Taste Of Addison Food Festival Cancelled After 30 Years

The town of Addison has concluded its long-running food festival. Taste of Addison began in 1993, created to spotlight & celebrate the city’s culinary scene.

This year’s festival was set to take place the weekend of April 17-19; however, last week, the Addison City Council announced that the food festival had run its course at Addison Circle Park. City council also said that they don’t want the brand to go away completely and that they intend to transition to new events year-round. Councilmember Randy Smith said, “Under its current form, I’m going to use a cooking idiom…stick a fork in it. It’s done.” Other members of the council voiced that the festival has lost its flavor. Last year’s festival was in the red by more than $750,000. Mayor Bruce Arfsten pointed out that though the festival was losing money on paper, the exposure that it brought was top value. He says, “It’s not just a straight numbers thing. There is so much more to it that it is hard to quantify some of it.” 

Local businesses like ‘Ron’s Place’, which is a whiskey bar that specializes in craft beer, have been a vendor at the Addison food festival for nearly 15 years. Planet Thompson, who is the bar’s general manager, says, “Although it’s a small city, it has a big city vibe, Anytime someone can get out there around thousands of people and say, ‘Hey look at us.’ One is better than none.” this event was a way for them to try to build their customer base.

Though this is the end of taste of addison the city plans to continue celebrating the addison culinary scene in new ways in an email that the town of addison sent out they said “The Town will shift its focus toward fresh, creative ways to celebrate Addison’s incredible culinary scene, The core purpose of Taste Addison – promoting Addison’s 200+ restaurants – will be reenvisioned to include new, year-round options to support and elevate North Texas’ most vibrant dining hub.”

City council has proposed multiple events throughout the year near the restaurants themselves, with the hope of focusing more on the businesses themselves. The Addison City Council will come back next month to brainstorm ideas on what multiple events they want to do. Ideas thrown out are restaurant week, holiday specials, and a burger battle.

locals are looking forward to what the city comes up with next!

Taste Of Addison Food Festival Cancelled After 30 Years was originally published on majic945.com