Heritage Festival
 

On Tuesday my wife & I went to the Heritage Festival at Spanish Springs. We had planned on not only enjoying the entertainment but having our dinner meal eating some of the authentic foods from the various booths/food trucks that we thought would be there. Unfortunately there were not many food booths or trucks. We saw only one German food booth, Flippers Pizza booth, A Mexican food booth and 2 pastry/bread booths. We were pretty disappointed.

We enjoyed the parade but noted that our favorite German band, the Swinging Bavarians - a family group from Ocala were not there. Neither was the large tent that always held an overflow crowd for the performance. I clicked on contact Village Entertainment to request that they return. It was an easy form to complete. I agree that the food options were limited. I suggest you communicate your suggestions to them.

Maybe the entertaiment department are running out of shoe strings!

On the other hand - my husband and his cousin had dinner at the World of Beer and sat at an outside table during the parade. They absolutely loved it and had an awesome time. They stayed in the square til around 9pm.

Perhaps the usual fleet of food trucks were down in Marsh Bend and McClure.

Two of the 3 trucks at Marsh Bend are permanent, they don't go from event to event. I also noticed the lack of food at several events last year at Brownwood. Maybe the restaurants are complaining about bringing in mobile food vendors.

Once upon a time (as late as last year) there used to be Italian night, German night, St. Patricks Day....heritage is apparently the new consolidated version.

Progress?

Two food trucks tonight at Brownwood. Restaurants were very busy, food trucks not so much. Didn’t recognize either truck, one Asian, and one a mix of food

The Asian food truck had no customers that I saw. I felt sorry for them.

My opinion - if restaurant owners are that threatened by food trucks, then perhaps they should do a better job marketing their own. Or providing a better experience for their customers. Whether by lower prices, or smaller portions, more variety, more daily specials, point incentives, or maybe even just adding some soundproofing material to their ceilings so 10 people in a building doesn't sound like a herd of buffalo stampeding through the city.

Heck, I didn't go to the Heritage Festival to eat. I went to learn something.

For example. at the Scottish booth I discussed history with one of the attendants and asked him if he thought Scotland was better as an independent country or after England conquered them. I was surprised by his answer.

At the Eastern Europe booth I met a guy who had recently visited Croatia and Slovenia and asked him if he thought the Balkan countries were better off under the dictatorship of Tito than they are now. Very interesting answer.

There was a lady from Ukraine and I asked her how she feels about the Russians. Of course she was very critical of the Russians because they try to take land from other countries and dominate them. I thought the Mexicans would have said the same thing about Americans after we fought them in 1846 and took a lot of territory from them.

All in all, a very interesting evening.

Kudo's to the stilt walkers and the ethnic dance groups who entertained us in Brownwood. The Silver Rockets' were awesome!

So, a rhetorical question. You own a restaurant that you sunk your life savings into. You pay your lease plus property tax and perhaps common area maintenance fees. A health department license for a fixed establishment which is 3 times the cost of a transitory license. And whatever taxes, fees, etc. the local authorities can come up with because you are a "brick and mortar" site.

Along come a food truck who maybe pays a couple hundred dollar fee to park their portable restaurant around the corner from your family establishment. They siphon off 15% of your customer base and then leave. How would you feel?

I'd feel like I had a slow day that day. If it was a permanent 15%, I'd try and figure out what I've done wrong that would inspire 15% of my customer base to trade my food for food truck fare, and do what I need to do, to improve.

Heritage Festival
 

The shows bring in more traffic so the restaurants shouldn’t suffer from the food trucks beyond the few hours of the show. If the restaurant owners were smart they would be standing out front with small appetizer samples and paper menus and $1 off coupons. The more people walking past your front door will bring you more customers after the 6hr events end. PEOPLE TRAFFIC is the best thing that can happen for any business. That was what made malls so successful pre-Dot-com days. The restaurant owners shouldn’t and probably don’t complain. They should ask for more events that send thousands of NEW people past their front doors where there would normally be “the same old” folks who are always there.

I spoke to a restaurant owner in Mt Dora about just that and he said he’d pay extra to have one of their large events every month.


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