Cook. Eat. Drink. Live.

First of all, what a difficult title to remember. I told people all weekend that I went to a food and wine festival over the weekend, but could never get those 4 words in the correct order when trying to tell them the name! I'm not sure where the name came from, but in terms of branding, it's not a great idea if it's nearly impossible to remember!

Pier 94 as an event space was different than I expected. I didn't really expect it to still look like a pier freight house, with some pretty fabric and carpets thrown around! It certainly was big and customizable, but everytime I looked up it was an eyesore! I'd be curious to see what it looks like after renovations.

The festival itself was good. I made some strong connections with some products, and even raved about a pasta sauce to everyone I talked to for the next few days! As a poor grad student, the free part and the samples made it a great experience for me. I couldn't see myself paying $325 a ticket though. While I'm not the demographic they're looking to target for many of their goods, I am the demographic for some of them (the pasta sauce, the flavored waters, a lot of the alcohol and beer, etc.) Even as I looked around, the people there did not seem to be people who had paid $325 a ticket either (most seemed to be comp'd in through someone too). I saw more real interaction occuring between different vendors than actually between vendors and interested patrons (with the exception of a lot of smaller food offerings, such as the woman who made her own pesto and the family pasta sauce company, who really could engage their clientel with their new products and demonstrated a clearer zeal in speaking about the product). A few people I spoke with manning the booths said they were volunteers and had minimal product knowledge! I know that if I were paying to show my product at this fair, I would certainly make sure the people at my table were extremely knowledgeable and sales driven.

In general, all of the infastructure elemens seemed well managed (bathrooms, places to sit when we got tired, etc.). The ambience upon entering was nice, but the people at check in were not helpful, and more interested in their own conversations than assisting me (again, they all appeared to be volunteers).