Art on the Square,
And lunch at Blue Talon.
Food paired with wine and some fudge from Kilwins.
Lots of live music on Merchants Square,
These are a few of Williamsburg’s favorite things.
You too can enjoy most of these things over the span of four days at CultureFix’s Scrumptious Weekend Thursday through Sunday.
Steve Rose, co-founder of CultureFix, said his organization decided to create the weekend event because Art on the Square, Foodapalooza and the Craft Beer Festival were scheduled to take place on the same weekend, but had never been marketed together.
“The motivation within the city and the town is obviously to try and increase tourism and help bring people from out of town, so the way to do that is to create an event that is a multi-day event similar to what we do with Winter Blues Jazz Fest,” Rose said. “We’ve done that for five years and had great success of seeing people come in from out of town and buy tickets. So using that same formula of doing multiple events over a four day period it gives people an opportunity to come in for Thursday to Friday, or Saturday to Sunday and stay the night.”
Scott Kucinski, chairman of the steering committee for the Craft Beer Festival, said Scrumptious’s main event tent for the weekend helps their festival, which was at capacity last year.
“It really gives us the opportunity to see how big we can grow (the Craft Beer Festival) without having to take that on ourselves,” Kucinski said.
While each event will keep its autonomy as far as fundraising, Rose said having all the events under one umbrella could help them, and even the greater community, be more successful.
“(Scrumptious Weekend) is really a test for the community whether we can all work together with one common goal,” Rose said.
“So that’s what is exciting for me, to see if that concept will work in town, and if it does then obviously we can build on that for other weekends throughout the year.”
What’s going on
Thursday: The festival starts off with a free concert with the band Slapnation on Thursday night.
“They’re always a crowd favorite, so we wanted to have a really fun evening and bring out many of the people in the community,” Rose said.
Yorktown is also included in the Scrumptious activities with the Yorktown Tapas Crawl on Thursday evening. Guests will try alcohol and tapas pairings at Riverwalk Restaurant, Water Street Grill and Carrot Tree.
“York County helped fund part of the event, so we’re doing an event down there with some of the restaurants in Riverwalk (Landing),” Rose said.
Friday: Friday’s big event is Foodapalooza, which benefits Williamsburg Area Meals on Wheels. Each $75 ticket provides 15 meals for people in the community, according to Kathie Upton, executive director of the Williamsburg-area Meals on Wheels.
“We deliver Monday through Friday anywhere between 100 and 1,525 meals a day,” Upton said.
Foodapalooza will feature chefs from local restaurants including Le Yaca, The Hound’s Tale and the Fat Canary serving up their best.
“So we’ve got a tremendous amount of support from the top chefs in our community,” Upton said.
“I love all the chef participation. They come passionate about what they do, (Meals on Wheels is) passionate about what we do, they put so much pride in the product they are putting out that night, most of them are cooking on site.”
Saturday: Saturday features some new events created by CultureFix.
At Truly Scrumptious, guests pay $15 for a ticket, and then get $5 back in tokens they can use at tasting booths for different restaurants.
“We’ll have different chefs featured on the hour so at noon, at 1 p.m. and at 2 p.m. the different chefs will put out their offerings of the day and then people can go up and use their tokens to purchase samples,” Rose said.
That evening will be the second event, Young and Hungry, which is a six-course meal. Each course will be prepared by a different chef and paired with a local wine, beer or mead.
“It’s a really collaborative dinner,” Rose said. “Then we’re going to theme the music … to each course of dinner as well.”
Sunday: As a grand finale for the weekend, there’s Art on the Square. The festival will feature more than 150 artists from around the country skilled in a variety of mediums.
Beth Richard, co-vice president of the Junior Women’s Club of Williamsburg, said Art on the Square raises money for scholarships and grants the Junior Women’s Club of Williamsburg gives to the community.
“This is our biggest fundraiser of the year, and all the money that we raise goes toward the arts scholarships we set up and then also all of our arts initiatives throughout the Williamsburg community,” Richard said.
Also going on Sunday is the sixth annual Craft Beer Festival put on by the Rotary Club of Williamsburg and Young Emerging Professionals of Williamsburg. It will support four local nonprofits: Here for the Girls, Avalon Center, Bacon Street Youth and Family Services and Literacy for Life.
“Over our first five years, we’ve raised over $100,000,” Kucinski said.
Kucinski said this year’s festival will have more than 50 beers from 25 breweries, food trucks and live music.
“My personal favorite part of the festival is you really just see a widespread demographic.” Kucinski said.
“You think of Williamsburg as such a small town, and you see the same kind of groups of people socializing at different events and with (the Craft Beer Festival) we are just always surprised with how diverse the crowd is.
Want to go?
Scrumptious Weekend is Thursday through Sunday at various locations. For a full schedule of events and to buy tickets, visit scrumptiouswilliamsburg.com.
