BocaBeacon.comThe Boca Beacon is Boca Grande's weekly community newspaper.

Subscribe via email

Grab our RSS Feed

Fall Festival a boost for businesses, but not all

While the Boca Grande Fall Festival was created to bring in donations for the chamber of commerce scholarship fund and, to be honest, to promote a really great excuse to party, one perk that sometimes follows is an increase in local business.

After the weekend celebration, messages were mixed as far as what island shops and restaurants did well over the weekend.

According to the Gasparilla Island Bridge Authority, 1,822 cars crossed the Boca Grande Causeway on Saturday, Oct. 17. How many of those cars contained off-island visitors who attended the Boca Grande Fall Festival may be a mystery, but Jim Cooper, executive director of the authority, said it is still an increase from the norm.

It was the same weekend last year when the “celebrity wedding” was in town, and traffic counts for those days were up even higher than this last weekend, Cooper said, so 2008 really can’t be used as a determining factor.

“You can’t really judge last weekend in comparison to last year’s numbers,” he said. “In 2008 for the same day, which was the day of the big wedding, we had 2,722 cars cross the bridge. But in 2007 on that same day, we only had 1,376 cars go through.”

While some businesses did well, others did not. Local restaurants and Fugate’s reported a great sales day. Specialty stores sales were slow to nil, though, other than selling a few T-shirts and sweatshirts because of the chilly weather.

One exception to that rule was Gasparilla Outfitters.

“It was OK, better than what we have been doing,” said owner Robin Melvin. “It was a nice day, we did have more business than usual, and the party and barbecue were great.”

Toby Wiener, co-owner of Fugate’s, said that he was very pleased with the business they received.

“We did really well Saturday, had a lot of people coming in,” he said. “I heard good comments from everyone about the fair too. Weather was a little bit of a factor, but the sun came out in the late morning and things really picked up.”

While business didn’t pick up right away for the barbecue vendors either, David “Smitty” Smith of Hudson’s Grocery said that in the early afternoon all the chefs were surprised by the ravenous interest of the crowd.

“We were told to serve until around 3:30 p.m. and most of the cooks ran out right about that time,” he said. “Next year we might run it until 5 p.m., there were still people there that would have eaten.”

Prior to the fireworks Saturday night some of the island restaurants reported a large influx of customers.

Saturday night we did a lot better business than usual,” said Lisa Ianita, one of Sister’s Restaurant co-owners. “People started coming in about 5:30 p.m., maybe a little earlier. Lunch business was down, but then everyone was across the street having barbecue.”

PJ’s Seagrille reported some activity, but defined it more as “busy” than “slammed.”

Manager Betsy Joiner said they had a low crowd for lunch of maybe 20 people, and a small crowd at dinner time.

“A lot of people with kids came in before the fireworks,” she said. “We had maybe 45 in the evening, and The Grapevine didn’t have much business during the day but had lots of lookers. In all, though, it was a great event as far as the chefs and food, I heard great comments on the street. I don’t think it brought much business inside, but Jimmy (JT Turner) and the other chefs were pleased. People loved what we served, and it put some positive feedback out for the restaurant. I know from that, some people will come back.”

Dawn Boggess and Gina Louk of Rotonda visited the festival as well with Louk’s daughter, Emmalee. They were a big fan of the Seagrille food.

“We come here to shop all the time since we live so close,” Boggess said. “We love it here, especially when something like this is going on. The food was amazing, especially the barbecued shrimp from PJ’s.”

Artists who traveled from all over the southeastern United States did not report a great day for revenue, but did say they made contacts that might be of use in the future.

Mel Landon, a local artist whose work is synonymous with Boca Grande and the surrounding area, said that while she had a slow sales day, she thinks she made some new clients.

“With the wind and the weather, it wasn’t a really great day to sell,” she said. “But I had several people tell me they were redecorating, and would keep me in mind, and that’s a big part of my business.”