N.C. Pickle Festival co-chairs Julie Beck, left, and Lynn Williams show off the new festival T-shirts now on sale at the Mount Olive Area Chamber of Commerce, 123 N. Center St. The shirts also will be on sale during the festival (Steve Herring|mountolivetribune.com)
This is a closeup of the design on the back of the 2023 N.C. Pickle Festival T-shirts (Steve Herring|mountolivetribune.com)
N.C. Pickle Festival co-chair Julie Beck works to fold 1,800 festival T-shirts (Steve Herring|mountolivetribune.com)
Are you are ready to show how much you relish the N.C. Pickle Festival, but don’t think you can wait another two months for the 37th annual edition of the award-winning festival to do so?
Good news, you don’t have to wait — the popular Pickle Festival adult T-shirts went on sale today, March 1, at the Mount Olive Area Chamber of Commerce, 123 N. Center St. The shirts also will be sold during the festival.
Already on sale are N.C. Pickle Festival socks, a festival first.
Coordinated by the North Carolina Pickle Festival, Inc. in partnership with the Mount Olive Area Chamber of Commerce, the 37th annual N.C. Pickle Festival will be held from 5 to 10 p.m. Friday, April 28, and from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, April 29, in downtown Mount Olive.
Festival organizers have been working to ensure there is plenty of festival merchandise for sale in light of selling out of all of the T-shirts and hats last year.
“We have lots of merchandise this year, which I think is going to be really neat,” said Julie Beck, Chamber president and festival co-chair. “Merchandise, I can’t imagine we’re going to have any issue with running out this year because we’re really stepped up on some extra merchandise.”
This year the T-shirts will come in two designs — one features the Pickle Festival’s official royalty theme with the year 2023. “Only the Best Pickle Wears the Crown” is printed below a pickle wearing a crown and dressed in royal attire including a pickle necklace and holding a pickle-topped scepter.
The shirts come in purple, bright green, blue and charcoal in sizes small through 4X.
“The T-shirts are here and they’ve actually been in my office for a week,” Beck acknowledged. “I’ve just been out of place. Since we have a royalty theme, we have to have purple,” “so we’ve got these really cool purple shirts. All of these have the royalty theme on them. They will all be $25.
“Because of what happened last year when we sold out of everything by 1 o’ clock, and we had nothing to sell for the last five hours of the festival, I’ve ordered a ton of these.”
The other design features last year’s Pickle Mural, but with no year on the shirts.
Because last year’s Pickle Mural theme was so popular Beck said she and co-chair Lynn Williams decided to bring those back with the only difference being they do not have a year on them.
“So I can sell these for the next five years. It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I just got the same three colors I had last year: yellow, mint green and light blue.”
The goal will be to sell the official 2023 T-shirts with the date on them first, Beck said. However, the ones featuring the Pickle Mural can be sold all along, too, she said.
“Right now I only have the adult shirts, and in fact I have not placed the kids order,” Beck said. “But I will be ordering some youth and toddler shirts. We don’t get a bunch because we don’t sell a lot of them.”
The other new item this year is the Pickle Festival socks, one size fist most, that are $22 per pair, she said.
The socks have little pickles on them and the N.C. Pickle Festival’s generic logo.
“They are a little expensive because unfortunately, they were expensive to buy, but I think I bought eight dozen of them,” she said. “When they’re gone, they’re gone. We won’t get any more this year. I didn’t want to get too many.”
Pickle Festival hats have been ordered, she said.
The hats, like the T-shirts, sold out last year, Beck noted.
“I ordered two kinds of trucker hats,” she said. “One has a little patch on the front and one does not have the patch, it’s just embroidered on the front. So I’m noticing a lot of guys that were in the ones with the patch on the front. Plus, I ordered some more visors because a lot of people like those as well.
“So we’ll have more Pickle Festival merchandise for a sale this year than we’ve ever had. So hopefully that’s not an issue. Our hats and visors do not have a year on them. In fact, the ones we saw last year were from 2020.”
For more information, visit ncpicklefest.org.
