Food festivals combine fun and business with a showcase of the North Bay’s bounty.
Every couple of weeks, there seems to be another local fair celebrating a different type of food—be it olives, mustard, citrus, apples, crab, tomatoes or cheese. The events are a testament to how rich and varied the agricultural bounty of the North Bay is, and, as culinary tourism becomes more popular and as more people identify themselves as “foodies,” you can expect the number of food festivals to increase. After all, agriculture is a large part of the North Bay’s economy…and on top of that, the festivals are good business.
“There’s a tremendous market for food and wine here,” says Janet Ciel, co-organizer of the Bodega Seafood Art & Wine Festival. “Ours is one of the premier areas of quality food and wines, so the food festivals are a logical progression.”
Festivals can cost anywhere from nothing to hundreds of dollars to attend, and they usually feature a variety of events that spotlight the versatility and pleasures of the food in question, from food-and-wine parings to free samples to entire meals. But with so many events happening so often, could the North Bay be heading for a glut of food fairs?
“Virtually every winery wants his or her own festival, because they’re a huge marketing opportunity,” says George Rose, VP of public relations for Kendall-Jackson Winery. “And there are probably too many of them now. There are only so many consumers. At some point, the golden goose is going to be smothered.”
Totally tomatoes
Every September for the last 12 years, Kendall-Jackson Vineyard Estates has hosted the Heirloom Tomato Festival. The event, which takes place in the walnut grove behind the chateau at Kendall-Jackson’s Wine Center, celebrates more than 175 varieties of heirloom tomatoes. This year, food will be provided by well-known restaurants including Syrah Bistro, John Ash & Company and Equus. Food and Wine magazine is sponsoring the event.
The demand to attend the Heirloom Tomato Festival is so high, Kendall-Jackson had to limit the number of guests. “We have to cut it off,” says Rose. “We could get 10,000 people, but we cut it off at 2,000. Otherwise, it would turn into the Gilroy Garlic Festival.”
Like many food festivals, the Heirloom Tomato Festival is primarily a benefit for a charity. Proceeds go to the School Garden Network, which promotes gardening and nutritional programs in Sonoma County schools. However, the festival is also a great promotion. The winery, restaurants and sponsor are all marketing to the same customer—food lovers.
“The guests are, first and foremost, consumers of Kendall-Jackson wine, but they also happen to be raving tomato fanatics,” says Rose. “There are some of those out there, believe it or not. It’s a great opportunity for the food vendors, too. The people at the heart of it are foodies—the food-and-wine ‘super users,’ I guess you might say.”
In the Bay Area especially, foodies are everywhere. These lovers of fine cuisine want quality, fresh, local food, and will often go on trips just to sample new cuisine. Culinary tourism is a growing market (see “The Land of Wine and Food,” page 44 in this issue), with people traveling great distances to taste food and bring home new recipes. This relatively new tourism niche is similar to agritourism, except instead of going to farms to see how food is grown, culinary travelers are interested in the refined, cultural side of food. Many see fine dining as an experience on par with going to a museum or listening to a symphony.
As this subset of tourism grows, so do the food festivals in the North Bay. And like the arts and craft fairs of the 1980s, they’re everywhere.
“I think it’s just been a growing trend,” says Steven Restivo, owner of Steven Restivo Event Services, a San Rafael-based business that puts on events all over the Bay Area and in Los Angeles, including the San Rafael Food & Wine Festival and elements of the Petaluma Butter and Egg Days. “You know, with the advent of The Food Network and HGTV, people are becoming foodies. They’re doing their own thing.”
Free fairs
Thanks in part to Marin Organic, which has worked to promote locally grown food, Marin County is becoming known for its organic farms. On August 16, the San Rafael Food & Wine Festival will celebrate this commitment at the Falkirk Cultural Center. At this event, consumers can taste wine, sample food from local vendors, view and purchase local artwork, watch cooking demonstrations by Marin chefs and enjoy free entertainment.
San Rafael Food & Wine Festival attendees can come for free, spend their money on the artists and can sample a variety of food and wine for $3 per taste. Restivo believes this format helps people feel they’re getting value for their money. Too often, he says, people pay $60 just to get into a festival and then have to pay more money to sample food or taste wine, which can leave them feeling cheated and spreading bad reports about the event. Food fairs, on the other hand, are always affordable.
“Everybody says we’re in a recession,” he says. “But our business is up this year. A family of four—a mom, dad and two young children—can come to a festival and enjoy themselves for less than $40 or $50. As far as entertainment value, it’s one of the most economical things to do.”
The San Rafael Food & Wine Festival is also touching on the green movement. As with the rest of the North Bay, food from Marin is seen by many as healthy, in part because of the emphasis on quality, and in part because people are more concerned by where their food comes from these days.
“With the interest in culinary tourism, green initiatives, eco-travel and getting back to nature, there’s a sense that food in the North Bay is real,” says Wendy Peterson, executive director of the Sonoma Valley Visitors Bureau. “People love that they can walk into a restaurant, and the meal on the table, most often, has products that are locally grown and produced.”
