BBQ festival canceled for 2008

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By Bobbi Mlynar (Contact)

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Success is a primary reason why the Greater Emporia BBQ Festival for this year has been canceled.

Organizers announced the decision Friday in a news release that stated the event was growing faster than the finances needed to support it.

The announcement came jointly from a core committee in charge of the event. De Henderson, committee chairman, and Joe Endres and Ron Thomas started the barbecue competition nine years ago, not long after the annual Twin Rivers Festival was discontinued.

“It was our dream to bring back a festival to Emporia,” Henderson said in a telephone interview Friday afternoon. “We’ve all missed Twin Rivers (Festival) and that was where we were trying to go with this. We have great new ideas and more people wanting to get involved.”

All the committee needed was a major sponsor to help defray costs of the event.

“It costs right at — before the increased gas prices — it cost right at $18,000 to put this event on, and we had wonderful, wonderful sponsors. These people were phenomenal,” Henderson said.

The growth, however, exceeded the sponsorships.

“The more we grow, the more it costs, so ... this year we were shy about $6,000,” she said.

The committee was expecting 42 teams this year, plus the 65 judges, assistants and others who attend the festival, she said. The event brought in about $45,000 in revenue for the city last year.

“We kind of track all of that, too, because the Convention and Visitors Bureau was one of the sponsors, and that was one of their criteria.”

Teams came from across the United States — last year’s overall winner was from Florida — and they were profuse in their compliments about the change of venue to Peter Pan Park.

“The park’s just gorgeous and we were so excited to get the park,” Henderson said. “We were well on our way to make it more of a festival.”

The park came with inherent additional expenses.

“There’s lack of power in the park,” she said. “We have to supply power for all of these people. So, by the time you rent your generators, you buy your utility poles, you buy your gas, that gets more and more costly.”

The committee’s release said that the local contest competed against other large competitions in Arkansas, Colorado, Osage City and elsewhere. More money or better prizes can often tip a barbecue contestant’s decision on which competition to attend.

Most of those competitions receive backing from corporations and from the host city governments.

“We love our festival, but we personally couldn’t come up with $6,000 to help us finish out the year,” Henderson said. “We understand as a non-profit that things are tight. If we could just find that one big guy that would say, ‘You betcha! This is great.’ ...”

The committee was pleased that the number of teams competing continued to increase.

“In fact, we were drawing some of the best teams from the nation and a wonderful representation of teams from our local area,” the release stated.

The expenses involved in providing logistical services for the festival, as well as prize money for the different categories of competition, increased in proportion to the number of entries.

“If you take the business approach to this, we were a startup company and we were growing faster than the income was being generated,” Henderson said.

If one large sponsor, or several smaller ones, steps forward, the Greater Emporia BBQ Festival could be resurrected.

“We would love to bring the festival back in 2009, but in order to do that we need that large corporate sponsor, or other entity to help us achieve this,” Henderson said.