Taste of Buffalo 2009
Delaware Ave. & Niagara Sq., Buffalo, NY 14202
Web: Taste of Buffalo 2009
Phone: 716.983.0978
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"Moving Taste of Buffalo and the National Buffalo Wing Festival to bookend a 10-day schedule might give WNY just the destination-quality event it needs to bring in tourists."

Like the rain that started Saturday morning, the 2009 Taste of Buffalo swept into Niagara Square and disappeared almost as quickly as it arrived, offering all-too-brief glimpses at over 65 participating area businesses. You've already seen our reports on the food, drinks, and our Awards, but we haven't discussed one other important topic: what worked and what didn't. This has been on our minds all weekend, in light of our visit last month to the world's largest food festival, the Taste of Chicago, so we're sharing our thoughts here. Your comments and insights are, as always, appreciated.

The Big Picture. As in past years, the 2009 Taste of Buffalo was unquestionably successful at doing three things: bringing out a substantial number of restaurants and wineries, offering food samples at entirely reasonable prices, and making hundreds of thousands of visitors happy. On day one, those who braved the rain (see below) had especially easy access to lots of good and great items without waits; on sunny day two, crowds increased dramatically, and yet comments were basically unanimous: there were too many people there, but the event was a lot of fun. The Taste of Buffalo gives Buffalonians an annual infusion of civic pride, and it was generally executed quite well.

Some Great New Participants. In an ideal world, the number of vendors exhibiting at the Taste would increase annually, but there are always going to be drop-outs and drop-ins. This year saw a significant number of new restaurants at the Taste of Buffalo and a huge fall at the Taste of Chicago, such that this year's 61 restaurants and 6 wineries made Buffalo's event roughly as large as Chicago's in terms of number of tasting options. Yet numbers weren't the only thing that mattered; many of the new participants - such as Dinosaur Bar-B-Que and Wayne Gretzky Estates - came from just outside of Buffalo, helping to expose us to noteworthy names and very good items from our neighbors. Yet the event was so dominated by local players that it still felt like a Taste of Buffalo, and that's a good thing.

Tickets and Pricing. The good news: tickets remain reasonably priced at 50 cents each, since booth prices topped out at 8 tickets ($4), and occasionally started as low as 1 ticket, with "taste" portions at 3 tickets. It's hard to take issue with prices like these, which generally were equivalent to or lower than those at the Taste of Chicago. But unlike the Taste of Chicago, where discounted ticket sales began in advance at partner supermarkets (any ideas here, Tops?), the ticket booths at Taste of Buffalo literally would not sell a single ticket - let alone the $120 in tickets we wanted to buy - until the clock struck exactly 11:00. The result: people were waiting in lines for tickets, in the rain, rather than standing under cover or lining up at booths to actually eat something.

Marketing and Growth Aspirations. Someone in marketing has figured out a strong marketing angle for the Taste of Buffalo: it's now billed as "the Largest Two-Day Food Festival," but we think the City and principal sponsor Tops could do a better job of promoting the event outside of this area. We're still wondering how the attendance is being calculated - a claim of "450,000 invited guests" is as fuzzy as Taste of Chicago's seemingly unaudited claim of 3.5 million attendees - yet it's certain that this event has the infrastructure in place to host more vendors and more attendees, assuming a modest change or two in venue were made.

Misfocused Awards. When the rain was falling on day one of the Taste, we spotted almost as many people from the event's awards committee out canvassing booths as we saw plainclothes customers. And within two hours of the event's start, there were people out doing more or less random polling for the "People's Choice Award," gauging picks for clear enough categories such as "Best Seafood" and "Best Dessert." But they were also coming up with winners for categories like "Children's Choice" and the "Pat Sardina/Abby Stalker Memorial Award," for which judging standards were less than obvious. To be very clear, we don't begrudge the Taste awarding anything, and the sheer number of people involved in its judging efforts is crazy; it has everything in place to do its awards "right."

But in our view, it's a little off. With a judging team of the Taste's size, its awards should provide universally meaningful categories and clear, advance standards for participants to compete in them; competition will ultimately elevate the community, and the event's offerings. From what we saw, the awards sometimes worked and sometimes didn't, occasionally inspiring too few competitors (see: Best Decorated Booth), and at others handing out question mark-quality awards to not so hot items. We're fans of Giacobbi's from back when it was in Amherst, but seeing its Crab & Shrimp Bisque - literally one of the worst items we tried - win a "New York Award," for what exactly we're not sure, is just confusing; having generic, broad categories such as "Meat Item" and the aforementioned amorphous Memorial Award without any description of how one wins it doesn't help. Compound this with the fact that the Event's servers can enhance their dishes for people wearing judging outfits; we overheard that exact thing going on at one booth. With a few tweaks, the 2010 Awards could be a lot better, and help improve the event at the same time.

Location, Ambience and Safety. Having visited the Taste of Chicago and other food festivals in years past, it's obvious to us that there are always going to be tradeoffs in locating an event such as this one: there's a need to provide a nice backdrop, roads with enough space for the anticipated crowds, and yet a place where local businesses aren't completely disrupted while everything's carrying on. Niagara Square's a nice starting point and hub for the Taste, and notably, Buffalo hasn't had the problems with guns and knives that have plagued the Taste of Chicago in recent years, but this mightn't be the ideal location, especially if crowds are going to grow in the future. The sight of cranes and unfinished buildings may, sadly, reflect the "how could it possibly take that long?" construction mentality of this area, but they don't exactly inspire awe in visitors. By comparison, Chicago's Grant Park provided space, beautiful sights, and plenty of room for tables and concert stages where people could actually sit down. While we wouldn't be thrilled by a move to Delaware Park for various reasons, a different venue might be worth considering.

Music and Events. Michael Jackson tribute music. Indie rock. With the exception of Lance Diamond, most of the bands performing at Taste of Buffalo might not have been familiar to the crowd, but their performances provided some fine entertainment options; the presence of the Culinary Stage for food-related presentations was also nice. That said, the Taste of Chicago's longer schedule, and its partnership with Best Buy and the Illinois Lottery, yielded a stunning number of performers and even daily musical themes: one day was gospel and jazz, two others were tribute and cover bands (the Eagles, Rolling Stones, U2, Luther Vandross), and so on. If the Taste of Buffalo wanted to expand a little, this would be a smart improvement.

Weather, and Whether Wings? Rain dampened the first half-day of this year's Taste of Buffalo - the sort of chance precipitation that is impossible to avoid, and around these parts, thankfully doesn't lead to cancellation of the event. (Just try and imagine that at Southern California's Taste of Newport; people can hardly drive there when it's wet, say nothing of standing outside!) That said, having a covered area for seating and perhaps some premium booths would be nice. And, though there's a strong argument to be made that the two festivals deserve to stand alone, it's worth considering the possibility that the Taste of Buffalo might usefully merge with or bookend the National Buffalo Wing Festival. A merger probably wouldn't be a great idea, merely diluting food sales at two already popular festivals, but moving them to two ends of a 10-day schedule, both running Friday through Sunday with a gap in the center for local tourism, might give Western New York just the destination-quality event it needs to bring in foodies, then others.

All in all, the 2009 Taste of Buffalo struck us as a very worthwhile local festival - one where we found and enjoyed a bunch of great Ameritalian foods, ethnic foods, drinks and desserts, but more important was the fact that we had fun doing so. Now that it's over, of course, we're hungry for more; mark your calendar, because the 2010 Taste of Buffalo runs from July 10-11.