stay in the shallow end

Taste of C-Ville was officially one of the most pathetic public events I’ve ever attended. It was cosmically pathetic. Let’s walk you through my experience:

We arrive at around 3:00, and pay $10 to get in. We’re given 5 slips of paper that have a $1 printed on either end. I assumed that each half was a dollar, and everything here was either $2 or $4, so no need to print up individual dollars. Of course, I was completely wrong, and it turns out that each slip was $1, and there was a $5 admission fee. I’ll admit that the misunderstanding was completely my fault, but that doesn’t change my first issue: At the minimum cost of entry, ten dollars buys you five dollars worth of food. I ended up getting some sesame noodles with chicken from HotCakes. That took four of my “Taste Bucks”. Isaah and I pooled our stray bucks and purchased a chocolate toffee bar, which cost two dollars. So for ten dollars, I got a small pile of noodles, a few chunks of chicken, and a half chocolate toffee bar. Lame. Lame. Lame.

My second issue is with the prices of the food itself. For an event that is supposed to allow us to sample local cuisine, $2/$4 is really expensive. I’d much rather have seen the portion sizes halved and priced at $1/$2. It’s called Taste of C-ville, not Meals of C-ville.

My third issue is the poor variety of local restaurants. Many local places that should’ve been there weren’t, and chains like Mellow Mushroom and Ben & Jerry’s don’t belong. Where was Continental Divide’s Red Hot Blues, Ludwig’s Schnitzelhouse’s Bratwurst, El Tepeyac’s Carnitas, Christian’s Gourmet Pizzas… Revolutionary Soup, Mas, and Bang! all would have been ideal for this type of showcase, and yet they weren’t there. I get the feeling that it was pitched to vendors as a place to sell food rather than an opportunity to market to more customers, but this is just speculation on my part.

My last issue isn’t easily quantifiable, but the whole affair felt very cheap. I’m OK with local bands and the cooking presentations are a great idea in my opinion. We arrived there between two sets, though, and somebody got on the mic to let us know that somebody would like to sing for us while the next band was setting up. At that point it went from live music to karaoke, and I could feel my impression of the event drop immediately.

I really wanted to enjoy Taste of C-ville, and I hope that they can get things worked out to make it a success next year. Here are my suggestions, as misguided or uninformed as they may be:

• Move the event to the summer, and have the Pavilion be a rain location. I think setting up in the lot where the Farmer’s Market is would be great. It would have a much more “festival” feel rather than “tent sale”.

• More vendors. Do whatever it takes to get more vendors. In it’s first year, it should’ve been ridiculously cheap to become a vendor. $200 is hard to justify when there’s no way to know what the turnout will be like. It would have been well worth the $4000 loss in revenue to have twice the number of vendors there. If C-ville were to have a “Taste of C-ville” edition profiling each of the vendors, I’m sure that would increase the number of vendors as well as generate public interest in the event.

• More advance notice. I’ve only seen a few signs posted for the event. A food festival seems like it would be a perfect fit for Charlottesville and if properly advertised could easily generate a Fridays After Five level turnout. The lack of vendors and advertising makes me think that the idea to have Taste of C-ville happened pretty late in the game.

• Drop the admission fee. Only sell Taste Bucks, and when vendor’s cash them in, take a cut, maybe twenty cents on the dollar. I don’t know if they were already taking a taste of the Taste Bucks, but if they weren’t, I’d think this would be a much more equitable way for them to collect from the vendors rather than the booth fee. Vendors that derive more benefit pay more for their space.

• I know some portion of the event went to the American Heart Association, but they never specify a percentage or an amount, which always makes me suspicious. I wouldn’t have minded the $5 admission fee if every penny was going to the AHA.

Oh well, hopefully next year (if there is a next year) will be better. In the meantime, I think I’ll put together my own Tastes of C-ville list. Coming soon…