People began to shuffle into Celebration Pointe around 5:30 p.m. Thursday, all with a common goal—to try some amazing food.
Businesses and vendors from around Gainesville lined Stever Spurrier Way for the second annual food festival.
The GCM Food Fest brought together over 40 food vendors and eight breweries in the beer garden for attendees to sample. Established Gainesville favorites such as David’s BBQ & Catering, Mí Apa and Adam’s Rib Co. and chain favorites like Krispy Kreme, Tropical Smoothie Cafe and Sonic came out to engage with the community.
About 2,000 people attended the event, which sold 1,200 tickets. In total, the event had over 24,300 portions of food to feed the community.
“The event has gone great, and attendance is better than ever before,” said David Bopp, the district manager of Tropical Smoothie Cafe. “We gave out over 900 smoothies in the first two hours.”
Newer local eateries like Pampy’s Bakery, Tela and Paper Bag Deli showed up as well. For many of these new restaurants, this was the first food festival the businesses attended.
Attendees were eager for the chance to try something new and one remarked to the owner of Pampy’s Bakery, “I’ve heard so much about you!”
Edward Lavagnino, the president of GCM said that GCM Food Fest’s mission is to bring together the community and allow people to try new things. “We want to do good for the community and find a need and fill it.”
Not only food vendors appeared. Many local organizations and businesses appeared at the festival giving out prizes and free goodies to the community.
GCM is geared toward helping local businesses. The free app helps consumers save money while shopping throughout Gainesville.
Lavagnino said that the festival’s vendors are strategically placed so that businesses and restaurants can mingle: “We want to meet the needs of our vendors and connect the community.”
Lavagnino confirmed that the festival will be returning next year and that GCM is already talking to Celebration Pointe about expanding it.
“We aim to add 20 new restaurants to the table every year,” Lavagnino said.
