participate in the festival,” says Becerra. Which is understandable.
In addition to being overwhelmingly male-dominated, the food world has, in recent decades, become celebrity-chef driven. “My world as a chef never really crossed any of those worlds,” Becerra says. However, she is a beloved New York chef with epic power to change people’s minds. “We’re entering a really amazing phase in food,” she says. “Food is pop culture right now.”
With chefs being bona fide rock stars, there’s no reason to believe that festivals like the Big Four destinations (Aspen, New York City, Miami, Chicago) won’t inspire more imitators.
Still, at some point, the chef will become disillusioned with the diminishing benefits of traveling the country to hang out with fans, said one longtime festival insider. But for now – when scoring tickets as well as arranging travel and dining reservations can have prices similar to Taylor Swift tickets – these festivals can provide serious value and entertainment.
Whether they can make the move to industrial Brooklyn remains a mystery. The New York Festival’s move to Brooklyn is “somewhat of an experiment,” say colleagues at the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce.
