Attendance, sales finish ahead of 2016 numbers
By Ed Nadolski
Editor in Chief
Although rain clouds hung over ChocolateFest’s opening night, the annual festival rebounded the rest of Memorial Day weekend to finish in the black and put a chocolate-smeared smile on the face of the volunteer organizers, according to Operations Committee President Bil Scherrer.
“After working all year to pull this off, you just want a decent weekend,” Scherrer said, referring to the disappointment of the rain-soaked opening night. “But Saturday proved to be nice and you could see the smiles coming back.”
In fact, the rest of the weekend dodged most of the rain as sunny skies and comfortable temperatures prevailed for the bulk of ChocolateFest. The turnstile count of attendance was 37,733, which is up from 34,000 in 2016, according to Scherrer.
Although final tallies were still being made Wednesday, Scherrer estimates that revenues across the various aspects of the festival will be up an average of 10 percent.
He said beer sales were up 16 percent, carnival receipts were up 15 percent and parking revenue was up 9 percent.
“We’ll be able to pay our bills, pay our volunteer groups and hopefully put some money into our long-term plans for the festival grounds,” Scherrer said.
He said Monday proved to be a good day for Love Inc., the local independent social service organization that collected food and monetary donations at the entry gates in lieu of regular admission tickets.
“A lot of people gave them a $10 or a $20 and said, ‘Keep the change,’” Scherrer said. “That’s what it’s all about. That’s why the festival exists – to help out the community groups.”
While the Chocolate Experience tent, carnival and beer tent remained the usual robust revenue drivers, new offerings such as the Café Stage and the ChocolateFest 5K Run-Walk proved popular.
Scherrer said the run-walk, which travels through the festival grounds attracted more than 500 entrants who each received a ticket to return to the festival. The fact that the event was run in the rain Sunday morning did not seem to dampen the enthusiasm of the participants. It was the second year for the event.
The most popular musical entertainment was again the country group Bella Cain, which preformed in the beer tent. “Bella Cain rocked it on Sunday,” Scherrer said.
Festivalgoers also proved to be well behaved, he said, noting there were few police incidents reported and none of them were serious.
Scherrer said the festival’s organizers will now take a break before beginning work on the 2018 ChocolateFest.
“Everybody is totally spent,” he said. “The wind is out of the sails.”
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