2022 N.C. Pickle Fedstival brochure wins award; Chamber President Beck elected president of state festival association

The awarding-winning N.C. Pickle Festival continues to bring home awards for excellence.

The 2022 N.C. Pickle Festival brochure won first place in the medium category during the N.C. Association of Festivals and Events ShowFest Event Innovators Conference held Jan. 29-30 in Charlotte.

Also during the event, Julie Beck, festival co-chair, was elected for the third time as Association president.

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 p.m. to 10 p.m. Friday, April 28, and from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, April 29, in downtown Mount Olive.

Melissa Kirkpatrick, from the Mt. Olive Pickle Co., accompanied Beck to the conference where festivals in the state were recognized for doing well, said Beck, who is also the town’s Chamber president.

“We were nominated for nine awards, but we came up with one, but we’re always happy to get one,” she asserted. “We received the Best Brochure in the medium category.”

The categories are based on a festival’s budget, she pointed out.

“So you have the small category, the medium category and the large category, and the Pickle Festival falls into the medium category,” Beck said. “This is about the third time that we’ve won Best Brochure. I attribute it to Lynn Williams (festival co-chair).

“I feed her all of the information and she figures it all out. So this is all about Lynn and her great job of pulling it all together. The judges liked it. It was very colorful. It has the (festival layout) map and it is very color coordinated. The map has different colors and tells in each section what is happening in that section, entertainment, whatever. It is really nice. It is all divided up by colors so you can tell what is happening.”

Beck continues in role

It is the third time Beck has held the position of president over her 27-some years as an Association member. Some of those previous terms were for two years for various circumstances, so while it is her third term it will be her fifth year in the office, she said.

As president, Beck said she will work closely with Stephanie Saintsing Naset, Association executive director.

“We just keep all the festivals on track,” Beck said. “We are a very non-competitive group. We all work to help each other out. Even if there’s somebody else’s festival on the same weekend as yours, we still share resources. We still work together.

“So as the president, I work very closely with the executive director to make sure we provide all the resources and support that our festivals need. Throughout the year, we do different webinars, some by Zoom, some in person, and then in the fall we always have a fall conference just to kind of keep people informed about stuff.”

Beck said she enjoy being a part of the Association.

“Honestly, I would attribute a lot of our success at our Pickle Festival to this state association because you go out there and you learn really cool things, a way to do things and new trends that are going on,” she noted. “You come back and you implement them in your festival.”

Beck said she has been involved with the Association for a long time, and that as an older member she tries to be a mentor, particularly to new festival planners.

“You don’t know what you don’t know and just to reassure them that you got this and that we’re here to help you out whatever it is we can do,” Beck said. “The last time I served as president of the state association, I really tried to make a point to go around to different festivals, and not only help those people, but actually volunteered at their festivals.

“That’s twofold — I am showing my support for them, but I am learning new ways that they do things that I can implement back at the Pickle Festival.”

What’s up for this year’s festival?

Asked if she had picked up any ideas this year, Beck said Pickle Festival organizers have some things up their sleeves.

“I will say we are working on some things,” she teased. “I think we always pick up ideas. You know, it doesn’t matter how long you go to this festival conference, you always learn new things — ways that people are doing things. They find things that work, things that don’t work.”

One thing Beck said she learned is that a lot of events are going cashless. However, that is not something the Pickle Festival will be doing any time soon, she remarked.

A speaker from Kansas City talked about why a lot of businesses are going cashless. Some of the reasoning is because of COVID, although some businesses had started to switch before the pandemic, Beck said.

“People as a whole, I think you tend to spend more money when you don’t pay with cash (as opposed to) when you use a credit or debit card,” she said. “So there were many conversations about how would you go this route and getting the word out to your attendees about this is a cashless event.”

There were conversations about how some people actually are against having debit or credit cards and how would a festival handle that issue, Beck said.

There were conversations as well about whether festivals could sell cards that attendees could purchase to place a certain amount of money on them, she said. That way people who do not use credit or debit cards all of the time could have one just for the festival.

“So it’s really interesting,” she said. “We are not at that point. The Pickle Festival definitely not this year. I don’t even know down the road. But it’s interesting to see that this is a trend that’s happening nationwide.”

For more information about the Pickle Festival, visit ncpicklefest.org.