Miles of mustard
If done well, a food festival can revitalize an area. The Napa Valley Mustard Festival is celebrating its 17th year this coming winter. The two-month festival features a variety of mustard-related events, starting in January with Mustard Magic, a black-tie event at the Culinary Institute of America in St. Helena. The events continue throughout February and March and range from photography contests to art exhibits to a grand dinner.
Pat Summers, president of Summers-McCann Public Relations, helped create the festival to promote Napa’s off-season. At the time, winter in Napa meant layoffs and slow sales. The festival was created to frame the scenic time of year when beautiful yellow blossoms of wild mustard fill the vineyards. The mustard reseeds itself each year and adds nitrogen to the soil, which is beneficial to the vines.
“The idea is to get people to visit throughout the winter season to partake of Napa’s bounty,” says Summers. “It’s a wonderful, slow, cozy time of year. Tasting rooms, restaurants and hotels can be more accommodating, because they’re not as rushed as they are throughout the summer and harvest seasons. And the photography contest has a huge impact worldwide. It makes people realize it’s a beautiful time of year here; it’s not the dead of winter.”
Since the Mustard Festival began, transient occupancy tax (TOT) revenue has increased 300 percent during Napa’s winter months. Restaurants and wineries suddenly have customers, and what was Napa’s slowest season has become “mustard season” instead.
“Jim O’Shea, director of hospitality at Sterling Vineyards, once said that, prior to the Napa Valley Mustard Festival, you could shoot off a canon in any tasting room in the area during winter,” says Summers. “The festival’s purpose is to bring business and prosperity to the region.”
Only olives
The Mustard Festival has, in fact, been so successful that other festivals have used it as inspiration. One is the Sonoma Valley Olive Festival, which will celebrate its 8th year this December through February. Olives are considered the second biggest crop in Sonoma Valley after wine, primarily because olive trees and grapes thrive in similar soils and climates.
The Olive Festival, which is presented by the Sonoma Valley Visitors Bureau, begins the first Saturday in December with the Blessing of the Olive at Mission San Francisco de Solano on the historic Sonoma Plaza, and continues through February to celebrate the olive’s many forms—from martini garnishes to olive oil to a pit-spitting contest.
“The Napa Valley Mustard Festival was the inspiration for the Olive Festival, but we’ve taken a different spin on it,” says Peterson. “We’ve moved away from three or four signature events and created a ‘season of the olive,’ where everyone coming into the Sonoma Valley during that three-month period can experience something olive-related.”
Like the Mustard Festival, the olive festival has led to a spike in TOT revenue. But while the North Bay may be able absorb overlapping olive- and mustard-related events, the more food festivals there are, the more each one has to stand out to get consumers’ attention—not only from local food events, but from events in other parts of California as well.
For example, Carmel hosts a tomato festival the same weekend Kendall-Jackson puts on its Heirloom Tomato Festival. People who live in between Carmel and Sonoma County can choose which way they want to go for the event. To stand out, Kendall-Jackson has played up the wine component of its festival. It pairs tomatoes with wine based on color—a Sauvignon Blanc might go with a green tomato, or a Syrah might go with the purple Black Krim Tomato and so forth. This unusual approach makes the festival distinct.
Another problem with so many food festivals, is the increasing demand for vendors. “There’s a great deal of event competition, which makes it difficult for restaurants and wineries,” says Summers. “They’re constantly being asked to donate, and it’s become a dilemma.”
Marketing through food fairs
When all is said and done, food fairs are primarily marketing events. In addition to promoting an area (like Napa or Sonoma Valley) and the vendors who sell their wares at the event, there are also sponsors. Companies invest in events to market their products and services. Meeting with potential customers face-to-face and at events with sampling opportunities is considered by many companies to be the best type of marketing. For the Napa Valley Mustard Festival, sponsorship packages ranging from $2,500 to more than $100,000 can be purchased by local business or larger organizations, like the Northern California Lexus Dealers Association.
Sponsorship dollars can help cover the festival’s set-up costs. Sometimes, in the case of a winery or a hotel, sponsorship can include providing space for the event. Other businesses use sponsorship as a way to promote services the public might not know about. The Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn was a sponsor for the Olive Festival in 2007. During the annual Feast of the Olive, its executive chef prepared a special course for the dinner, promoting both the inn and its restaurant at once.
“Sponsorship is a way to shine a light on a business and to be seen from a different angle,” says Peterson. “It gives them a new way to present themselves and for people to learn more about what they do.”
In fact, in this increasingly cluttered business landscape, sponsoring a food festival can help a business stand out.
“I was watching Charlie Rose on PBS,” says Restivo. “He was interviewing the head of Proctor & Gamble, A.G. Lafley, this brilliant guy who has a $200 billion company. And Charlie Rose asked him, ‘With all the new media out there, how do you stay successful? What’s your ad strategy?’ One of the things Lafley said was ‘public events—and one of the areas our sales are up this year is corporate sponsorships.’”
One reason this kind of marketing works so well is it doesn’t feel forced. After all, it’s natural that the North Bay, which is so rich in agriculture, should promote its bounty. And it’s equally natural that people would want to come and sample it. It is, after all, part of the ongoing history of our area.
“These events are part of how the wine business was built,” says George Rose. “It started out with someone standing at a table pouring wine for the benefit of an organization and getting word-of-mouth from that. These festivals are just the extension of that, 25 or 30 years later.”
