South Beach food festival will go on despite pandemic. Here’s what it will look like
The sprawling food festival that draws tens of thousands to South Beach every February is planning to go on as an in-person event.
The South Beach Wine & Food Festival has been lining up talent for a five-day festival that would cut capacity to one-third of its usual attendance of 65,000, halve the number of events, and limit itself to outdoor-only dinners, the festival’s founder said.
The festival still, by no means, would be a small, intimate affair.
It expects to draw more than 20,000 people for its 57 events, down from 114, from Miami-Dade to Palm Beach counties. And the large, outdoor events that have been the festival’s hallmark will still go on, albeit at reduced capacity, and broken up into two sessions with an hour-long cleaning period in between.
“We know if we don’t do it right, we’ll screw it up for the entire industry,” festival founder Lee Schrager said.
Meanwhile, the festival has drawn out a plan intended to curb the threat of coronavirus transmission, Schrager said. It includes one-way lines at events, a mask requirement except while seated, health screening and temperature checks, no communal food and no “meet and greet” opportunities with celebrity chefs.
And still, Schrager said, all that could change if COVID-19 cases continue to surge. More than 140,000 new cases were diagnosed in a single day in the United States this week. And in Miami-Dade, the rate of people testing positive for coronavirus has nearly doubled in the last week to more than 9 percent. The county had to drop to 10 percent before the mayor allowed restaurants to reopen.
Scaling back the large, outdoor gatherings has been the festival’s focus.
The annual Burger Bash, which usually crams 4,000 people under a block-long beachside tent, will be split into two sessions of 1,000 people each, including staff. One session will run from 6-8 p.m., the other from 9-11 p.m. The beachside BubbleQ, a barbecue and champagne event, will serve two groups of 1,000 people each.
Smaller dinners will still be part of the festival. But festival goers will be seated at individual tables depending on their party’s size. Guests who want to sit together will have to buy tickets together. It’s a lesson the festival learned from a trial run at last month’s New York City Wine & Food Festival, which Schrager also founded.
The number of national talent flying in will also be cut from about 400 to 100 or so, Schrager said. That will put the focus primarily on local restaurants and chefs, many of whom have garnered national acclaim.
A full slate of events will be available by Dec. 7 at the website, sobewff.org, Schrager said, and tickets go on sale Dec. 14.
Schrager said the festival “will not make one penny this year,” and for the first time, the festival is reimbursing participating chefs up to $700.
The intent of holding the festival in some in-person way, he said, was to support a restaurant industry that has been decimated by the virus’ easy spread. Restaurants — the only indoor spaces where people spend time together not masked — were by far the riskiest places to catch the virus, according to a new analysis of months of transmission data (which included Miami) reported by the New York Times.
“If we do this correctly,” Schrager said, “we hope to lead the way for how events like this can be held.”
This story was originally published November 13, 2020 at 10:07 AM.
