Home > Relish Austin > Archives > 2011 > May > 18 > Entry
Unsolicited advice for C3, Food & Wine magazine as they create new Austin Food and Wine Festival
At a press conference last night, Charlie Jones of C3, with help from chefs Tyson Cole and Tim Love and even mayor Lee Leffingwell, announced that the Texas Hill Country Wine and Food Festival was becoming the Austin Food & Wine Festival.
This isn’t just a change of name, folks.
The Austin-based C3 hosts some of the biggest music festivals in the country, and Food & Wine magazine is behind successful food festivals including the Aspen Food & Wine Classic and the South Beach Wine & Food Festival.
That these two companies are working together on the Austin Food & Wine Festival is a huge deal for Austin. The Texas Hill Country Wine and Food Festival was, arguably, already the biggest food festival in the state, but it was a regional festival that attracted visitors from, perhaps, a three-hour radius around Austin.
But with the backing of these major players, this new festival means that just days after South by Southwest ends next year, Austin will again be thrust into the national spotlight, but this time, entirely for its food culture.
Now, no one asked me for advice on how to run the new event — and if anyone knows how to pull these kinds of things off, it’s C3 and Food & Wine — but I’ve been hearing enough questions and concerns from readers that I thought I’d share some anyway:
Plan wisely for crowds. If people are traveling from outside Austin to come here for a big food festival, they won’t return if it’s too crowded or poorly executed. C3’s first big foray into food events in Austin was last year’s Gypsy Picnic, a trailer food festival that became so crowded within an hour of opening that it turned into a bit of a fiasco for both vendors and guests. On the other hand, C3’s music festivals (Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits Music Festival) are good examples of managing large crowds. I haven’t been to a Food & Wine food festival, but food writer Jeff Houck of the Tampa Tribune says that certain aspects of it feel like “the mosh pit at Lollapalooza,” which isn’t exactly a good thing if you’re holding a glass of wine in your hand.
Don’t ignore regional food and wine. Saveur magazine helped put on the Texas Hill Country Wine and Food Festival for three years in the early ’00s, but I’ve heard from various sources that the partnership didn’t last because the new organizers weren’t respectful of the local food culture. “(C3 and Food & Wine) need to take into account the longterm, existing relationships within the city that the festival has made over the past 25 years,” Congress chef David Bull said at last night’s press conference. And just a hint: Like everywhere else, local is big here, so include area farmers, farmers’ markets and ranchers and you’ll do well.
Don’t let national celebrities overshadow regional talent. Everybody loves the promise of seeing someone in real life whom they’ve seen on TV, but it’s easy to feel like we’re living in the TMZ of the food world with gossip sites like Eater and others spreading across the country. Bring in some big names to introduce them to Austin, but pair them up in inventive ways with Texas notables who have been dedicated to the Austin food festival in the past.
Treat volunteers with respect. You can’t pull off big events like this without the backing of volunteers. Both C3 and Food & Wine know this, but hopefully they’ll utilize the supportive members of the food community here without making them feel used and abused. A free glass of wine and a thank you from one of those big name chefs go a long way.
Don’t forget the kids. ACL always has a huge kid area, and even though food festivals are usually centered around wine and haute cuisine, the new food festival should make room for the under 21 crowd, too. I’m not talking about dumbing down the events, but just making some of them kid-friendly with cooking activities to engage Austin’s young eaters. Chefs seem to have babies as fast as they open restaurants, so they’ll be happy to be able to include their kids in the events, too.
Spread the love. With so many people involved in the food industry here, it will be hard to include them all, but it will foster a lot of goodwill if they try to work with more than just the top 10 biggest names in food here. I understand the need to create a certain level of exclusivity, but Austin is a quickly growing city that still has somewhat of a small town feel. Burning bridges or kicking longtime food and wine festival partners to the curb won’t help get this new festival off on the right foot.
Offer low-cost ways to participate. Sure, people will always spring for the $100 tasting tickets or even $1,000 VIP tables, but offering low-cost points of entry will allow you to host the expensive events without pissing off everyone (which is most of us) who can’t afford them.
Just a few ideas from my corner of the Austin food world. It’ll be exciting to see what this newly reconfigured festival looks like, I just hope I’ve recovered from SXSW enough to fully appreciate it.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Food in the news
Comments
When commenting, we ask that you keep things civil and abide by our Visitor Agreement. To report comment abuse, click here.