Project Brew - My Journey to Creating one of the Best Beer Festivals in the World!

Intro

Ever since I started I Heart Beer Festivals back in 2017, I've always had these grandiose plans to create a one of a kind event that ranks as one of the best in the world. A festival that caters to all tastes and preferences including non alcoholic beverages, an event that not only entertains, but educates and a festival on every beer drinkers bucket list across the globe. A mix between TFOB, the Alberta International Beer Festival, Montreal World Beer Festival and Oktoberfest is essentially what I'd like to create, essentially a beer drinkers paradise.

Long term objectives based on my current situation:

City: Toronto

Season: Winter

Days: 2

Size: 30,000+

Drink Brands: 100+

Activities + Things to Do: 100+

Years to Objective: 10

Challenges:

1. Venue: Toronto only has a few buildings that could accommodate such a large indoor festival and that is the Enercare Centre and the MTCC. We'd have to find the right space and time available to run the event.

2. Economic Uncertainty: Trying to grow an event in todays current economic climate is risky, well established events are struggling financially or giving up all together so growing an event by 3k people a year seems manageable but it'll be a grind each year to increase numbers.

3. Trends: Beer is no longer a growing trend, which doesn't necessarily mean we can't achieve our objectives, but I'll need to cater to other tastes as well and expand our reach. Building a large scale one of a kind beer festival in the heart of Toronto should attract people all over southern Ontario and beyond.

4. Costs: Rising costs are a huge issue in the event space. In order to combat this, we need to be nimble, different and efficient. We can't follow the traditional mega tradeshow playbook with multiple move in and move out days, thus having to charge exhibitors thousands of dollars just to cover the cost of the venue rental. We need to envision a hyper planned event with minimal setup/teardown times, reducing our budget and allowing us to push those savings onto the exhibitors.

5. Exhibitor Acquisition: Exhibitors are starting to shy away from food and drink shows do to growing costs and a changing market. Our focus must be on making sure the average exhibitor receives a good ROI based on their goals and objectives. Acquiring 100 brands over time may be challenging if we aren't able to achieve ROI and attendance goals.

Positives:

1. Competition: There currently isn't a beer festival in Southern Ontario that caters to the local, international and macro crowd. TFOB is the closest thing to a a beer festival that caters to all three categories but it's currently not running to it's fullest potential and it's 6 months away from our festival.

2. Location: What better place to have one of the best beer festivals in the world than in the largest City in Canada. Besides TFOB, I don't think Ontario has a beer festival that cracks 15,000 attendees except for maybe the Kitchener Oktoberfest but that's a city wide event.

3. Branding: With the I Heart beer brand and our new mascot/character strategy. I feel like we have the potential to create something special and unique that no other food and drink show has in Canada.

4. Transparency: I want this to be the most transparent beer festival in the world. Individuals will have an opportunity to see how things are planned, what costs are involved and have an opportunity to understand the inner workings of a large scale event.

5. Community Focused: Besides beer, the focus will be on local vendors, think themed popup marketplaces. We'll partner with other events across the province with mini showcases at our event.